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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Seaforth News, 1959-11-19, Page 3moo° FICD E7]E�I OD/JEW DEIB 1Mrr @MEOeJ k►IE=E E00 ©Cly 11 i i I MHO OIEtlF OME Jr ]w ©EMI U00MUM O©OMO OMO DOW MUM ©CiirEir7R �!I,: 0 HUN] ]LILY' MD LOU au7E]k Woodsmoke Blues hi A. Log Country X felt like a modern pioneer When I went with my husband to live on a "stump ranch" in western Washington. This parti culaa; corner .>zf ''our country is the home of rain, and more rain, the annual fali;act ally, measur- ing from 85 td,,i2U inches. With all the lush gileenrbeauty•about us, we learned to accept the ug- liness of iron cpokstoves and sheet -iron stovepipes without question. We learned to take ashes and dirt and smoke in our stride and to think nothing of them, In that woods country, wood was king --- and woman was queen of the. woodpile. During our first wet winter on the Sk000umciruok, a wide river that flews uphill for sever- al miles whenever the tide comes in, we learned that there was ' more to a Washington winter than ever -dripping skies. There was the ever-present problem of wood - a problem if we had it, a still greater problem if we. didn't. I never ceased to wonder at the- high cost sod scarcity of this fuel in a section where trees grow so rapidly and to such. giant size, where milling and, logging are among the main in- dustries. In the mill and lumber towns it was sometimes almost impossible to obtain wood at any price, °especially when the mills closed because of strikes or de- pressions, lack of demand or for any one of a number of reasons. Then we learned the hard way What it means to live through a fuel famine," as the newspapers called it. Through that first winter we thought about wood much of the time - wanting it, needing it; hating its nuisance, its dirt, its maddening, habit of burning out just when I had a cake all ready for the oven - or when the clams were waiting in their bucket of cornmeal water, all ready for their steam -bath. We had. no place to store wood, so. were obliged to ,purchase it one cord at a' time. Each load was an event, something to look for- ward to, to get excited ,bout, Through those quiet gray days with the constant dripping of rain on the roof,wood was the main topic of conversation. "Did you order the' wood to- day?" were the first words to greet a husband on his return home at night. If, miraculously, he had, not forgotten it, the'next question was "Will it be dry this time, do you think?" Foolish question! It was never dry. We learned a whole new lan- guage, all Washington's own. We talked of planer ends, bark - wood, mill ends, forest wood;' we tried one kind after another. One night Jack tried me out on what kind I preferred, what' kind to order. "They tellme that barkwood slabs last better than, anything else . but the women' don't seem to like 'em. Say they make' a lot of dirtaround the house." I let that pass.... As though they could make any more dirt than the other kinds! 'Perhaps you'd better get a mixed load, partly mill -run or body -wood, and partly clippings. That would be ideal." How glibly I was learning to reel off the strange names. "Fir block from the' plywood factory are good, too. But they're hard -to split. Once a friend suggested that we try pond lilies. Pond lilies'for fuel? But by this time I 'knew better than to take things liter- ally : in this great Northwest where Paul Bunyan had started , a trend of tall stories to go along with the tall trees. I guessed that pond lilies must be another. "style" of wood. We decided to try some. When the load arrived, 1 lifted a piece of the soggy, muddy wood. It was 'heavy, water- logged, with a dank, moldy smell, It should have been sold by the ton, instead of by the cord! These pond lilies were the rough, uneven ends of logs, left floating in the mill pond until salvaged for fuel. It wuold take, summers of sun to dry them out,. sufficiently to be usable, writes Maude itubin in the Christian Science Monitor. Fir blocks were the perfectly smooth, round cores of the kluge logs that had been shaved, into thin layers for making plywood, Planer ends or clippings were the waste from the kiln -dried lumber at the planing. mill. They were, very appropriately, called "ladies' wood." After the episode of the pond, lilies, we tried a load of "forest Wood" - alder and hemlock, bought from a' man "up coun- try.' 'He was honest enough to. say, "It's not dry of course," , which was a masterpiece of un- derstatement, . Did you ever try to burn wet hemlock? Well, don't. It can't be done, When the axe strikes it, the sap squirts up into the eye of the defenseless chopper with more venom than a fresh -cut grapefruit. And if you put a piece of It into the stove, 'on top of a good roaring' fire, you soon hear the dreary sound of hemlock sap stewing and drizzling onto hot coals - then onto coals that are .not so hot. When you open the stove again, you see only the black- ened remains of a still -dripping I final! piece of hemlock. Y de- veloped a system of drying out wood in the oven to be put into the firebox, to dry out more wood in the oven, to be put into the firebox, ad infiinitum. There on the stump ranch, all cooking wood had to be split, of course. I soon found that thele was a definite knack to that, too. The trick of it depends upon how sharp the axe is, of course,•.. and still more, upon how ex- pertly it is. wielded. Thefinal few inches of the stroke, just be- fore the blade comes unto con- tact with the wood, must have an added force, •a certain "umph," in order to de business. I was no fragile swooning 'Vic- torian,'but the first time I tried to split a piece of wood my efforts were merely laughable: I scarcely dented the wood. It was a moment of complete frus- ' tration. I little thought 'that in three short years I. would actu- ally master that treacherous axe - and in a short half ]lour, be able to split a huge pile of wood, almost enough to cook a light lunch. I even became am- light lunch. So it went, up the`' chimney- in- to smoke, pond, lilies, . kiln -dried, planer ends, clippings, body wood, mill -run, door -ends, cross- arms, the language. of the North- west where 1 learned that a stump -rancher's wife , must be more than a housewife. She must be a jill-of-all-trades, a connois- seur of cooking wood - anda good woodchopper! In addition to these, I learned to cook on an old wood -range, a black iron monster that, to tell the truth, turned out better food than any.• I have had since. Now, forced to live' far from that green and lovely corner of. the United States, I long to be back there. Just yesterday I went to a nearby lumber yard to buy a piece of board .for a new shelf. The rich smell 'of' Douglas fir filled the air, de- lighted my nostrils, stirred old .. memories. I' could imagine ;a, load of 'dry fir in the shed, clams in their bucket, .huckleberries wait- ing for their crisp short -cake . . and best of all, a big 'lire in the fireplace. There indeed was the reward, compensation for all. the worry ' and work, the dirt, the backache, the inconvenience. East or west, 1940 or 1959, noth-' ing is so restful, socheering and heart-warming, as anopen fire preferably of fragrant Wash- ington wood. I get the wood- smoke blues when I. think ,of it! CROSSWORD PUZZLE ACROSS 60. Legume 1. Old World 57. Skin 0. Stage of date L Curve DOWN 9. English letter 5. Oirl (dial,) 12. Scarcer 3. Last Aslan 13. Baseball club countryman 19. Large tub 4. Nothing 15. Light-colored more than and mild, as a cigar 10. Work 18. Close to 20. Entrance 21. Hawaiian wreath 26. Before 24, Makes quits 25. Word of sorrow 27. American Indian 29. Artillery 31. Minority 35, Passageway 27. Activity 38, Danger 41. Abstract being 43, 'Urge on 44, Spoken 45, Sell 1n small nuantltlos. 47. Anything huge or onormeoa 42, Largest river In Prance 62. Holland nemnlune 63. W eet Saxon. king 64, Close (poet,) 65, Perceive visually 6, Out up 6. Habitations 7. Yawn 8. Fr. summer 9, Etude 10. Silk fabric 31. Proofreader's marks 17. Black_ birds 19. Fetters 11. Ingredient of varnish 22. Guido's note 24. Self 26. Gastroppod mollusks 28. Concerning 30. Lubricate 32. Workshop ' 33. Light carriage 24. Work unit 36. Ogled 32. Fleshy fruits 39. Wear away 40. Hindu queen 43. Dinner cotu•se 45. Italian river 40. Character In mho Last Day of Pompeii" 48. Tilt 90, 'Male sheep 51. Period 1i11111111®11■1®i11 11s®®®=<111®U®a®■ •EJ!'::i ®1111®1111:1111111111 ®111141'44®11®!:,•:',11®®®® 11■®111111r®®111111 11111111:: 111111111111ME �1111!e°w'!t!;®1111t:�n°®11111111 �1111�=��i1111i�;®111111■ Answer elsewhere on this page "SINK: THE ARMY" = New mascot for the U.S, Naval Academy, "Billy XVI," gets spruced up for presentation to the middies. Beauty treatment takes place on the pedigreed Angora, who replaces one which died recently. )llflA1th 1'RONT -Joku A yearning for .Scotland's tra- ditional heather is leading peo- ple afoul of the •law and causing . work for officials of the Canada Department of Agriculture. o « * This is pointed up by a sam- pling of :reports. from Plant Protection 'Division . inspectors, which showed.that:Iry one month: -At Montreal, four ship pas- sengers were intercepted car- rying 22 ar-rying22 heather 'plants; -At Toronto, 34' mail shipments were investigated and found to be cut heather with the stems inserted in potatoes or heather with roots and soil; =At Vancouver, 10, mail ship- ments of cut heathewith stems inserted in potatoes were . held 11P• * 0 0 Cut heather may be brought into this country without in- spection, but all: plants contain- ing: rootsorsoil from countries where the ,Gplden nematode, a serious. pest of potatoes, is known .to, exist (and Scotland, is one of these) must be accompa- nied by a phytosanitary ,certifi- cate' stating` that ,the ;soil, where the plants were grown was offi- cially' tested and this nematode not found. Furthermore', Canada prohi- bits importation of potatoes from all European as well as a num- ber of other countries. There has been a steady in- crease in the amount of heather brought into Canada, possibly ,because Snore and more Cana- dians are visiting -Scotland' when heather, : is in full bloom. So if you are thinking of, ask- ing Auntie Flora or Cousin Stuart; to send over, "a wee bit o' heather", tell them to leave the. potatoes at home. a a * Credit Unions have become' a ' multi-million dollar business 'in Canadaand expansion' continues. Membership, assets and loans showed substantial gains in 1958, according to a report by the'Eco- nomics Division, Canada Depart- ment of Agriculture. There were 4,436- chartered creditunions, of which .4,197 re- ported a membership of 2,212 000 - an increase, of seven per gent over the precious year. 0 « * Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and Saskat- chewan reported small decreases in, •the number of chartered Credit unions, but all provinces shared in the membership gain. Assets increased 19 per cent to reach a new high of more than $1 billion at the end of 1958..Quebec took thelead with over half the total membership and 63 per cent of the total assets. 0 # 0 Loans made to members of all credit unions rose 14 per cent to 4394 million. Savings, the sum total of shares and deposits, increased by; 18 per cent to $936 million ',and represented 93 per cent of the total 'liabilities; The aver- age savings per credit union were $342,' 0 0 0 Rural, credit unions accounted for ,38 per cent of all unions, a slight ' decrease from the pre- vious year. Occupational, the fastestgrowing type, claimed 32 per cent. Urban and other types of credit unions remained about the same as in 1957. The 27 centrals,. each of which serves as a credit union for credit unions, had a member- ship increase of nine per to 4,976. Members consisted of 4,265 credit unions and .711 co-opera- tives. Assets of centrals increased by 23 per cent to $126 million. The •. 10 centrals affiliated with :the Federation des Caisses Po- pulaires Desjardins accounted for 62 per cent of the total .assets of all Canadian centrals. Loans granted by centrals amounted to 446 million - a small decrease from the 1957 figure. o « a • The Canadian Co-operative Credit Society, a central savings and credit organization at the national level, established in 1954,had assets totaling $104,- 185, in 1958. Member societies subscribed 2,656 shares with a total value of $265,000, of which $108,900 was paid up. Thesociety made its first loan in' 1 57. In that year, loans. of $40'r 100 were made to members. Bi, gest Floral Clock In /he World Largest of the world's twenty or so floral clocks is the one at Queenston; in Ontario's Niagara Peninsula: With a ,diameter of 40 feet, it Is larger than its prototype in Princes Street Gar- dens, Edinburgh. This floral clock, located' at Sir Adam Beck Generating Station, has dramatized' the work of The Hydro -Electric Power Commis- sion of Ontario for thousands of tourists since 1950. The clock mechanism -hands, drive, chimes -- was designed and fabricated by Hydra's re- gional staff at Niagara Fails, The hands are telescoped stain- less steel tubing, welded to stainless steel castings. The stub ends are counter -balanced with lead, so that the hands require the same turning effort, whe- ther moving downwards or up wards. This required nice calcu- lation, since both the hour and the minute hands weigh 500 pounds each, while the sweep second hand weighs half of this. The hour hand is 14 and a half feet, the minute hand 17 and a half, and the second hand 21 feet long. "The clock mechanism runs in a bath of o11," the engineers state, "and is driven by a two horsepower 3 - phase squirrel- cage motor, the rotor of which has been altered so that the motor now operates as a syn- chronous motor at 1500 rpm, up to an input of approximately 1200 watts; the input required to operate the clock is about 600 watts." So that its face can be seen clearly, and thus serve its basic purpose of telling timethe clock is mounted on an artificial slope of 3 to 1, The space beneath Forms three concrete rooms, which house the clock mechan- ism a n d electrical equipment. There is also a toolroom where the gardener stores an alumin- um bridge and electric shears used in trimming the foliage of the floral clock -face, Few floral clocks strike the hour, but this one does. A 24 - foot tower rising behind the clock contains four 25 -watt co- axial speakers, which broadcast the Westminster chimes every 15 minutes, "The notes of the chimes are produced by miniature metallic rods being struck by small -ham- mers, actuated electrically by contacts on the clock," the en- gineers explain. "This relatively low initial sound is amplified to a peak power output of 100 watts to drive the speakers.". Some. 24,000 carpet plants are set out each spring to form the contrasting geometric floral mat. The clock is attractively land - seeped with a rock garden and curved pool set with 'lotus, pa- pyrus and other aquatic planta, and illuminated by submerged lighting. - From Imperial Oil - ways. DRIVE CAREFULLY - The life you.save may be your own. Upsidedown to Prevent t'eeil!ng Off I1001 LESSON Bei. it. Barclay Warren, R,A, S.D. i'hi1lp, Willing Evangelist Acts 8; 4-6, 26-38 Memory Selection; As my Fa- ther hath sent me, even so send I you. John 20;,21, The martyrdom of Stephen sig- nalled the beginning of a fierce persecution of the Christians of Jerusalem. Saul, who might be called an accessory to the crime against Stephen, became a lead- er in the attack. "He made hair- ock of the church, entering into every house, and haling men and women, committed them to pris- on." 'It has been said that the blood of the martyrs has become the seed of the church, It proved so in this case. The disciples that ' were scattered abroad on ac- count of this persecution, went everywhere preaching the word. Philip, one of the seven who had helped in the administration to the needy, went to Samaria. The people heeded his preach- ing. Unclean spirits were cast out and many of the sick were healed, Apostles Peter and John came over and prayed that the new converts !night receive the Holy Spirit. Simon, who had been a sorcerer, thoughtto buy r c e, the power of imparting the Spir- it and was sternly and fearfully reproved, Then Philip received another assignment. The angel of the Lord bade him go south into the wilderness. He might easily have questioned such a leading to leave a city where so much good was being done and go into a very sparsely populated area. But he obeyed. Soon he saw a high official of Ethiopia reading the Scriptures in his chariot as he returned from Jerusalem. Here was the man to whom he was to bare witness. The offi- cial, whom we would call the Minister of Finance, was reading the fifty-first chapter of Isaiah. Philip was invited into the char- iot and had the privilege of preaching Jesus to this earnest man. He explianed how Isaiah's words had been fulfilled in Jesus, The Ethiopian believed that Jesus was indeed the Mes- siah and was baptized. The Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip for another task and the Ethio- pian went home to his own land rejoicing in his faith in the Lord Jesus. No doubt there were many other episodes of a like nature among the early Christians. Their hearts were burning with a holy love and joy in Jesus Christ their Saviour. They had to share the good news. If the task had been left exclusively to the apostles, comparatively little would have been done. The whole church took. up the wit- nessing. That is what must be done today. , ISSUE 46 - 1959 • NOT -SO -BRAVE 'BULL - Panicked by the 'cheering crowd, a bull in a Madrid, Spain, ring heads for the stands in a mighty leap. He didn't make it, /5tRAP 96otbs � COAL ! gR0 17olbi Altoxs sot IRo TONE 180 > ' ,.;I30lbs lbs ONE TON OF STEEL, BEGINNING TO 'END-Steelmak- ing requires handling of a great variety of raw materials... Fanciful factory, above, shows the production, of one ton of ingoot'(carbon) steel and what it will make in terms of con- sumer goods. It takes 4,955 pounds of raw materials to make the ton of steel. included in the 3,480. pounds of pig iron are i FACTORY • ONES at,t.'TRpgm AOR AUTO iron ore, coke, limestone and scrap. 14y the`tirde ingot steel it fabricated into finished steel, a quarter -ton is pared off whipta goes back into the furnaces as scrap. In 1958, for example, ingot steel production was 553 million tons and finished steel shipments stocd'at 59.9 million tons, excluding exports. DOA from ,American Iron and Steel Institute.