Longing for the better days (when things weren't as good as we want to remember them as being). - Tobacco, turpentine and naval stores.
Talking with Commissioner of Agriculture Tommy Irvin this past Saturday about how most of Coffee County's tobacco this past season was grown under contract rather than being sold at auction -- coupled with an article discussed below that also revisits another part of Georgia's heritage of days gone by -- reminded me of one of my earliest posts on this blog of 08-04-04 entitled "Old times there are not forgotten - Tobacco markets open this week."
For those of you who have been on board from day one, please pardon the rest of us as we revisit that post and a comment I received further reminiscing of the good 'ole days.
And for those you who were born fixated to Vince Lombardi's 'Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing,' modified for you to 'politics isn't everything, it's the only thing,' loosen up. In politics there is never a dull moment, always another day, and there is much to come.
The earlier post:
An AP post in The Albany Herald on 8-3 notes that the "[e]xperts say enthusiasm at the tobacco markets has waned the past few years."
Down here in South Georgia any of us could have told you as much; we didn't need an expert.
On August 4, Tommy Irvin, Georgia's Commissioner of Agriculture, will be here in Douglas on his 36th annual tobacco tour, visiting our local markets before heading over to Nashville in nearby Berrien County.
I probably won't go. A couple of years ago not going would have been similar to a kid missing a circus coming to town in the 50's -- you just didn't do it.
As noted in the AP story, changes in the landscape of the golden leaf have turned a once ballyhooed event into almost an afterthought.
About 80 percent of the flue-cured crop in the past couple of years has bypassed the auction system, with farmers selling their crop directly to cigarette makers with whom they have a contract to grow the golden leaf. That trend is expected to hold again.
Gone are the days when the opening of the tobacco markets was one of the most exciting days of the year. Buyers arrived in stylish cars to bid on tobacco that was world renowned. Farm families poured into town to spend more freely than usual. And growers in bib overalls gathered in the warehouses to hear the singsong chant of the auctioneers.
One thing that has not changed is the aromatic smell of tobacco. It still fills the auction warehouses and receiving points where farmers deliver contract tobacco.
"It still has a pleasant smell, and it still smells like money to most tobacco farmers," the AP story noted.
I still think about the 'smell of money' when I pass a tobacco warehouse in Douglas on my long Saturday morning run during this time of year. In the 'old days' local merchants -- whether feed and seed stores for fertilizer or the local haberdasher -- would carry farmers on credit all year, knowing they would be paid when the cash crop came in.
The times, they are a-changing.
_______________
A comment I got about this post observed:
"Great blog. The note about the opening of the tobacco markets caused me to remember covering the openings many years ago. The flue-cured auctions were among the best covered and biggest South Georgia news events of the year. We sent reporters and photographers to cover the sales in Douglas, Albany, Valdosta et al. There was a festive air about the whole thing, and, of course, the farmers usually walked away with their wallets bulging. Those were better days."
I responded to my e-mail friend:
"Not just better. Those were the days. Our family like so many in those days grew tobacco, and when I was five or six years of age, Dad would have me and baby sister Virginia sit on a sheet of tobacco during an auction, hoping the tobacco warehouse owner would see us kids and nudge the auction price up a bit (which the warehouse owner could do by bidding on the tobacco himself, and often buying the tobacco which often was later sold at a higher price). Recognizing an opportunity here for something for myself, I would cut a deal with my father. 'Dad, you spend a nickle and buy me some boiled peanuts, and Virginia and I will sit there and smile and look cute.' I love it."
_______________
More of our region's history is told in an article in today's AP entitled "Family maintains old still to commemorate South's naval stores industry."
The setting for the article is Willachoochee, Georgia, a place about 15 miles from Douglas in adjacent Atkinson County, the home of Lace Futch and the 'No Name Bar,' fondly referred to by Lewis Grizzard in so many of his columns.
The AP article:
Family maintains old still to commemorate South's naval stores indutry
The dome-shaped copper still nestled in the pines on the outskirts of town was modeled after a liquor still.
But the liquid from Willacoochee's still wasn't 100-proof white lighting. Instead, it gushed turpentine, a rural cure-all for much of the 20th century, and rosin, the sticky stuff that gives baseball players a better grip on their bats and provides the friction that makes violin strings sing beneath a virtuoso's bow.
The McCranie Brothers' still commemorates a period in the South's naval stores industry when workers went into the forests to attach cups on longleaf and slash pines. They "chipped" the trees to start the gum flowing, collected it from the cups and carried it to the stills in wooden barrels.
"It's the only one in Georgia that is original on its original site," said Shasta McCranie, whose descendants built the still in 1936. "The copper still was designed after the liquor stills in Scotland."
McCranie said tourists traveling U.S. Route 82 between Tifton and Waycross stop by to see the still, some outbuildings and some of the logging equipment used there until 1942. His family maintains it.
"It's kind of like a big kettle," McCranie said. "It makes steam and water cools the steam coming out in the spirit room. The end product is turpentine and rosin."
McCranie never fires up the Willicoochee still. But stills in Portal, near Statesboro, and in Tifton, continue turpentine production on special occasions.
Grady Williams, one of the Georgia Forestry Commission's last naval stores specialists, said people quickly exhausted a 50-gallon supply produced at Portal one year.
"They remember the old times," he said. "Farmers would always keep some pine products - turpentine - to relieve soreness in the throat and sore joints."
The term naval stores comes from the days of wooden sailing ships. Pine tar and pitch were used to caulk seams and protect ropes from the elements. Chemicals extracted from pines are still used today in adhesives, perfumes and many other products.
John Johnson, curator of the Georgia Agrirama, the state's official museum of agriculture in Tifton, said naval stores dates back even to Biblical days, when Noah was instructed to pitch his ark within and without. Noah could have lost his cargo of elephants, giraffes and rabbits if his boat leaked.
North Carolina, which became known as the "tar-heel state" because of the naval stores industry, became a prime producer in the early 1800s. As its trees were exhausted, production shifted to south Georgia in the 1870s and then on to other states as far west as eastern Texas, Johnson said.
"For south Georgia, it was phenomenal," he said. "It helped open this area up for settlement and provided one of the few alternative cash crops. Other than cotton, you didn't really have that many cash crops."
Many of the old stills closed in the 1940s, when the extraction of turpentine, gum and other chemicals began shifting to pulp mills. The mills could do it cheaper during the pulping process.
The Agrirama's still, assembled from the parts of other stills, is a popular attraction, Johnson said.
"We're the only one that is open to the public on a daily basis with someone to interpret it," he said.
The McCranie still sits on the west side of Willacoochee, a town of 1,400, located about 186 miles southeast of Atlanta. The town's other landmark, the No-Name Bar, sits on the east side.
McCranie said he never even considered switching the still from turpentine to moonshine.
"It could be done," he said. "But we're about as law-abiding people as you'd find in Georgia."
_______________
A special thanks to Elliott Minor of the AP for this trip down memory lane.
Naval stores and turpendine were big business in this part of the state. As noted in the article, about 4 feet or so from the base of the tree the pine would be chipped, or slashed, literally cutting off the pine bark and exposing the fresh colored interior of the pine, a slash being about 3 feet in height and eight inches or so in width.
Then as noted, a tin looking cup about a foot or so wide and about four inches in height and four inches in depth would be attached (nailed to the pine) near the bottom of the slash to catch the rosin as it slowly drained into the cup.
Working in tobacco was hard work, very hard work; the wages when I did it were $3 and later up to $5 a day, but included a meal that you couldn't beat with a stick, generally expertly prepared by the farmer's wife.
The pay for doing turpendine; you got paid by the barrel. If you were lucky, you had access to a mule that would pull a sled on which sat the barrel into which you emptied the sticky rosin, the sap of the pine tree.
How much a barrel? I have heard, but can't remember. And I only watched. I worked hard as a kid and young boy, but not this hard. This was probably the hardest work around, and even "tobacco hands" didn't do turpentine.
For those of you who have been on board from day one, please pardon the rest of us as we revisit that post and a comment I received further reminiscing of the good 'ole days.
And for those you who were born fixated to Vince Lombardi's 'Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing,' modified for you to 'politics isn't everything, it's the only thing,' loosen up. In politics there is never a dull moment, always another day, and there is much to come.
The earlier post:
An AP post in The Albany Herald on 8-3 notes that the "[e]xperts say enthusiasm at the tobacco markets has waned the past few years."
Down here in South Georgia any of us could have told you as much; we didn't need an expert.
On August 4, Tommy Irvin, Georgia's Commissioner of Agriculture, will be here in Douglas on his 36th annual tobacco tour, visiting our local markets before heading over to Nashville in nearby Berrien County.
I probably won't go. A couple of years ago not going would have been similar to a kid missing a circus coming to town in the 50's -- you just didn't do it.
As noted in the AP story, changes in the landscape of the golden leaf have turned a once ballyhooed event into almost an afterthought.
About 80 percent of the flue-cured crop in the past couple of years has bypassed the auction system, with farmers selling their crop directly to cigarette makers with whom they have a contract to grow the golden leaf. That trend is expected to hold again.
Gone are the days when the opening of the tobacco markets was one of the most exciting days of the year. Buyers arrived in stylish cars to bid on tobacco that was world renowned. Farm families poured into town to spend more freely than usual. And growers in bib overalls gathered in the warehouses to hear the singsong chant of the auctioneers.
One thing that has not changed is the aromatic smell of tobacco. It still fills the auction warehouses and receiving points where farmers deliver contract tobacco.
"It still has a pleasant smell, and it still smells like money to most tobacco farmers," the AP story noted.
I still think about the 'smell of money' when I pass a tobacco warehouse in Douglas on my long Saturday morning run during this time of year. In the 'old days' local merchants -- whether feed and seed stores for fertilizer or the local haberdasher -- would carry farmers on credit all year, knowing they would be paid when the cash crop came in.
The times, they are a-changing.
_______________
A comment I got about this post observed:
"Great blog. The note about the opening of the tobacco markets caused me to remember covering the openings many years ago. The flue-cured auctions were among the best covered and biggest South Georgia news events of the year. We sent reporters and photographers to cover the sales in Douglas, Albany, Valdosta et al. There was a festive air about the whole thing, and, of course, the farmers usually walked away with their wallets bulging. Those were better days."
I responded to my e-mail friend:
"Not just better. Those were the days. Our family like so many in those days grew tobacco, and when I was five or six years of age, Dad would have me and baby sister Virginia sit on a sheet of tobacco during an auction, hoping the tobacco warehouse owner would see us kids and nudge the auction price up a bit (which the warehouse owner could do by bidding on the tobacco himself, and often buying the tobacco which often was later sold at a higher price). Recognizing an opportunity here for something for myself, I would cut a deal with my father. 'Dad, you spend a nickle and buy me some boiled peanuts, and Virginia and I will sit there and smile and look cute.' I love it."
_______________
More of our region's history is told in an article in today's AP entitled "Family maintains old still to commemorate South's naval stores industry."
The setting for the article is Willachoochee, Georgia, a place about 15 miles from Douglas in adjacent Atkinson County, the home of Lace Futch and the 'No Name Bar,' fondly referred to by Lewis Grizzard in so many of his columns.
The AP article:
Family maintains old still to commemorate South's naval stores indutry
The dome-shaped copper still nestled in the pines on the outskirts of town was modeled after a liquor still.
But the liquid from Willacoochee's still wasn't 100-proof white lighting. Instead, it gushed turpentine, a rural cure-all for much of the 20th century, and rosin, the sticky stuff that gives baseball players a better grip on their bats and provides the friction that makes violin strings sing beneath a virtuoso's bow.
The McCranie Brothers' still commemorates a period in the South's naval stores industry when workers went into the forests to attach cups on longleaf and slash pines. They "chipped" the trees to start the gum flowing, collected it from the cups and carried it to the stills in wooden barrels.
"It's the only one in Georgia that is original on its original site," said Shasta McCranie, whose descendants built the still in 1936. "The copper still was designed after the liquor stills in Scotland."
McCranie said tourists traveling U.S. Route 82 between Tifton and Waycross stop by to see the still, some outbuildings and some of the logging equipment used there until 1942. His family maintains it.
"It's kind of like a big kettle," McCranie said. "It makes steam and water cools the steam coming out in the spirit room. The end product is turpentine and rosin."
McCranie never fires up the Willicoochee still. But stills in Portal, near Statesboro, and in Tifton, continue turpentine production on special occasions.
Grady Williams, one of the Georgia Forestry Commission's last naval stores specialists, said people quickly exhausted a 50-gallon supply produced at Portal one year.
"They remember the old times," he said. "Farmers would always keep some pine products - turpentine - to relieve soreness in the throat and sore joints."
The term naval stores comes from the days of wooden sailing ships. Pine tar and pitch were used to caulk seams and protect ropes from the elements. Chemicals extracted from pines are still used today in adhesives, perfumes and many other products.
John Johnson, curator of the Georgia Agrirama, the state's official museum of agriculture in Tifton, said naval stores dates back even to Biblical days, when Noah was instructed to pitch his ark within and without. Noah could have lost his cargo of elephants, giraffes and rabbits if his boat leaked.
North Carolina, which became known as the "tar-heel state" because of the naval stores industry, became a prime producer in the early 1800s. As its trees were exhausted, production shifted to south Georgia in the 1870s and then on to other states as far west as eastern Texas, Johnson said.
"For south Georgia, it was phenomenal," he said. "It helped open this area up for settlement and provided one of the few alternative cash crops. Other than cotton, you didn't really have that many cash crops."
Many of the old stills closed in the 1940s, when the extraction of turpentine, gum and other chemicals began shifting to pulp mills. The mills could do it cheaper during the pulping process.
The Agrirama's still, assembled from the parts of other stills, is a popular attraction, Johnson said.
"We're the only one that is open to the public on a daily basis with someone to interpret it," he said.
The McCranie still sits on the west side of Willacoochee, a town of 1,400, located about 186 miles southeast of Atlanta. The town's other landmark, the No-Name Bar, sits on the east side.
McCranie said he never even considered switching the still from turpentine to moonshine.
"It could be done," he said. "But we're about as law-abiding people as you'd find in Georgia."
_______________
A special thanks to Elliott Minor of the AP for this trip down memory lane.
Naval stores and turpendine were big business in this part of the state. As noted in the article, about 4 feet or so from the base of the tree the pine would be chipped, or slashed, literally cutting off the pine bark and exposing the fresh colored interior of the pine, a slash being about 3 feet in height and eight inches or so in width.
Then as noted, a tin looking cup about a foot or so wide and about four inches in height and four inches in depth would be attached (nailed to the pine) near the bottom of the slash to catch the rosin as it slowly drained into the cup.
Working in tobacco was hard work, very hard work; the wages when I did it were $3 and later up to $5 a day, but included a meal that you couldn't beat with a stick, generally expertly prepared by the farmer's wife.
The pay for doing turpendine; you got paid by the barrel. If you were lucky, you had access to a mule that would pull a sled on which sat the barrel into which you emptied the sticky rosin, the sap of the pine tree.
How much a barrel? I have heard, but can't remember. And I only watched. I worked hard as a kid and young boy, but not this hard. This was probably the hardest work around, and even "tobacco hands" didn't do turpentine.
posted by Sid Cottingham | 7:14 PM
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