5
it took a crew of two to put them up. After the boxes
were cut, beginning around the first of April, we began to
put streaks on the trees. Those were done first for about
two to three years by what was called a chipper which
was a device unlike anything that I could compare it with.
Nevertheless it was a device that had a kind of a cup formation
on one edge--it was made of steel, and it was very sharp.
Then it had a handle to it and was attached to a sharp
wooden handle, and at the end of that wooden handle was an
iron ball. A man would take this chipper and cut down one
side of the face just above the boxes, and later the gutters,
and then would go and cut down the other side of the face,
so that you would have two "v" shaped streaks on the side
of the tree. And the tree would exude what we call gum,
a stick substance that had turpentine and rosin in it.
Then that would run, rather fast, for about a week or ten
days. And the gum would oxidize and close the pores of the
tree. The purpose of this was nature's way to enable the
tree to protect itself from insects. Then, by the
first of May we began to have weekly streaks on these trees.
On our turpentine place, one man would be assigned a crop
of trees. Actually, instead of there being 10,000, there
were 10,500 trees in a crop. As a rule, I used 10,000
mainly for the purpose of adding up the number of trees
that were boxed in--that particular year. Then it took about
four weeks for a tree to fill that quart box down at the
bottom. Each worker, male, would have a crop. Some
would be short corps, older ones sometimes would share a
crop with someone else. And they worked by themselves in
the woods, although we would have a wood rider who would
visit them once or twice a week. They would be paid by
the crop. Then when the box was full of gum, we had what
was called. .
P: Excuse me just a minute. What do you mean they would be
paid by the crop?
L: Oh, they were paid so much money for chipping this crop.
P: I see, all right.
L: You see, they would be paid weekly. There were given checks
which could be used at the commissary, and then at the end
of the month they were paid off in cash. They could cash
in their checks that they hadn't used at the commissary.