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Archiver > MDGARRET > 2004-01 > 1073367358


From: Art Grady <>
Subject: Re: [MDGARRET] OLD Camper's COMMENTS
Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 21:36:09 -0800 (PST)
In-Reply-To: <3FFA3208.8050408@erols.com>


Pat's info on bark burning quick and hot for cooking, and Walt's information on the tanning bark wagon is just awesome to read even if not about our various ancestors. You can tell when I've been up a little late and I pop in a silly message, and this is a warning, this is one of those!

I am reminded of scores of camping trips I have been on and how on many a wet day in my youth it was just miserable to get a fire started, I thought as I read about bark. Then I thought about how my brother in law showed me his prize backyard possession, a charcoal chimney, you probably have seen these where you stuff in two sheets of newspaper in the bottom and fill the top up w charcoal, light the bottom and wait, a little later you have a nice bunch of lit coal with no gassy charcoal lighter taste.... I got one of those too at a garage sale and always use it at home. (Never take charcoal camping) But another time I found a bargain I couldn't resist at another garage sale. As a camper, I have for years kept a couple packs of those flushable paper toilet seat sanitary covers in the glove compartment of my tow vehicle, and some in a storage cabinet in my wee pop up trailer (too wee to have a lou (or whatever that slang term for commode is). Bear with me as you may not see!
how this
relates to cooking or tanning with bark! So one fine summer day the whole little village next to ours has a community garage sale and I find this totally irresistable bargain. This man had been in the vending business. He had 4 or 5 like new vending machines that for a nickle sold you a little cardboard box containing 4 of those very same flushable paper toilet seat sanitary covers. I didn't see any need for the vending machine for $45, but... he had cases of boxes of 500 of those little 4 paper seat boxes, and struck in awe with the prospect of never again having to buy another overpriced 10 pack at a sporting goods store I bought (hard to remember which) one or two cases. Several years later I reached the conclusion that not in my concievable lifetime would I and or my other 5 family members along with my brother and brother in law and their families who we frequently camp with....would we all even if we quadrupled the amount we camp use up 4000 flushable sanitary paper!
toilet
seats. Then it hit me. When I am at home and I light up my charcoal chimney with the 2 sheets of newspaper I brought from the house and it goes out without getting the coals started, I go in the garage and get a little 4 pack of toilet seat covers, open and crumple them, and by jingy that has never failed to get the barbeque going.

Better yet if we are camping, I just spurn the twig gathering completely, and get out a 4 pack of seat covers, and have my campfire going and cooking pizza on the reflector oven faster than you can read and old Sears catalog!

Art

Walt Warnick <> wrote:
The cover of "The Casselman Chronicle," Volume XXXIII, Nos. 3 and 4,
1993 is a magnificent old photo by prominent photographer Leo Beachy of
a "Bark Wagon." The wagon, which is hooked up to a team of two horses,
appears to be about 12 feet long and is stacked up to a height of about
10 feet with large, tightly packed slabs of bark. The caption on the
inside cover says, "Bark wagons, such as this, were a common sight in
the days of clearing and settlement of our forested mountains. An
important commodity for use in tanning leather, sale of hemlock bark
alone on occasion brought enough income to pay for purchase of a tract
of mountain land."

Another Leo Beachy photo on page 20 of this same issue of "The Casselman
Chronicle" shows a 7-man timbering crew posing beside a huge felled
tree. The caption reads, "Bark has already been harvested from the
great tree."

Walt Warnick
-------------------------

Pat Thompson wrote:

> 14th - Clear and warm. Finished putting rods through
>today. Hauled
>another load of bark.
>-----------------------------------------
>Connie, Just another FYI, I was showing Scoop your entries
>from Hilary's diary and he said the bark wood was probably
>used for cooking because it would get hot quick. It wouldn't
>last long so you would need more of it if you were cooking
>in a fireplace. Bark wood would even be different from
>'slab' wood or cord wood. Also, if trees had been downed in
>the area, the dried bark wood would be gathered for cooking.
>Just a thought that will maybe help you understand Hilary"s
>life. The diary must be fascinating.
>Pat
>
>
>
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