Lightard, Splinters ,Stove Wood, and Fire Wood

I’ve been thinking about some of the things I keep hearing about education in the US and it gets more confusing. The top ranked education systems in the world in some global reports are Finland and South Korea. These are followed Hong Cong, Japan, and Singapore and the United States ranks 17th! If you try to get a straight answer on what the US spends on educating its children, well, good luck with that! The numbers are all over the place. One report says it’s over $91,000 but is not clear as to what period of time that is for. Is it for the entire education, one year, or just what? Others, like the Census Bureau, say the number $8,701 per student on elementary and secondary education and that would seem to be close to the $91,000 estimate. (Actually, that would total $104,412, if correct.) America tops the list in money spent. What has this got to do with Lightard, Splinters, Stove Wood, and Firewood, you ask. More on that in a minute.

So, as we often find, money being thrown at problems does not always solve the problems. Of course, we never let that stop us in the US because appropriating money is the easiest thing a government like ours can do, especially since it is not the government’s money. Neither does creating more levels of government oversight and rules, apparently.

I won’t try to explain “Justification of Purpose” in full detail here. It would be easier to explain Calculus or the Theory of Relativity, but suffice it to say that if you create a committee, position, or fund, they have to immediately do something, even if it’s the wrong something, to show how badly they were needed in the first place.

Try Something for the Sake Of Trying

That has led us to such things in education as “No Child Left Behind” and “Common Core Curriculum”. Debate is in full swing on Common Core and we all know that this is the next program that is labeled, “To Be Discontinued” at some point in favor of the new, yet to be discovered, cure all for education.

We can’t decide if children need recess or not. Are they going to school enough days per year or not enough? Should school be year round? Are they eating right at school?

Maybe the answer is technology. Let’s give them a Laptop, an iPad, and have a workstation. If that helps, then the solution is clear: give them two of everything.

Why Other Countries Outrank Us In Education

When we look at Finland and ask what is it that makes them good, one report says it’s because the teachers are held in high regard there. Maybe, I don’t know. I have never been to Finland. But, I have a suspicion that nearly every teacher and every student looks about like the other. One analysis of Finland says it is “ethnically homogeneous”. 89% are Finnish. 79% of the country are Lutheran. The logical conclusion that I reach is that most people there kind of see things the same way and racial and social differences are few. But, I don’t work for the government so my opinion probably is not valid.

If you look at South Korea, by golly, we see the same thing! 96% of the population is ethnic Korean! Maybe we are on to something. I wonder how much “political correctness” there is there. Would I have to learn to speak and use Korean to function there?

In Hong Kong the population is 93.6% ethnic Chinese. In Japan the population is 98.5% ethnic Japanese. This potential problem with our educational system is not politically correct to discuss in the US and we may offend some one from Bora Bora who is living here illegally and getting food stamps and subsidized housing.

I really think the education problem will be solved by genetic engineering. The UK has just announced that they can take the DNA from three people to make babies in the future. Why not four or five?

But the real solution will be the memory chip implant! I feel sure that Intel or the NSA or somebody will have one ready, soon!

Just think of all the money we will save! All the knowledge there is on a little chip that can be installed in the back of a child’s head! They will know EVERYTHING instantly and can become productive citizens and play any video game with no learning curve. They will know how to use the three or four remotes on the coffee table even before they can walk. Prop them up in the child seat at the breakfast table and they will buy and sell stocks and commodities before they can talk! All of our children in the future will be exactly the same! They will act, think, and function at the same level! No more class distinction or differences in performance. Talk about homogenous!

There would have to be a decision as to when these are installed. Prenatal or postnatal? It might be best to wait until after birth to insure privacy between parents and child.

The children will be programed with whatever religious platform the parent orders, if allowed by the Federal Government. My guess is the Supreme Court will have to weigh in on that due to the “freedom from religion” that we practice now. Maybe there could be an upgrade download at some point for the child to opt in or out or change. Church would be obsolete!

If it becomes too lopsided, there may have to be different levels of chips to avoid getting too many rocket scientists, as an example. Someone has to pick up the trash on Mondays but that may be accomplished by robots. But, hey, isn’t that what everyone will be!?

Communication would be done by simply holding a device next to the area of the head containing the implant. (Much like pacemakers are communicated with, now) The person would think “Email to Joe” think what they wanted to tell Joe and then think “Send”. No typing required!

You only have to look at some very simple and basic, fundamental areas to see how we have failed our children. Let’s look at just a few.

How many kids today know the difference between lightard (some spell it lighter’d, some lightered), fatwood, rich lighter, lighter knot, and heartwood? Is there any difference? What is/was it used for? Where do you find it? And how about “splinters”? Well there is another one!

This was an essential training area for kids 65 years ago. It could mean the difference between a cold house and a warm one. Much more important than any laptop or video game!

How many kids could explain the difference between stove wood and fire wood? There is/was a huge difference, especially if you wanted a hot biscuit and scrambled eggs in the morning.

If you sent a kid out to get some slabs, where would they go? Or an adult, for that matter. Can you even find any slabs today?

When you look at just these items you can see how we have started leaving out things that the parents and grandparents were taught. So as we progress we have to eliminate some information from the training of our youth. Maybe if we eliminate recess and retail drug deals, and gang meetings on the playground, we could free up more time for these items to be taught.

So, I felt that I should do my part to correct this failure of the education system. Kids should know about such things.

When I was a kid my grandparents lived in the rural south. I was born just 77 years after the Civil war and the way people lived in rural areas was not too far removed from where it was on April 14, 1865. People used fireplaces and wood stoves to heat their homes and cook their food. They produced their own food, made their own sausage, cut their own wood. There was not a single credit card and very little cash. It was a place and time of self-sufficiency. It was a place of hard work and sweat.

Of course many people had moved to the city by this time and the industrial boom was under way. They had indoor bathrooms and running water! But a lot of the rural areas did not even have electricity or phones. There were no TV’s.

A Lesson in Fire wood

In the fall and winter, part of the routine was to get fire wood. When someone said firewood, it was understood that this was wood that would be used in the fireplace.

Some of the more prosperous families were starting to get propane tanks and installing a couple of gas radiant heaters. But they were used sparingly due to the lack of cash to pay for the propane. Often, the gas heaters would be used to warm up the main rooms when company came or just to get the chill off day to day but were not used all day long every day. There were also some fuel oil heaters, but not many in the area I remember.

Firewood was mainly oak. White or red oaks were common. My grandfather liked to use the blackjack oaks that grew on the property that he owned that was detached from the home place. They grow in sandy soil and don’t get very big and they were easy to manage and the trunks were of a size that made using them in the fireplace easy. And, they are not valuable as lumber due to the small size. He would like to cut these as early as possible so as to allow the wood to cure out and burn easier. This was usually a day’s work, two or three times a year to get the yard’s wood pile built up to carry them through the winter. There were plenty of sweetgum, poplar and other hardwoods but oak is preferred because it burned hot, made good coals, and did not pop out sparks and hot coals while burning.

These were cut in the early days with a crosscut saw and axe. It was elbow grease and hard work. We later started using bow saws with Swedish made blades and these were a big improvement in sharpness and speed.

No chainsaws were in common use even though Andreas Stihl patented the Cutoff Chain Saw for Electric Power in 1929. Early saws that I saw in logging operations were huge roll around devices that looked like a huge hand truck with a gasoline motor, drive belt and a large rotating blade. I wonder how many legs were cut off with those monsters! In the late ‘50”s the pulpwooders started using chainsaws as a common way of cutting pines for paper pulp mills. Most individuals did not own them due to cost.

Wood was split by axe to make the sizes more manageable. And, the logs would dry out and start burning easier when split. The firewood was cut to the length that the fireplace could accommodate. Anywhere from 24” to 30” lengths were common. There was usually some in a big pile outside, some on the back porch and some in a wood box inside to avoid having to go outside early in the morning and late in the cold evenings.

Stove wood was a different deal than firewood. Wood stoves had a smaller fire chamber and the pieces for use in the stove were usually much shorter than wood that was used in the fireplace. Pine was the wood fuel of choice in the wood stove. About 12” to 14” pieces were used and the pieces used in the stove were usually flat pieces of wood, not round like a tree limb or tree trunk. This wood was usually not cut on site. Stove wood was usually sourced at a sawmill.

Lumber was made at, and bought from, sawmills. Not home centers or even lumberyards. The sawmill was the lumber yard. This was the source of dimensional lumber: 2 X 4’s, 2 X 6”s, 2 X 10”s. etc.

The sawmill produced a lot of sawdust and slabs. Most people know what sawdust is. Not really all dust but lots of small chips of wood created by the saw cutting through the logs. Some was use in chicken houses, barns, butcher shops and even work sheds to cover the dirt floors. It was produced in such large quantities that most sawmills had a large incinerator to burn the sawdust chips in. You could see them glowing at night when you went by and they had large screens on top to minimize sparks being caught in the breeze and burning the woods down.
They would usually give away the sawdust. Today, this material is often sold as fuel for grills, wood heaters and other heat generators and is seen in the form of charcoal briquettes, etc. Some is made intentionally for particleboard and pressed wood.

Slabs, on the other hand, are seldom seen today. Slabs are still generated but are ground up at the sawmills now to be used as wood chips.

When a log is processed to make lumber, the round log has to be made into a square shaped object. This is accomplished moving the log through a series of saws, cutting off four sides of the log along the length. This results in four slabs of wood for each tree. (Modern sawmills use laser imaging and computers to determine the number of saw cuts to be used on a log to maximize the amount of lumber that it will yield.)

In the old days, this was done with the bark still on the tree. These slabs were of no use to the sawmill and were collected and stacked and they would then sell them to people for use as firewood, or in some cases, you would see the slabs used to make cow pens, hog pens, or other temporary enclosures where beauty was not essential.

My grandfather would get a load and take them home. These would be cut into short pieces once they were gotten home, often using a big circular saw powered by the tractor. These were then split into strips for use in the wood stove. There was your stove wood!

If you would like to see this operation, there are several YouTube Videos showing cutting Cordwood with a Tractor, Believe it or not!

Now, then, there is lightard! Lighter’d, Fatwood. Lighter wood. A wood by any other name.

Now, when you start looking at what it takes to make wood ignite and keep burning, there is a great deal of scientific sounding research. Much of it almost undecipherable. My grandparents and the millions who depended on wood burning fireplaces and stoves then and now did not get to apply much of this information in any practical way. Their knowledge came from the experience handed down from one to another.

Some charts show that dry pine wood will ignite at 800 degrees Fahrenheit. Oak wood will ignite at about 900 degrees. Both these ignition points require that the wood reaches the ignition point and raising these woods to that temperature is very difficult unless heat can be applied for a constant source for some amount of time. Many have experienced that you can get piece of wood to start burning only to have it go out. A match won’t do it! Many modern wood burning fireplaces use gas starters to get the wood hot enough to burn.

When a pine tree is growing, it has a great deal of sap flowing through it and these trees can appear to bleed when cut. Turpentine is gathered by cutting pine trees and allowing the sap to bleed into metal containers attached to the tree under the cut. That sap runs at certain times at higher rates than other. The sap is up or down.

When a pine tree, usually a longleaf pine, is cut down or blown over, there is sometimes a concentration of that sap in the stump of the tree and over time the sap becomes resinous and the stumps will last for many years. This high concentration of resins makes the wood in the stump highly flammable. Tree sap is fluid transported in the xylem cells of the tree.

These stumps were often collected and used as a source for fatwood. Small pieces, splinters if you will, were cut off and used to start fires. Even when wet, lightard (Lightered)(fatwood) will burn since it very dense and has a low absorption rate for moisture. By whatever name it is called in a particular area, the stuff works!

Today, some mail order houses sell this item for big bucks. Based upon their prices, I must have handled about a million bucks worth in my lifetime!

It was always customary that Grandmother had a supply of precut splinters and stove wood in a box on the back porch. If she ran out, she was most upset! Having these in good supply insured good biscuits and cornbread! Good pies! And chicken and dumplings, too!

So, I hope this gives the youth of our day the valuable lessons that have been lost under the rule of the Department of Education guidelines. I may do something about “Hog Killin” one of these days. My neighbor up the street who grew up in New Jersey says his father “Killed Hogs” in New Jersey! Who’d a thunk it!?

©Jerome Chapman 02/09/2015