Show Coffee was treasured but after a time the supply gave out and store coffee became with not a few a mere memory Only through the blockade runners could coffee bi obtained and of courts the great mass of people had t go without it The same r mnrk ries t ta As a substitute fr coffee cof-fee rye wheat or okra was roasted ground and boiled in a coffee pot or kettle or sweet potatoes raw were sliced and roasted then chopped fine and ground Bran and bread crusts were also used and not a few used the seeds ot the persimmon and dried apples A J substitute for sugar sorghum or cane syrup was the sole reliance Cone was cultivated everywhere and gave good yields In the autumn the cane crushers made in a rude way of wood with big rollers placed perpendicularly perpen-dicularly side by side made creaking noises which could b heard at great distances a the mules walked in a circle around the crushers pulling the sweeps or beams which turned the rollers The cane was cut and hauled to the crushers and there children were kept at work feeding it into the oilers a hard tk Not infrequently the rollers caught the hand Or hands of n careless feeder and then there usually followed loss of usunly folowe a lo one or both arms The cane juice was boiled in wooden or iron tanks generally the former which was provided with a sheet iron bottom bot-tom In many places the boiling was done in ordinary pots und kettles and these were t be seen in rows hung on wooden poles over a log fire in the woods near the crusher After boiling the syrup was run into barrels or kegs It would not crystallize and make sugar like the Louisiana cane juice but it was used in it fluid or semi fluid state for all purposes There was often great rivalry ri-valry between neighbors a t whose bilin1 of syrup was the best and the long sweetening sweet-ening a it va called was duly tasted and passed upon by critical neighbors Sometimes i Some-times it was nearly black in color and of a rank vile taste when burned but in other cases it was golden and equal t any syrup in the world People soon learned t like it Children never saw sugar and the story is told of one little Confederate who in 1SG5 after the war ended was given a lump of gen cut loaf and held it his hand snowy i hi eyeing eye-ing it anxiously but not knowing what manner of stuff it wa An odd thing during the war was the drawing of cotton yarn Tho factories could not supply everybody s it was found best t let people women especially draw lots and the who drew ticket with lot ad ones dw a a number had the privilege of going t tho factory when yarn wa spun of presenting the card and the amount of cr ad proper money and taking away the much desired five pound bundle of cotton yarn Many thousands of people picked cotton by bad corded it with hand cards into rolls then spun it into yarn on old fashioned spinning wheels The blockade runners always brought over thousands of cotton cards which were sold at cost t the women Though all this inventive genius was shown during the wa yet when the struggle ended the people abandoned the makeshifts and returned t store goods A cane field is now a great curiosity the noise of the mill is no longer her and the loom and the spinning wheel a mere curiosities save in the most out of the way neighborhoods FRED A OLDS |