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COTTONSEED
"Morning, mom; come on in and rest yourself. here, take
this rocker; them straight backed chairs are purty hard. You know,
Tom, T shore found out some things yestid#y when I went to town. I
had some cottonseed T aimed to trade for meal and hulls for my cows,
and so I drove around to the oil mill to trade 'em.
"Well, when T. go, there the mill was running, with a whole
passel of men a -working like the devil beating tanbark. They got a
railroad sidetrack runs right up by the mill; and the sidetrack was
full of freight cars plumb full of nothing but cottonseed. Some men
in one of the cars was scooping the seed into a great big bin, using
the pitchforks with a whole lot of teeth set close together to do the
scooping with.
”while I was watching, sort of goggle-eyed, here come a
fellow used to work for ttf- old man Holmes. 'rou.remember him; a tall,
lanky feller named ,r3am Burns.
"Here, fill up your pipe with some of this here homemade
I'll get you a coal out of the fireplace.
There hain't a match on the place; I told randy to get some matches
from the peddler but she ddn't. Said she didn't have enough eggs
to get matches and sugar both, and'Mamdy can't drink coffee unlessen
she has sugar in it.
"Oh, about Burns and the oil mill? I'll tell you jest as
soon as you git your pipe fired up. Burns was weighing the cottonseed
and talking all at the same time. >Tust as he give me the slip with
the weight wrote on it, he said,
you use compound lard?' and I said
'yes, why?'
He said, *Well, that is where this mill pays expenses.'
2 -Cottonseed
"I was already interested in all that zipping machinery,
and when he told me that I just couldn't hold out no longer. I
asked him if he could let me look through the whole shebang. He
said he thought so, and for me to wait a minute. ,T waited, and
purty soon he come back, saying he'd go along and tell me about it.
"We started right there at the freight cars, where them
car unloaders, as Burns called the cottonseed chunking men, were
trying to fill up the big box. Down in the 4om of that box they
was a whopping big screw that kept the cottonseed going out in a
steady stream. The thing worked just like a big sausage mill, only
they weren't no grinding plates at the bottom end of the screw. It
a clever contraption that Burns called
had a bucket elevator. It
was a wide belt with a whole lot of buckets fastened to it with big
frame bails. These bails rotIld hold Shah bucket under the screw -end
till it filled with cottonseed. Then tke belt would move up till the
next bucket was under the screw -end.
"This belt was carrying the buckets of seed upstairs so we
went up to see what it did with 'em. Yell, it was just dumping the
seed into big bins in what Burns called the storage room. They got
another belt up in the storage room that runs all the ray across the
room in what they call a tunnel. Two men -ere in there shoveling
seed onto this belt, and the belt was carrying them away. The next
time the seed stop they are in a mieaning machine. These cleaning
ci
machines take out all the dust and dirt. ThenNconveyort yank5the
seed to a gin and doggoned if they don't gin 'em all over again. They
get lots of cotton off them seed with this linter gin; and they bale
this linter cotton and sell it. That was the first time I ever knowed
what 'linter cotton' is. And I'll tell you something right now: if
John B. downt git rid of his old wore -out, snaggle-toothed gin I'm not
Z-fbttonseed
going o let him keep on ginning my cotton and sending a third of
the lint to the oil mill on the seed.
"Under the linter gin another one of them conveyors ketches
the seed and throws 'em into the hopper of what they call the hull
separator. This is a machine that bites the insides out of the seed
and throws the hulls one way and the meats the other. More of them
conveyors are there to ketch each one of them. Te follered the meats
first.
"That conveyor poured the meats into a big pot that Burns
called a cooker. The feller that runs this pot is the cooker operator.
He stays there and adds water as they need it while these meats are
cooking. It takes about an hour to git 'em cooked done.
"They take the cooked cottonseed meat to a big hydraulic
press, and that press mashes ever' bit of he 0.1 out of the meat and
leave the meat in hard cakes about as big s /17orgot
to say thatAthe cooked meat is put in the press wropped up in a 44
of cloth that Burns said they called camel's hair cloth. rust
knowed of their making cloth out of camels' hair, too. When the cakes
are took out of the press they skin this cloth off and put them in a
breaker machine that breaks them up in little pieces. Why do they
use the breaker machine? Why, Tom, them cakes are just about as hard
as rocks after they are pressed.
"After the es are broke up another conveyor takes the
pieces to a storage tank that set5right by another tank full of bran.
They mix this bran with the cake pieces and put it in a mill that
grinds them into cottonseed meal. What kind of bran? Why, its just
real fine -ground cottonseed hulls, that's all.
4 -Cottonseed
"The fresh cottonseed meal goes through another conveyor to
a great big hopper over a automatic scale. That scale is one of the
durnedest contraptions I ever seen. A man just sticks a cottonseed
meal sack over the end of a chute and, wham! that scale shoots a
hundred pounds of.meal into the sack. All the feller has to do is
sew the top of the sack with that heavy cord they'VOOMW hold it tight
and the meal is ready to sell.
"Mat happens to the hulls? We went back to see about them.
After they leave the hull separator their conveyor shoots them to the
hull packer. There they are sacked and the sacks sewed, about the
same as the meal is done. Sam said some of the oil mills have hull
grinders to grind the hulls into the little pieves they call bran, but
this mill ain't got one. They buy the bran that they mix with the
cake to make the cottonseed meal.
*Here comes -Mandy with some of them teacakes I been smelling
all morning. Here, try some, Tom. I think if anybody can make good
teacakes it's Mandy. 'Don't hurry, Tom, we'll have dinner after a
while.
"The cottonseed oil? Now, Tom, you know I plumb forgot to
see what happens to it before we can buy it back in lard buckets. I
got to ask Sam about that next time I see him.
"You want to borry my crosscut saw? Sure, it's out under
the woodshed; just pick it up as you go by. latch out fer old Nellie
and don't let her bite you. She's tied under the shed.
"Say, you -all goint to the Singing Sunday? Yeah-, guess we'll
be there.
"well, cone back when you can set longer, Tom. Bring the
family over and make us a real visit.*