Jasper County Democrat, Volume 4, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 March 1902 — FLORIDA LETTER. [ARTICLE]

FLORIDA LETTER.

Thelma, Fla., Meh. 11. Editor Democrat: —After this long silence we again resume our tale of woe. We have several excuses to offer for not getting out our usual letter last week. The first and most importantone being that we had not a scrap of writing paper and could not find any to buy, beg or borrow. The last letters we wrote home were written on brown wrapping paper. Two weeks ago we wrote home for some paper to be mailed to us and last evening it came so we hasten to make use of it. We get and send mail three times a week. Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Thelma is a new post-office just established in place of Register, which was moved about four miles north. There is a good deal of registered mail'goes out from all Turpentine camps and parcel mail comes in, and after Register was moved the turpentine niggers spent so much time running F.ftir the mail that Mr. Johnson of the Taylor County Turpentine Co., petitioned for an office to protect himself. Another reason why we did not write last week was because we were over in the "Devil’s Woodyard” turkey hunting, but, sad to relate, we never got a turk'y. /And the turkeys wore there, too, lots of them, but Myers got off his nerve and could not hit them. But we still hope. We went and camped part of tho week with Dan nie Monrue, who was a noted: hunter here five years ago. One morning he called a turkey up to Mr. Myers and he missed it cr it went away crippled and then Mr. Myers learned of Dannie how to yelp with his mouth, or rather, be watched Dannie call, and in the afternoon went out in the woods presumably to shoot quail, but did not ’shoot any. But when he came-in he told Dannie he had found something out in the woods. When Dannie asked him what’; it was he yelped like a turkey, to | everyone’s surprise The next morning he went after turkeys and when they gobbled he gave the: cry of the hen and an old gob- : bier sailt-d dbwn rigid in front of j him and before he had got settled fairly on the ground and his wings i straightened down Myers shot and ! missed. But he is going to kill I one on this full moon, sure. He * is bound to get one; we can't go home till he does Yesterday we were at Jug' Island Swamps and tho’ we did i not find any turkeys we came home with a “plum turn” of cat i squirrels. Myers killed seven and Mrs. M. four. They are very fine eating; a little smaller than our fox-squirrels at home, and the swamps are alive with them. One has only to go in and sit down on a log and in ten minutes they j are barking all around you. Last Friday we went to the mouth of Fish Creek and caught 80 fine fish at two strikes. Mullet, trout, red fish, sheephead, flounder and a small sucker-mouth fish they called “grunters,” we also got three fine black bass right in the , net with the salt water fish We are now at Fish Creek and I am writing this while waiting for the tide to go out. We have the net on the seine-board and on the boat all ready to go when the tide is right. It is low tide now, | about six o’clock. We are having some delightful weather now, warm and sunny and not very high winds. But February was a very disagreeable month, even in Florida. There was white frost one morning last week while we were out camping. Mrs. Dannie has a pet deer that Mr. Clarke caught when it was a littlo fawn. It is a year-old doe now and the prettiest thing and so tame it ate sweet potatoes from our hand and let us pet it like a dog. They let it run out in the woods but keep a little bell on it so a hunter won’t shoot it by mistake for a wild one. It runs with the cattle part of the time but comes up every morning and night to be fed. Myers has done much weeping' and wailing and gnashing of teeth since our last letter. Missing the ' turkeys was not the half of his | troubles. One day three hack loads of men passed thro’ camp, 1 about twelve men in all, and was gone about three hours and when ] they came back all Myers’ happiness fled and melancholy settled

on his brow. They were U. S. marshals and had gone, down in the swamp and found Mackintire’s still and demoralized it and drank up and poured out all the real moonshine, and M. had been promised a quart to take home with him to treat his friends! Mr. Mackintire had invited him one day to come and see him and bring his wife, that he had two feather beds and that he was just as safe there as with his own brother. He had been imbibimg some of his own Moonshine that day, and the next day he asked Myers if he said to offend him. He was invisible when the officers came and has not been back there since. It seems there was a regular epidemic of making “moonshine whiskey;” many who could not get a regular copper still and “worm,” put their corn meal and syrup in an iron pot to ferment then had an iron pipe lead from that through a trough of cold water and when the sour mash was cooked the steam in the pipe condensed in the cold water and left the pipe as “moonshine.” The officers captured in all three copper stills and seven pots. In one place they caught the men red-handed making the stuff. They are supposed to mutilate the copper still and turn them in to the government to be sold for old copper, shoot holes in the iron pots and poured out the whiskey. They poured a good lot down their throats before they got back here. All the washing is done here out doors with a big iron pot to heat water and boil clothes in, and it has got to such a pass now that one is not sure when they go to wash but what an officer has been along and shot a rifle ball thro’ the wash pot. We are told of one man who once made whiskey in a lard can, in the fireplace, with a pipe that led out thro the wall of the house into an enclosed trough of water with an outlet for the whiskey. The only ingredients of pure moonshine is corn meal and Florida syrup. It is clear and and white as water and strong as alcohol. They call all revenue paid whiskey “red liquor,” to distinguish it from “moonshine.” Myers is inconsolable over the loss of his promised qm r>, but life is so full of disappointments that, as a lady in Stephensville said, we are “as used to them as to a hair in the bread.”

MYERS & MYERS.