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TURPENTINE
Well, I put on my shoes and I started. Going up some roads and down some
others to see what Negroes do for a living. Going down one road I smelt
hot rosin and looked and saw a “gum patch.” That’s a turpentine still
to the outsider, but gum path (sic) to those who work them.
It was not long before I was up i (sic) the foreman’s face talking and
asking to be talked-to. He was a sort of pencil-shaped brown-stained man
in his forties and his name was John McFarlin. He got to telling and I
got to listening until the first thing I knew I was spending the night
at his house so I could “Ride the Wood” with him next morning and see
for myself instead of asking him so many questions. So that left me free
to ask about songs go (sic) the turpentine woods.
“No, Ma’am. they don’t make up many songs. The boys used to be pretty
ad (sic) about making up songs but they don’t do that now.”
“If you don’t make up songs while you are working, don’t you all make
some up round the jook?”
“Mo (sic), ”mam, its (sic) like I told you. Taint like saw-mills and
such like that. Turpentine woods is kind of lonesome.”
Foreman McFarlin had me up before five o’ clock next morning. He had
to wake up his camp and he always started out about 5:30 so that he had
every man on the job by 6.
Every man took his tools, went to his task-whatever he was doing when
he knocked off at 5:30 the afternoon before, he got right on it in the
morning. The foreman had 18 men under him and he saw everyone in his place.
He had 5 chippers, 7 pullers and 5 dippers and a wood-chopper. All the
men off to work, John McFarlin straddled his horse, got one for me and
we began riding the wood. Talking about knowing his business! The foreman
can ride a “drift” and with a glance tell if every “face” on every tree
has been chipped.
First he rode a drift of virgin boxes. That is when a tree is first worked,
it is a virgin box for three years. That is the finest rosin. The five
men were chipping away. The chipper is the man who makes those little
slanting cuts on pine trees so that the gum exudes, and drains down into
the box. He has a very sharp cutting tool that heavily weighted in the
handle and cunningly balanced so that he chips at a stroke. The company
pays a cent a tree. We stopped and watched Lester Keller chip because
he is hard to beat anywhere in the world. He often chips 700 or more trees
a week.
A puller is a specialized chipper. He chips the trees when they have
been worked too high for the chipper. He does this with a chipping axe
with a long handle knows (sic) as a puller. The foreman explained that
the tree are chipped three years and pulled three years then it is abandoned.
Leroy Heath is the champ puller.
He inspected a drift that was being dipped. The men who dip take the
cup off the tree, scrape out the gum with the dipping iron and put it
back in place and pass on to the next face. The dippers are paid $.85
a barrel for gum and 10 barrels a week is good dipping. Dan Walker is
the champ. He can dip two barrels a day.
The wood-chopper cuts wood for the still. Wood is used to fire the furnace
instead of coal because the company owns millions of cords of wood for
burning in trees that have been worked out.
McFarlin explained that thee(sic) is no chipping and dipping from November
to March. In November they stop working the trees, scrape the faces, how(sic)
and rake around the trees as a caution against fire.
The foreman gets $12.50 a week, the foreman’s house, all the firewood
he wants and all the gardening space he wants. He said shyly that he would
raise(sic) in wages, but feels that he will not get it. He wants to know
if the Government is sending people around to make folk pay better wages.
He hopes so.
Visit to Aycock & Lindsey
Turpentine Camp
Cross City, Florida
CROSS CITY: TURPENTINE CAMP
ZORA HURSTON
August 1939
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