[Granville-Hough] 2 Sep 2009 - Fuller's Earth

[Trustees for Granville W. Hough]

“All’s not oil that slicks,” by Harold Hopkins (used by permission).

“In the 1930s poverty was so much with the folks in my hometown of Mize 
in Smith County, Mississippi, that many spent at least some of their 
time letting daydreams of wealth and other unlikelihoods trickle through 
their thinking equipment.
People still allow themselves such fancies, but for most there are no 
longer any daily jousts with deprivation that remind them to let their 
minds wander and wonder about what it would be like to lead a life of 
unbridled luxury.
Most of us want our lives to be useful, prudent, and productive, and we 
all hope to leave the earth a little better off than we found it; but 
even the most conscientious of us must wonder what it would be like to 
have the easy task of spending lots of money instead of grubbing for it. 
Eventually age deprives us of our best shots at the brass ring.
My teen-age son once gave me a little money clip with the notation 
“Poverty sucks” engraved into it, as if he knew a bit about that 
condition and wanted me to take the hint. I realize that poverty is 
relative and has a meaning at one time that it doesn’t have at others. 
On the downside poverty can be unpleasant, unhealthy, and sometimes 
terrifying. On the upside, it can be a test of one’s stamina and ability 
to survive adversity. Most of us never lose hope that around the next 
corner fortune, if not fame, may await. Many risk their money in 
investments or gambling in the hope that affluence will suddenly strike 
and bring long deserved rewards.
In the 1930’s the opportunity to get rich was considerably less inviting 
than today. If you wanted to be a person of means, you had to 
concentrate, and avoid wasting too much time and energy barking up any 
tree that didn’t have a fat possum waiting to be caught and put into the 
pot.
Promoting a plan, a product, or oneself is the way most seek quick 
money. In the 1930s it wasn’t so easy. People had little cash to invest, 
and they held onto it tightly. Only a few could be persuaded to loosen 
their grasp if they saw – or thought they saw – a chance for a big 
killing at small risk. Sometimes a promoter may be more trusting than 
the people he’s trying to convince, and can lose his shirt if he fails 
to discern when it’s time to fold his scam, and scram.
In small town Mississippi, oil wells have long been promoters’ 
favorites. Who can say whether there’s oil under your particular piece 
of dirt, or anybody’s? Only your friendly geologist may know, and even 
he can be wrong.
But when a gusher does come in, it can hit big. Oil speculating takes a 
lot of perseverance, and a little bit of luck. The oil may spurt right 
up from the ground near where you’re standing. The proceeds could 
underwrite a big house, a big car, dining out, or hiring others to do 
your laundry or make your beds. You could get shaved or massaged by 
servants, and send your kids away to camp or college. Striking it rich 
is a dream that has come true for some, but in the 1930s there were few 
strikes just over the horizon. The prospect of an oil boom in 
Mississippi seemed as remote then as looking ahead to a time when FDR 
wouldn’t be president.
A few did let nothing them dismay. So it was with Mr. Albert Lack, a 
kinsman of mine. The way Albert Lack saw it, if there was oil in Texas, 
Louisiana, and Oklahoma, it had to be in Mississippi, too, and he set 
about to find it. As events eventually proved, he was right, but some 
years ahead of his time.
When Albert Lack announced his belief that there was oil beneath some 
property he owned near Mize, many folks just smiled and said, “That’s 
Albert for you,” and decided to keep whatever cash they had deep in 
their denims. Others listened more attentively when Albert Lack talked. 
Tests were made. People came from out of town and looked over Albert 
Lack’s holdings, a mile or so west of Mize on Clear Creek. The 
centerpiece was a fine, flowing spring, its waters seeping from strata 
of white chalk and red earth on the side of a hill and forming a small 
stream that found its way down to Clear Creek nearby.
On the big day, a crowd of fifty or so grownups, and a gang of tagalong 
kids like me, joined the march to Albert Lack’s diggings. There were no 
early birds. Everybody went as a group, the kids scampering ahead to 
show they knew the way to Albert’s spring. The pit, or pool, had filled 
with water from the spring. And the people looked, and there on top of 
the water was a large oil slick, its iridescent colors shimmering 
beautifully in the bright southern sun. What now? Would there really be 
an oil well? When would drilling start? Some who had been doubters now 
began to show signs of oil fever. And the folks at Mize just sat back 
and waited for the drillers.
But the days passed, and the weeks, and no drillers appeared. Other 
events diverted attention elsewhere. After some weeks, Albert’s plans 
for an oil well no longer seemed to be a subject of interest. But Albert 
wasn’t finished. He announced instead that the terrain around the spring 
was rich in a valuable substance called Fuller’s Earth which might make 
him and any who wanted to join him almost as rich as an oil field would.
Fuller’s Earth? I don’t remember whether mining for Fuller’s Earth ever 
began on Albert Lack’s land. Time has rubbed the sharper edges off my 
memory. At that time and for years afterward, I had got it into my head 
that Fuller’s Earth was a substance named for a person named Fuller, 
like Fuller Brushes. A few years ago, I again ran across the words 
“Fuller’s Earth” in the dictionary and I thought immediately of Albert 
Lack back in the 1930’s. I read the definition of fuller’s earth: it 
was, the dictionary said, a claylike substance used in fulling wool 
cloth. Fulling cloth, I found, means shrinking it. Wool cloth is first 
woven, and the loose weave is then shrunk to bring the woven fibers 
together. Fuller’s earth acts as an absorbent to remove the natural oil 
or lanolin that had expanded the fibers. Removal of the oils makes the 
cloth shrink to become a more closely woven fabric that is warmer and 
more durable.
Fuller’s earth also has other industrial applications for removing or 
filtering out unwanted liquids. And then, not long ago, I learned it has 
one additional use. I was in a supermarket that sells bulk pet food and 
other pet products. You use a scoop to dip whatever amount of fuller’s 
earth you want out of a barrel and into a bag, and pay for it by the 
pound, exactly the same way the storekeepers at Mize did long ago with 
sugar, cornmeal, and other food products sold in bulk form by weight. 
Shoving the grocery cart ahead of me down the aisle, I glanced at one of 
the barrels and its label stopped me in my tracks. It read: "Kitty Liter 
– Fuller’s Earth.” Think of the joshing Albert would have received from 
those wisecrackers on the street corner at Mize if they’d known that 
Albert’s product was just the thing to keep one’s cats from doing the 
unthinkable indoors when they couldn’t make it to a sandbed.”

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GWH: I well remember the gossip about Albert Lack. Albert’s father, Will 
Lack, was on the farm adjoining ours on the east side of our quarter 
section, so we paid attention to what the Lacks said and did. My father 
had once had trouble with the Lack sons because their dogs were killing 
his sheep, which were grazing on the open range. We heard that Albert 
had made a trip to East Texas to the oil gusher country, and the land 
lay in hills and hollows just as it did in Sullivan’s Hollow. He came 
back convinced that we had oil, too, because of the lay of the land on 
the surface.
Then in 1936, we got our drillers and first well about a quarter mile 
over the county line in Simpson County on Nevil Garner’s land. The rig 
was similar to those of East Texas, made of wood 2 by 4’s and 2 by 6’s, 
with a ladder on one side to the top. When the drilling was going on, 
you could stand off to one side and see how they manipulated the drill 
pipes. They got down about 3000 or 4000 feet, but found no oil. They 
either gave up or just ran out of money. They abandoned and removed 
everything except the wooden structure with its ladder. It was an 
attractive nuisance for all daring kids, and a worry for Mr. Garner. My 
cousin, Tom McAlpin and I tried climbing it, and Tom went to the top. I 
got altitude sickness halfway up. Tom reported he could see all the way 
to Magee. I was shaking with fear and couldn’t even see all the way to 
the ground. We got down safely and scooted down a fence row where Mr. 
Garner could not see and chastise us.
The oil boom did continue as exploration techniques improved. Those 
families who had managed to hold on to their land did well through the 
years. By virtue of my father dying without a will, I wound up with a 
small share, as my mother and six brothers shared equally with me. Even 
so, it enabled me to stay in the Army and live in decent communities. As 
oil is now up and down around $60 a barrel, there may be still another 
boom, or at least scavenger operations at the old capped wells.
The flow of money from the oil operations have made a great difference 
to the county. One of the things which makes me mad is that 
Eastman-Gardner, the old lumber company that stripped the land of its 
timber, is one of the greatest benefactors from lease money. They still 
have more land than anyone else because no one had enough money in the 
1930s to buy it at $1.00 per acre. They are absentee landlords, 
foreigners and Damyankees from Chicago, or someplace. Still ripping us 
off after 100 years.