Fire Building:  The Anderson family prospers; an explanation of “turpentining”; why sailors are called “Tars,” and their uniforms have flap collars, and how Harlis nearly burned the house down.

The nineteen-teens are called the “Golden Age of Agriculture,” and life on the Anderson farm must have been good.  Cook was primarily a cotton farmer, but also grew cattle, hogs and vegetable crops – virtually anything he could sale. There was once a very active strawberry market at Seminary, with berries shipped by rail to distant locales, so Cook planted strawberries. There were chickens for meat and eggs, cows and hogs to be butchered and the meat smoked, salted and even canned, and always a milk-cow or two, and every two years another baby was added to the family.  The farm prospered and grew as Cook bought additional land to expand his operation. 

All Children --  boys and girls – wore dresses until they were four or five years old.  Daddy told me about his first pair of pants:   a pair of overalls; he especially liked the pockets because of all the things he could carry in them.  Verl was disappointed and cried when she was told that girls could not wear pants.

One of Daddy’s early chores was building the fire.  In winter time, he had to get up at 4:00 a.m. and build a fire  so the “fire-place room” would be warm when everyone got up.  Once the fire was going, he got back into bed until  breakfast was called at six o’clock.

Let me digress for a moment (OK, OK, I am going to chase a rabbit.  Now are you satisfied?) and  talk about the turpentine business.  From the days of early settlement until the 1970’s longleaf and slash pine trees were “tapped” for sap and rosin.  One would slash a tree at an angle, as high as he could reach, to remove the bark and start the sap flowing, then hang a clay (later,  tin) cup at the low end of the slash, and pine sap would flow into the cup. After a day or two, the “turpentiner” would come by in a wagon with a couple of barrels on it.  He would empty the liquid sap into one barrel,  scrape the hardened  rosin into another barrel (it was a lower quality product), and proceed to the next tree.  Once a slash stopped flowing, he would make a mirror-image slash next to it to produce a chevron.  When that one stopped flowing, he would repeat the process below the old slashes and continue on down to ground level, then move to the other side of the tree and repeat the process.  The row of slashes was called a “face.” Large trees might have three faces.  A strip of uncut bark was kept between faces so the tree would not die.  Once the tree was “worked out,” it was cut for lumber.

The sap was distilled into turpentine, which was used for everything from paint thinner to medicine.  Rosin was remanufactured into a variety of forms for various uses. Solid rosin was rubbed onto a fiddle bow to make the strings vibrate and powered rosin was used  to enable the hands to grip things better – like a baseball.  In the days of wooden sailing ships, turpentine and rosin were indispensable.  Ropes were coated with rosin to make them last longer and for friction so knots would hold better.   Raveled yarn and was coated with rosin (the resulting product was called  “oakum”) and forced into cracks between planks to caulk the ship and make it water tight.  Sailors even coated their straw hats with rosin to water proof them.  In hot weather, the rosin would melt and drip off their hats, so they draped a rag over their collars; it was held in place with a kerchief that was knotted in front – a practice that found its way into the design of modern naval uniform jumpers with their “flap” collars (or “napkins”) and the knotted kerchiefs still worn about sailors’ necks.  The nickname for a sea-going man was “Jack Tar” (probably because he smelled like pine tar) – and modern sailors are still occasionally called “Tars.” Products made from pine sap are known as “naval stores,” and the business is known as the “naval stores industry.”

In more recent times – up until the late 50’s – a thriving naval stores industry was based on harvesting old pine stumps, chipping them and forcing steam through the chips to extract  turpentine.  Continental Turpentine Co.  was an important part of Laurel’s economy until  pine stumps became scarce and they moved to Cross City, Fla, where there was still an abundant supply. Hercules Powder Company, which still operates in Petal, was once a turpentine producer, but now it has moved on to other products.

Now wasn’t that interesting, and aren’t you glad you stayed with me? But what, you are probably asking, does that have to do with this story? Well, don’t be impatient: I am about to tell you.

We were talking about Daddy building a fire every morning.  He found a whole bunch of abandoned  tin cups that were full of hardened rosin, and – knowing how flammable it is – he figured it would be ideal for starting fires, and he would not have to split “fat-lightered” splinters, so he stashed them on the “wood shelf” outside the window.  The next morning, he put one on the floor of the fireplace and  piled oak logs on the fire dogs.  He touched a match to the rosin and it caught fire quickly and burned with a hot flame.  Knowing  the oak logs would quickly catch fire, he crawled back into bed.

He soon heard a terrible racket coming from the fireplace room.  He heard  flapping and Cook yelling “Appie,” get some water, quick.” He jumped out of bed to see what was happening.  The rosin had melted and run, flaming, out of the fireplace and  set the floor on fire.  Fortunately, they got the fire out before much damage was done.

That was the last time he took a fire-building short cut.