Читать книгу Memory's Storehouse Unlocked, True Stories. Pioneer Days In Wetmore and Northeast Kansas онлайн

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At the tanyard there were six vats, each, four by six feet, which were set three feet into the ground, with the tops about one foot above ground.

A wild black cherry tree, at this time loaded with ripe cherries, stood close to one of those vats. On account of its fruit and its fine shade it was the delight of all the boys. Especially was it inviting to my little brother Davey Cullom, who, though fourth in point of spacings from being the baby or of the home, was still his mother’s darling little curly-headed man.

There was an erroneous notion that black cherries would make one tipsy—in a mild way. It was also claimed that choke cherries, some of which grew in the next bend above oh small trees like plum trees, were poisonous. That was erroneous, too.

Davey Cullom attempted to walk around on the edge of one of those tanvats, and fell in. The vat was filled with strong ooze, leachings from the oakbark and sumac. With the process then employed by my father it took four months to tan a calfskin—but Davey Cullom got his hide tanned in about fifteen minutes. Not with the ooze, however. It was because he could not walk, in a test, the twelve-foot length of a ten-inch board without stepping off.