“When I sight th’ tree I walk ’round till I see th’ hole they’re usin’, then I cut a big X deep through th’ bark with my barlow. A tree that’s marked can’t be teched by nary other bee hunter. ’Tis sort of a unwritten law of th’ woods, this marked-tree business. Ever’body knows what it means. Nobody but a low-down skunk would cut a marked tree in these here hills. Even if it is on th’ other man’s land don’t make no difference.
“I usually chop or saw th’ tree purty soon after I find hit, sometimes on th’ same day if it ain’t too late. Lots o’ mornin’s I’m out a hour by sun waitin’ with my bait an’ that gives me time t’ do all th’ work in one day. Most of my bee huntin’ is done on Sunday since pap died an’ I had t’ take over th’ runnin’ of th’ shop.
“One time when I wus a kid of a boy, pap found a bee tree right at th’ head o’ this here holler. We wus needin’ some sweet’nin’ purty bad, so he took his rifle gun an’ went up on th’ ridge an’ killed a buck deer. He brought it home an’ skinned it an’ hung th’ meat in th’ smokehouse. He got a feller who lived down on th’ crick t’ go with him t’ cut th’ tree. Hit wus shore a rich one and they sewed up close t’ eighty pounds o’ honey in the deerskin. Jist as they wus ready t’ start home a couple o’ wild turkeys flew over an’ lit about a quarter up th’ holler. Pap an’ th’ feller with him had their guns along so they decided t’ foller th’ turkeys. They wus a big holler stump ’bout seven feet high standin’ close by an’ pap drapped th’ skin o’ honey into it. They wus gone a couple o’ hours and brought back a big gobbler. When they got t’ whar they had cut th’ bee tree, they heerd a awful noise inside that stump they had left th’ honey in. Sich scratchin’ an’ takin’ on ye never heerd. They slipped up t’ th’ stump an’ pap swung hisself up an’ looked in. What d’ye think, a half-grown bar wus in that thar stump after th’ sweet’nin’! Hit had clumb up th’ outside an’ drapped in, but after loadin’ up on th’ honey, hit couldn’t climb out. Thar hit wus all stuck up frum ears t’ tail an’ takin’ on turrible. But pap soon put it out o’ misery. He clumb a tree an’ shot th’ critter between th’ eyes. Th’ honey wus mostly ruint but we had plenty o’ meat at our house fer quite a spell.”
By this time we had arrived at the tree, which was on Hite Lindsey’s land at a point where the ridge dips into the hollow. After sawing and felling the tree, Lem quickly cleared away the limbs that would interfere with our progress. He had instructed me to use the smoke bellows while he chopped a hole in the trunk for the removal of the honey. The fun began. I puffed smoke and fought bees for all I was worth. Lem chopped vigorously and soon had an opening through which to remove the treasure. After filling the four pails to the brim with the golden liquid and comb, we started homeward. Of course, we had gotten a few stings during our encounter with the bees, but we pulled out the stingers and rubbed honey on the spots to stop the swelling. We stopped at Hite Lindsey’s place long enough to tell his wife, Lizzie, to take a bucket and get the rest of the honey.
“Sometimes th’ bees don’t use th’ holler of th’ tree a-tall but stick th’ honey on th’ outside,” explained my companion as we walked down the hollow. “This don’t happen often though fer bees is smart an’ know not t’ leave their honey out in th’ weather unless they can’t do no better.”
The tree-cutting and honey-salvage experience is one which hillsmen enjoy many times each year. Wild honey is “long sweet’nin’” much to be desired and no native need be without it.
That afternoon at the store Tobe Mullins enlightened me upon the sweetening lore of the backhills. Back in the early days when highways were unknown in the Ozarks, crude wagon trails served as the only outlets. Transportation was difficult and expensive. Natives off in these hills learned to dispense with practically all luxuries. Even the necessities of life were limited and home products were substituted whenever possible. Refined sugar, often called “short sweet’nin’,” was a rarity on the hillsman’s board. The country merchant always had a barrel of it on hand which he was eager to sell for cash or swap for prime coonskins or for roots of the goldenseal. But it was almost prohibitive in price and was used sparingly. In a few neighborhoods the sap of the hard maple was made into sugar and used as a table delicacy. This sweetening from the hillsman’s woodlot was exceedingly toothsome. But most of the sugar requirements were met by wild honey and sorghum syrup, commonly called molasses. There might be a little refined sugar in the gourd to set out when company came, but for the most part this costly product, like candy, nuts, and oranges, was for Christmas, birthdays, weddings, picnics, and other special occasions.
“Four or five years ago,” said Tobe, “I went with Ed Bullock an’ Hite Lindsey t’ round up a herd o’ hawgs that had strayed t’ th’ Bull Crick settlement. We stopped at Abe Howell’s place fer dinner. When Abe’s woman, Susie, poured th’ black, scaldin’ coffee, she asked us which we would have, long or short sweet’nin’. Ed took ‘long’ since he wus use t’ hit at home. Susie took a jug o’ sorghum an’ poured a couple o’ spoonsful into Ed’s cup. Hite figured he would take th’ ‘short’ product. Not havin’ any white sugar, Abe got up frum th’ table an’ took down a leather bag that wus hangin’ on a peg by th’ kitchen stove. He pulled out a cake o’ maple sugar, bit off a chunk as big as a hicker nut, an’ laid hit in Hite’s sasser. I drunk my coffee without no sweet’nin’.”
Folks in the White River country like to tell of the time when Uncle Abe got liberal and treated his entire family, except two of the older boys, to all the precious cane sugar they could eat. It is reported that Abe needed only one or two drinks of corn whiskey to open his heart and touch his pocketbook. The fact that he went through the year without getting a haircut, or without even currying his long, grotesque whiskers, and that he wore a homespun suit colored with red oak bark, shirt outside his pants, in preference to store clothes, was no real indication that he was stingy. He preferred yellow whiskers tucked in his shirt and hair that warmed his neck against the cold winds of winter. And the thought of store clothes never entered his mind. But to get back to the story.
It happened when the Howell family went to the bottoms in Arkansas one fall to pick cotton. But let Abe tell it in his own peculiar way as reported to me by an old settler.
“Wal, s’r, I fetched th’ hull dang bunch of ’em into one uv them thar big stores in town, an’ I sez, sez I, ‘See hayer, mister, if ye’ll let these here youngens an’ their mammy eat all th’ short sweet’nin’ they want out’n that thar bar’l, I’ll pay ye a silver dollar!’ Wal, he let ’em do hit an’ they shore dug their fingers into that thar sugar an’ nearly strangled gettin’ hit down. After they got their bellies full, I went an’ looked in th’ bar’l. An’ I’ll be dumfuzzled if they had et enough so you could miss hit, an’ me already havin’ paid th’ feller th’ dollar. Course they wus only seven of ’em as Lum and Ezra had stayed at home t’ take care o’ things an’ t’ look after Nate Watkins’ still while he went t’ th’ county seat t’ set on th’ jury.”
At one time the hard maple was common in many sections of the Ozarks, but civilization has taken a heavy toll of this beautiful, productive sugar tree. The closely grained wood is valuable for furniture making and furnishings in houses. It is durable and takes a high polish. It is also serviceable to the shoemaker for pegs and lasts. This demand has thinned the Ozark forests of this flaming torch of autumn and sweet wooer of spring, but one may still find an occasional “sugar orchard” in the backhills.
With the first thaw of late winter, the harvester visits the maple groves and taps the trees with an auger. Wooden pegs or spouts are driven into the trunks, and wooden troughs are provided to carry the dripping sap to suitable receptacles. When a sufficient amount of the watery fluid is collected, it is boiled in flat sorghum pans over a slow fire. The sticky syrup must be of just the right consistency before it is drawn off and put into another vessel, usually a copper kettle, for the crystallizing of the sugar. When the liquid starts suga
ring, it is beaten with a paddle to give it a firm grain. It is then removed to small muffin or cake pans and cooled. The cakes weigh about a quarter of a pound and sell in the country stores at five or ten cents each, the price being regulated by the supply and the tourist demand. Large producers sometimes sell the sugar in the bulk for as much as fifty cents a pound. This sugar may be returned to its liquid form by boiling with a little water. Spread on corn or wheat cakes over a thick layer of country butter, it makes a dish to set before the king.
Molasses made from sorghum cane is one of the most popular hill products. Sorghum making is a time of festivity in the backhills, seasoning the autumn days with gaiety even as maple-sugar time seasons the spring. The native Ozarker is an artist in making syrup. During my sojourn in the Woodville neighborhood, almost every farmer had his patch of cane which he stripped, cut, and hauled to mill. Most of the syrup was made at Ed Bullock’s mill where the toll was one third of the sorghum or a dime a gallon.
Sorghum cane is not particular about the type of soil in which it grows and it requires but little cultivation. These factors, not to mention the hillsman’s sweet tooth, account for the numerous cane fields. Boys and girls usually do the stripping. It is a real adventure to attack a cane field with a paddle in each hand. It recalls Don Quixote and his windmills.
I spent several days at Bullock’s mill where the stalks of green cane were crushed in a crude horsepower contraption and the watery juice transported to a long flat cooking pan. Ed’s old mule, Jude, was hitched to a long pole which operated the cane press. ’Round and ’round the circle poked Jude through the molasses-making season of autumn. This old mule had spent ten years in the milling business and had learned to take his time. The pan was set upon a roughly built furnace of rock under which burned a slow hickory fire. Ed was an expert at sorghum making and was known far and near for his skill. He knew just how to regulate the fire in order to turn the whitish liquid into reddish gold of the proper thickness. Too much heat scorches the sorghum; too little makes it strong and of dark color. In either case the product is ruined for commercial purposes.
The atmosphere was filled with the spicy tang of the boiling sorghum as Ed stirred the liquid and skimmed off the greenish scum. Neighboring children stood by, dipping pieces of cane stalks into the boiling molasses to form suckers. Late in the evening the liquid was drawn off and stored in a barrel. That night the young folks had a taffy pulling around a bonfire. The molasses was boiled in an iron kettle until of the right consistency to make into taffy. Then it was pulled into long white strands and eaten by the young people.
It has been said that one touch of nature makes the whole world kin. The sweet tooth of mankind is universal and never ceases to ache. And whether it be soothed by the refined sugar of agriculture and chemistry, or by the natural long sweetening of the backhills, matters little. The long and the short of it is to have the sweetening.
Bounties of Nature
The harvest of the hills is not limited to one or two short seasons each year. Every sign of the zodiac offers the alert Ozarker opportunity to profit from nature. With the approach of Groundhog Day in February, state laws close the hunting and trapping season and the numerous Nimrods stack their guns and store their traps for other hill activities. Catfish get hungry after the first spring rise, and wily bass jump for flies in the clear streams. There are delicious wild fruits and berries to be picked from bush, twig, and vine in summer and early fall, and nuts to be gathered and sacked for the market or home consumption. As the autumn season comes on the harvest of wild herbs and roots with medicinal properties offers profit to the hillsman who knows the alphabet in the book of nature.
Wild ginseng, goldenseal, and mayapple all grow in the Ozarks and are still quite plentiful in the pockets of the mountains where the lumber camps have not denuded the forest of its larger trees. These plants, especially ginseng and goldenseal, grow in the shaded areas of the wooded hills and require several years to reach a stage of maturity. They do not flourish in cut-over lands where the monarchs of the forest have been removed. The Indians and early settlers knew the worth of these plants in making simple medicines, but there was little commercial demand for them until about the year 1860.
Ginseng and goldenseal have been grown in the Ozarks as commercial crops since 1901. Gardens of less than two acres have produced $10,000 worth of seed and medicinal roots in a four-year period. The juices extracted from these plants are used in compounding medicines both for internal and external use. Most of the ginseng produced in Arkansas is shipped to China where the Orientals use the drug in great quantities. But the war in that country has greatly retarded the trade in this commodity. More attention is now being devoted to the culture of goldenseal which, properly dried, brings about three dollars a pound. The seed is also utilized and sold at a high price.
Mayapple, also known by the names mandrake, hog apple, wild lemon, and raccoon berry, is prolific and patches of it dot the valleys and rich uplands. The root of this plant has strong cathartic properties and was highly prized by old-timers as a liver medicine. It is not difficult to recognize this plant with its palmate, yellowish-green leaves and its solitary white flower in the fork of the stem. The roots are dark brown and about the size of a man’s little finger. It is very fibrous and shrinks considerably when dried. It has a commercial value and is dug after the fruit matures in autumn.
Numerous other herbs are dug, dried, and marketed and, though the compensation is small, it provides pocket money for the family. Dandelion, horsemint, nightshade, boneset, buckhorn brake, peppermint, goldenrod, black root, blue flag, crowfoot, sundew, wild clover, and many others supply ingredients of commercial value from root, leaf, or seed. Bark is stripped from the trunk or roots of the slippery elm, dogwood, white walnut, sumac, white pine, and wild cherry and carried to market.
But not all the herbs and wood products collected in the Ozarks are laid upon the scales at the country store or shipped to urban markets. Many of them are used for home consumption—in compounding salves, making teas, or as substitutes for store products that cost money. Take the toothbrush as an example. No need of spending a dime for the manufactured article when nature provides it free. Of course, the younger folks now get their brushes at the store and spread them with highly advertised pastes and powders, but many of the old-timers still prefer nature’s product and show full sets of natural teeth to attest to its efficiency.
My introduction to the hillsman’s toothbrush came in 1922. That was the year Tomp Turner and I built a houseboat and took a 300-mile float-trip down White River. At Cotter, Arkansas, we sold our boat and parted company. Being penniless and with winter coming on, I took the job of teaching a three-month school in the Baxter County hills. Soon after the opening of the term, I noticed that my pupils (there were sixty of them) had the habit of cutting short twigs from certain trees on the school ground, and chewing on them. The twigs were about the length of a pipestem and, at first, I thought it was slippery elm bark they were after, or some succulent wood with which I was unacquainted. Upon inquiry, I learned that these twigs were used as toothbrushes and that they served the purpose well. Later I tried this custom myself and discovered that a twig or root from the elm or hackberry makes a good instrument for mouth sanitation. Many natives have improved upon this practice by making the twig a “mop” for snuff. This is not to be confused with the dipping of snuff. The latter practice consists of pouring a quantity of the powdered tobacco behind the lower lip, after which it is placed by the tongue.
The use of the twig toothbrush is an old, old custom and dates back to 1700 B.C. when the practice was a religious rite in southern Europe. Ancient lore says that the priests made out a schedule for the people to follow in brushing their teeth. On certain days of the week, the rite was performed in a definite way. On other days it was omitted entirely and the mouth was cleansed by rinsing with twelve mouthfuls of water. The priests said prayers before and after the toothbrushing rite.
; Hackberry and redbud roots make the ideal mountain toothbrushes, and folks in the backhills are always looking for these succulent woods. Since a brush can be used only once, it takes a quantity of them to supply a family.
The trapping season in the Ozarks begins around the first of December and lasts two months. Thousands of pelts are secured by the men and boys who comb the watercourses for their prey. There are raccoon, opossum, skunk, mink, muskrat, red and gray fox, and an occasional timber wolf to test the trapper’s skill. The pelts secured are slipped around boards or stretched open on the side of a building until they dry. They are then sold to local buyers or shipped direct to nearby cities. Thousands of dollars are brought into the Ozark region annually through the sale of pelts.
The opossum has become a regional emblem in western Arkansas. Each December, when the frost is on the persimmon, the Polk County Possum Club holds its annual banquet and funfest at Mena. The club was organized in 1913 and now has thousands of members. A few weeks before this gala event, a call goes out for bids on the supply of opossums for the banquet. All animals sacrificed at the festive board must be Polk County products and less than two years old. The requirements usually state that the opossums must be fed on a fattening menu of persimmons for four or five days preceding date of delivery. Folks come from far and near to sit at the long tables in the banquet hall and partake of baked ’possum and sweet potatoes. Funsters and fast music make the occasion an outstanding annual frolic in the Ouachita hills.
Ozark Country Page 7
