Rice

A Winnowing Shed

Rice. Everyone eats it. The Italians liked it so much they made pasta that looks like it.  But where does it come from? Normally one thinks of Asia, you know, Chinese and Japanese. But what if I told you that in the 17th century the center of western rice production was right here in South Carolina? Look at this area. It's hard to believe that as far as you can see there were once fields of rice.  

When this area, South Carolina, was first settled by the English, the Crown demanded that the colonists find crops that could be grown for export. A number of different varieties of crops were tried with little success. Initially the economy of the Carolinas was based on timber and naval stores. What are naval stores, you ask. As the name indicates, they are things or stores that have to do with the navy; products for the building or maintenance of ships such as pitch, tar, turpentine and, of course, timber.  Deer skins were also shipped to England in huge quantities.  But, according to one story, the colony's fortune changed with the weather. 

Literally, a hurricane was responsible by forcing a pirate, John Thurber, into the port of Charles Town which later became Charleston. It seems that Thurber had aboard his ship, a brigantine, some African slaves from his last port of call, Madagascar where rice was regularly grown in terraced fields.  Those slaves had with them bags of seed. And those seeds were grains of rice. How much did they have? Legend says as much as a bushel. That would have been quite a bit of rice. That rice was used as partial payment for repairs on the pirate ship at a local shipyard. Henry Woodward, the shipyard owner, managed to get the seeds to grow. 

Initially the rice was grown on dry land.  There are two types of rice, "dry" and "wet", in reference to the soil in which each is grown. The eventual rice economy of South Carolina was based on the “wet” variety of rice. The thin topsoil with the clay subsoil was ideal for a crop that required very wet growing conditions. Unfortunately the land was covered with  predominantly marine forests in the late 17th century.  To remove the forests and prepare the land for rice production, hundreds of African slaves were imported. Some local Native Americans were also enslaved. Trees were cut down and  stumps removed. Much of the acreage was burned; perhaps the beginning of slash and burn in the Western Hemisphere. The fields needed to be level too since they would be flooded periodically with water during the growing of the rice crop.  As the forests were removed and planting began, slaves from rice  growing countries such as Sierra Leone, Gambia and others were sought. Indeed, slaves with rice growing knowledge fetched high prices.  

The control of water in the production of rice is very important.  There are two points in the growth cycle of rice that the fields must be flooded with freshwater; salt water could not be used. The fields must be flooded prior to planting. When the rice stalks mature to a certain height the fields are flooded again to kill the weeds and grasses which would tend to inhibit the growth of rice. (Weeds could not survive under water.) This may be repeated as necessary.   Initially, streams were dammed up to produce reservoirs of water to allow flooding on demand. In Madagascar rice was grown in fields which were flooded by water. From the diary of John Bertram we find that in 1783 Gideon Dupont of Goose Creek perfected the use of tides to push the fresh water from the creeks into the rice fields when needed. McKewn Johnstone had done this initially at Winyah Bay in 1758 but Dupont perfected the process. On the Carolina coast the water level changed over five feet between high tide and low tide. Through a system of dykes, ditches, and flood gates or trunks the water was controlled flowing into and out of the fields. With this water management system the cultivation of rice had reached its pinnacle. 

When the rice matured and the green stalk changed from green to yellow the rice was cut down with a scythe or sickle. The stalks would be bound in bundles of about eight inches in diameter. These bundles are called sheaves. A number, six to eight,  of these sheaves placed in the form of a teepee to dry are called shocks.  After the rice had dried it would be threshed. One method of threshing, removing the rice from the stalks, is to place the sheaves on the ground and flail them until rice kernels are removed from the stalk, leaving the straw and kernels of rice separate. By another method the sheaves are beaten against the ground to separate the grain kernels from the stalk. The rice, once removed from the straw, was winnowed. Winnowing consists of taking the rice after threshing and tossing it into the air from a large flat basket, allowing the wind to remove the chaff as the rice falls back into the basket.  On larger plantations there was a winnowing shed which was raised off the ground about eight feet with a hole in the floor. Threshed rice was poured through the hole in the floor while the wind blew the chaff away before it hit the hard packed earth. The rice was swept from the ground before the next process. The next process would remove the husk.  To do this the rice was pounded in a large mortar and pestle to remove the husk from each grain. The mortar was usually made of a hollowed out section of hardwood approximately three feet tall by ten inches in diameter.  The pestle was a four to five foot length of hardwood with the end rounded to the curvature of the mortal which was used to pound the rice.  At this point in the process the rice is brown and edible.  Continuing this pounding polishes the rice. Polished rice is the product we normally refer to today as white rice.. Eventually, the use of water power in 1817, and later steam power, mechanised threshing and pounding processes. Remnants of some of these rice mills can still be seen today.

Growing and cultivating rice was extremely labor intensive. No part of the process from planting  to processing the harvested grain had been mechanised prior to 1817. Therefore there was a dependence on slave labor. Rice had to be planted and harvested by hand. By 1690 South Carolina was shipping 300 tons of rice per year to Great Britain. There are many who claim that the African slave is responsible for the Carolina rice culture including all the technical aspects of rice production. While it is true Africans had been cultivating rice for centuries, even utilizing tidal control for flooding the fields, rice would have never become king of the Carolinas without the capital, land and other resources of the English.  

The production of rice made the Carolina colony the gem of the American colonies; the richest colony. The plantations were of various sizes but with a combined total of over 120,000 acres under till for rice when production was at its peak.The rich planters were the aristocracy of the new world. But, as  they say, all good things come to an end, and the era when rice was king did indeed come to an end. In the late 19th century rice production declined. However, the elimination of slavery, which had an adverse effect on labor for the rice fields, it was not the only reason for the demise of rice production in South Carolina. After the American Civil War, Europe, the major market for Carolina rice, found less expensive sources. India and the Far East provided cheaper rice, although it did not rival the quality of Carolina rice. Also, as rice cultivation became mechanised, the soft earth of the Carolina lowcountry would not support planting and harvesting machinery. This combination of factors led to the abandonment of rice as a cash crop in South Carolina. American rice production moved west to Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas. 

If you look closely you can notice how the topography of the land was changed for the growing of rice. This abandoned plantation with its ruins of a grand house is all that reminds us of the days when rice was king in the Carolina lowcountry.  

What's In Your BitVault?

The BitVault is like a key fob manufactured by Lever Gear. The rather clever name describes the storage place for two supplied bits. Screwdriver bits, that is.Small and easily attached to a keyring the BitVault is a great place for Every Day Carry items. Of course EDC items are as personal and individual as the person carrying it.The contents of my BitVault is as follows:

-flat blade bit

-Phillips blade bit

-dental floss

-pencil

-paper

-2 Tylenol

-single edge razor blade

The uses of the screwdriver bits are obvious. However, one may question the choice of dental floss. In addition to the purpose for which it is designed it is very useful in securing things, I once secured a mirror to a Mercedes after it met with another mirror on a arrow street in Bath. Of course you can cut the floss with the  razor blade. And of course sharpen the pencil. 

There is a bit of space left. Any suggestions?

click here to see more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FcS_MIm9ZU

Burial at Sea

It was a sad day among most of the members of the ET Gang.  It was late September and the USS Intrepid (CVS-11) was back from another Western Pacific cruise. It had been my home for about three years.  I was a 3rd Class Electronics Technician and a part of the Electronics Technician Gang.  We maintained all electronic radar and communication equipment on the forty-two thousand ton aircraft carrier. Some of my shipmates would become friends for life. There were some pretty smart boys in the  Electronics Division.
Some were college drop-outs or just plain smart.  But I didn't fit into either category.  Over long periods at sea men can sometimes develop hobbies out of boredom. The sailors on whaling ships of old were famous for scrimshaw. But today hobbies were of a different kind. Many would create vast collections of recorded music on expensive tape recorders in a pre-digital age. Others would create electronic gadgets. One made a homemade lava lamp. And yes one of my shipmates had a pet. Pets are frowned on by the Navy brass. I had once been on a ship that had a beagle for a pet. It was the secret everyone knew about. But there was no dog on the good ship Intrepid. However, there was this kid in our division that did have a pet. I say "kid".  I think I had the right.  I was twenty-three at the time. Richardson* was what was known as a "kiddie cruiser".  If you joined the Navy at seventeen, you enlistment was up before you turned twenty-one. He looked the part too.  He was tall with a mop of very black hair and perpetual smile on his face. He was gangly though not skinny and rather quiet. He worked with another tech on UHF gear. (Our division was divided in to "gang" according to what equipment they maintained.) The ultra high frequency communication equipment was in fairly discrete space that if you didn't know where it was you would not find it.  These techs for this equipment practically lived in this space.  Since the space was hard to find and Richardson and his buddy weren't the most popular sailors in the Division few people knew of Richardson's pet. I once overheard Richardson ask hs buddy Slovak if he had fed Ferdie. After seemingly days of pestering Richardson, he finally admitted that he had a pet on board.  I was hoping it was not a snake. We had recently dropped anchor in Singapore and some sailors had brought snakes aboard.

"Is it a python?" I asked.

"No, nothing like that,"  he answered with his usual smile, "Come on, let's go!"

I followed him through the passageways through hatches an up several levels to the UHF space. It was a very small space located high in the island structure of the ship. On one side was a bank of electronic communication equipment. The indicator lights of green, amber and blue blinked or glowed.  On the opposite wall was a counter space used for a workbench.  There were two barstools there also. On the wall was that famous Farrah Fawcett poster of her in the orange swimsuit. The space was air conditioned unlike our berthing spaces.  Electronic equipment had priority over the human crew.

"So where your famous pet?" I asked, still expecting a snake.  I don't like snakes.

"He's right over there," Richardson said pointing to the workbench. 

"Where?" I saw nothing.

"There, On the bench.  In the jar," he said.

Near the wall at the back of the workbench beside an oscilloscope was a jar with a transparent liquid. It was one of those large jars like the kind pickled eggs inhabit at local watering holes. There was movement in the jar. I moved closer. I could finally make out a small fish.

"That's Ferdie!" And he's almost swam around the world, " Richardson said and added, "Maybe he can get a certificate too!  He came aboard at Norfolk, you know."

This was the Intrepid's last cruise before a lengthy shipyard period in the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard for extensive repairs. This last cruise was a circumnavigation of the globe. It was a great cruise. Ports of call were Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, Subic Bay, P.I., Hong Kong, Singapore, Yokosuka and Sasebo, Japan,  Sydney, Australia, and Wellington, New Zealand.  All sailors would receive a large certificate verifying their membership in the Loyal Order of Magellan.

" I don't know, Richie. We'll see what the Chief says. We may have to com-sha one and I could letter it for you," I said, "Thanks for letting me in on your secret."

In a week we would be home. Our families would be waiting on the pier for us.

The sea is sometimes placid spread like a sheet of glass as far as the eye can ssee. But there are places at sea where that is never the case. Terra del Feuga is one of those places. That particular point at which the two great oceans meet south of the continent of South America. We saw high seas and snow there. But closer to home there was another unwelcome body of water. There is a reason the sea off Cape Hatteras is called "the graveyard of ships". Many a seafarer has met his doom there. Our passage would be no different. After a few months at sea, you learned how to adapt to rough seas. If it was extremely rough, everything that was not fastened down was lashed down. When eating in the galley, you held on to your tray with one hand or it would hit the deck. But it was not quite that rough at the Cape. But it was bad for one sailor's pet.
As the ship rolled to starboard, Ferdie's habitat fell to the deck and shattered. As the life sustaining liquid dissipated he gasped for the life giving liquid. With a final flick of his luxurious fins he was gone.
His funeral was a rather simple event. A match box served as a coffin. I drew an American flag on a napkin to drape across it. The three of us committed his body to the sea off the fantail. Richie mumbled some words from Heinlein's "Glory Road".

The next day we met our friends and families. But we would always remember, Ferdie, the black moor who almost swam around the world.

Kindness in the Fog of War.

The Sinking of the Linda Blanche out of Liverpool by Willy Stöwer

My father told me of his closest  encounter with the enemy during WWII.  Dad was near forty years old when he was drafted into the Army. Due to being deaf in one year he was not sent to the combat zone. Instead the Army made him a military policeman, an MP stationed at Fort McClellan, AL. While there he was sent with other MPs to the shores of the Gulf of Mexico to guard a German submarine that had washed ashore. I thought this would be a good subject for a blog post when I was searching for a topic last week. I began my research on the web since my primary resource had passed away quite a few years previously. 

The Gulf of Mexico was actually a hotbed of submarine warfare during WWII. Tankers carrying petroleum products from the oil refineries on the gulf coast as well as freighters carrying other products were very desirable targets for the German submarine navy.  During 1942 there were 23 enemy submarines patrolling the Gulf almost continuously. Specially designed “tanker” submarines replenished the subs in the Gulf. 

Unarmed tankers and freighters were easy targets for the U-boats. Almost daily debris from U-boat victims washed ashore in the Gulf states. The biggest concentrations of Nazi submarines were around England and in the Gulf of Mexico. The German U-boat Navy under Admiral Karl Donitz sank 225 merchant ships totaling more than 1.25 million tons of cargo in six months in 1942 in the Gulf. German losses were small, losing only eight submarines.

One of the most intriguing losses of American shipping was the sinking of the Alcoa Puritan. It was early May, 1942, when the freighter, loaded with 9,700 tons of bauxite ore, was sighted by the  U-507 commanded by Korvettenkapitan (Commander) Harro Schacht.The first torpedo fired from the submarine missed the ship but was close enough to be seen by a seaman on the freighter. The captain of the ore laden ship attempted to escape. The U-boat was slightly faster and soon caught the Alcoa Puritan. With its deck gun the German riddled the American vessel amidships with holes. The captain of the freighter ordered the crew and passengers to abandon ship. The submarine submerged and the commander wasted no time in firing a torpedo amidships into the freighter, sinking it immediately. Captain, crew and passengers were safe in lifeboats when the German U-boat surfaced close by.  The commander maneuvered his craft close to the captain’s lifeboat and ordered his crew to pass cigarettes, bread and water to the Americans in the lifeboats.  In clear English the German commander, Schacht, called out, “Sorry we can’t help you, hope you get ashore!” The account of this incident is well documented in the book, Slaughter In The Gulf .

This was very interesting research but I never found any reference to the incident my father had described. 

The Wild Ride

I believe I was about twelve years old or so when I took the wildest ride of my life. Of course it is no surprise that my best friend for life, Jimbo Dillashaw, was involved. 

If I remember correctly it was a spring morning, a clear warm Saturday morning, and I was in the peanut patch out by the road.  Daddy had told me that I would be spending my day hoeing the patch, that meant cultivating manually the young peanut plants. To spend a Saturday in this fashion was not my idea of fun, but Daddy had a sayin' that a stick on the behind sent a message to the mind of dogs and boys. And I knew all too well what he meant! 

When I heard the sound of tha automobile approaching I knew exactly what kind it was. It was a Model A Ford.  Their four cylinder motor made a familiar "clackity-clackity" sound. I was on the row of peanuts near the road when the strip-down Model A pulled to a stop. A strip-down is an old car that almost all of the car body has been removed. All the fenders had been removed and the only thing left was the body from the windshield forward. Sitting on an empty five gallon molasses bucket and holding on to the steering wheel with a grin stretching from ear to ear was Jimbo Dillashaw. 

"How you like it," he said.

"Not much left," I said.

"It's lighter, so it's faster!" said Jimbo, his buzz cut red hair almost glowing in the bright sunlight.

Jimbo was one of those people that had magic in their fingers when they touched something mechanical. This old car was given to him by Miss Faye Hollingsworth.  She had given it to Jimbo if he could get it to run. She had needed her car shed for a new Chevrolet coupe she had bought. Jimbo had worked his magic and now had himself an automobile. In two more years he would be old enough to get a driver's license. 

"Want to go for a ride?" he asked.

"I gotta hoe this peanut patch," I answered.

"This thing is so fast, I'll have you back before your daddy knows you're gone!" Jimbo had a way with words.

"Let's go!" I said as I dropped my hoe and jumped onto the strip-down Ford. 

"Turn your hat around," Jimbo said as he raced the engine, slammed it into low gear and popped the clutch.

I was sitting on an old wooden box of some sort and was desperately trying to find something to hold on to. Jimbo had shifted into top gear now and there was a cloud of red dust behind us as the light weight vehicle sought traction on the red dirt road.  As we rounded the curve next to the creek we met old man Talbot in that old International pickup truck. He cleaned out the ditch to avoid being hit by us.

"Jimbo, shouldn't you slow down?" I was concerned.

"She don't run real good slow," Jimbo said, eyes still glued to the road and hands on the wheel showing white knuckles.  But no sooner than he had gotten the words out of his mouth, than the engine began to sputter. 

Jimbo said a word that he did not learn in Sunday School and said, "We're running out of gas. Grab one of those jugs behind you and pour it in the gas tank."

I turned loose with one hand and felt the jug behind me and grabbed it. It was a one gallon jug like Momma bought vinegar in when she was making pickles.

"Hurry! Pour it into the gas tank before the motor stops.  If it runs dry, we may never get it cranked up again. Hurry!" he said.

In my hurry I lost the lid off the jug.  I had to stand up in the moving car amd reach over the windshield to pour the liquid into the tank. Much to my surprise I spilled very little. Suddenly the engine got a new life. It spit out a blue flame from the exhaust pipe and seemed to jump out from under us.

I sat down quickly and held on as though my life depended on it.  And it did! Jimbo was fighting to control the car as we were going faster than ever before. At first we ran into the ditch on the right hand side of the road.  The wheels on Jimbo's side of the car were in the ditch and my side was high on the ditch bank. I was about to push Jimbo out of the car as he steered the car back into the road. We did the same on the other side of the road. The accelerator seemed to be stuck, but maybe Jimbo was just doing his thing. As we approached the Johnson farm we left the road again.  I don't know whether we broke through the barbed wire fence or simply sailed over it, but we were in the pasture. The cattle scattered out as we approached. That is, all but one. He was red with a white face and horns. He weighed more than the car with me and Jimbo in it and was not moving. We swerved to the left as he charged. I felt the car start to spin out of control. Jimbo got control and we were aimed toward the road with nearly a ton of beef chasing us. The Model A Ford seemed to jump the fence back into the road.  We had not gone one hundred yards before the motor coughed, sputtered and died.

Jimbo released his grip on the steering wheel and said with a sigh, "What a ride! What did you put in the gas tank?"

"I just grabbed a jug," I said.

Jimbo looked behind us on the floorboard of the strip-down. "The gallon of gas is still here.  Oh no! You put the other jug in!"

"I didn't have a chance to look.  I just grabbed a jug," I said defensively.

"That wasn't gasoline, Buddy.  That was from Grandpa's jug! That was what he calls, corn squeezin's, white lightning. Well, at least I know my hot rod will run off alcohol," Jimbo said. 

After Jimbo tinkered with the engine a bit, he got it started and we had an uneventful ride back to the peanut patch. It had been a very exciting wild morning ride, one I would always remember.  

Daddy was waiting for me at the peanut patch and he wasn't happy.