A Pocketful of History

by Jim Noles

  After drilling the tap hole, the sugar maker fits his tap hole with a plastic or metal spout in order to prevent the sap from simply running down the side of the tree. Now, nature again plays a key factor in sugaring. In order for the sap to drip from the tap hole, the right weather conditions are required. A freeze will pull water into the maple tree’s roots from the surrounding soil, thereby creating a small suction effect in the tree’s wood. Later, as the wood thaws, the tree’s sap is placed under enough pressure to ooze out of the tap hole.

  At this point in the process, modern technology and historic tradition diverge. Modern facilities collect the sap from their sugarbush through plastic pipes that run from the tap hole spouts and through an intricate network of tubing to a main pipe—the main line—and on to the sugarhouse. Some rely on mere gravity to conduct the slow flow of sap; many others, however, use vacuum pumps to facilitate the sap flow.

  At a traditional sugaring operation, however, the collection of sap is a far different process—and the one depicted on Vermont’s state quarter. At those operations, the sugar makers simply hang a bucket on the spout that has been placed in the tap hole and then the tree’s sap will drip into the bucket. Each day that the sap flows, these buckets need to be emptied into a gathering tank placed on the back of a tractor-drawn wagon or, in increasingly rare instances, a horse-drawn sleigh, which then transports the collected sap to the sugarhouse.

  “When people think of maple sugaring they automatically think of buckets hanging on trees and folks gathering the sap with pails,” Marsh said, “but the Vermont maple industry has definitely changed over the years. Most sugar makers now use a pipeline system to collect sap, but some of our sugar makers still do use this method to collect sap.”

  Once at the sugarhouse, whether traditionally rustic or efficiently high-tech, the process is, on paper, a deceptively simple one—although modern techniques, such as reverse osmosis or steam recovery, are finding increasing favor. At any rate, in the sugarhouse, the goal is to boil the newly arrived sap as soon as possible to separate the sap’s water from its sucrose. Otherwise, as the sap warms, it will begin to break down, leaving the sugar maker with dark, stronger tasting syrup or possibly even spoiled sap.

  To boil the sap, the sugarhouse utilizes an evaporator; this is a collection of large rectangular pans atop an arch, which suspends the pans over the heat source—traditionally fueled by wood, but today usually fueled by oil. Inside the evaporator pans, a winding series of channels, or flues, first directs the sap through the back of the superheated device, known as the “flue pan.” There, as the sap is heated, its excess water is boiled away.

  After its journey through the flue pan is complete, the sap enters the front of the evaporator, moving into what is called the “syrup pan.” That pan is divided into two or more compartments. As the sap moves through these compartments and toward the front of the evaporator, it continues to lose water to evaporation. By the time the end of the pathway is reached, the sap is 7.1˚ F above the boiling point of water, has a density of 66.9 percent sugar, and, at that point, is no longer really sap. It is now, for all practical purposes, pure maple syrup, and the sugar maker opens a valve in the compartment and draws off a batch from the pan before it gets too dense and begins to burn.

  At that point, however, several steps in the process still remain. First, sugar makers check the new batch with a special instrument, called a hydrometer, to ensure proper density (i.e., sugar content). Second, they run the syrup through a wool cone filter or a filter press in order to remove a natural but gritty substance known as “niter,” or “sugar sand,” from the syrup.

  Finally, the syrup—by now clear and golden—is taste-tasted and color-graded to determine which of the Vermont maple grades will be placed upon its label. Vermont maple syrup typically falls into one of the four table grades: Fancy, Medium Amber, Dark Amber, or Grade B. If the maple syrup is too dark or too strong in flavor, then it is labeled for commercial use. In the end, it typically takes about forty gallons of sap to make one gallon of pure maple syrup.

  In 2005, the Vermont maple crop, despite the use of 2.1 million tap holes, was down 18 percent from the previous year, a decrease that reflected unfavorable weather conditions across New England that season. Some blame global warming; others fault cyclical patterns in the weather, harkening back to the 1950s, when similar warm spells plagued the maple syrup industry. Regardless of the long-term prognosis for sugaring seasons in Vermont, it will, fortunately, always have a home on Vermont’s state quarter.

  15

  KENTUCKY

  A Quarter Horse? Hardly

  When you look at Kentucky’s state quarter, beware of jumping to conclusions. First, it is probably a misnomer to call it a “state quarter.” Actually, Kentucky, like Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, is a commonwealth—which makes it a commonwealth quarter, right?

  Second, although the coin expressly celebrates “My Old Kentucky Home,” as composed by Stephen C. Foster, it would be a mistake to assume that Foster ever called Kentucky home. Foster, born and bred in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, scarcely visited Kentucky and certainly never lived there.

  And finally, even though the quarter features a horse, the equine in question is anything but a quarter horse—no offense to the American Quarter Horse. In contrast to the Thoroughbred, the American Quarter Horse is a smaller, heavily muscled steed, ideal for running quarter-mile races or even shorter sprints. And although the Quarter Horse is a proud breed, Kentucky’s coin understandably depicts a Thoroughbred— a breed that can indeed lay claim to an “old Kentucky home.”

  In truth, the Thoroughbred actually traces its history to England and three foundation sires—the Darley Arabian, the Godolphin Arabian, and the Byerly Turk—named for the Englishmen who brought the Middle Eastern stallions to England in the seventeenth century to breed to native horses. Their efforts were rewarded with a horse capable of carrying weight at sustained speed over extended distances, in short, a perfect racing machine.

  The Thoroughbred arrived in America around 1730 when an English colonist imported his first Thoroughbred stallion. Within the next 100 years, 300 more would follow to form the foundation of American Thoroughbred racing. From that modest beginning, the breed grew to its present success. Today, the Jockey Club, which serves as the breed registry for all Thoroughbreds in North America, registers approximately 37,000 foals annually.

  In Kentucky—named, according to some, for the Cherokee word for “land of meadows”—there are 500 Thoroughbred farms in and around Lexington alone. In total, according to 2003 numbers, the state births approximately 10,000 foals a year, which in turn give life to roughly 40,000 jobs—for trainers, jockeys, blacksmiths, veterinarians, handicappers, and even painters. A typical 300-acre horse farm in the heart of the Bluegrass can count on budgeting $20,000 annually to keep its traditional white wooden fences gleaming with fresh paint.

  Raising and training Thoroughbreds is a serious business in Kentucky, a reality underscored every year at Lexington’s Keeneland Race Course, where horses are auctioned off for as much, in one case, as $13 million for a yearling. Of the eleven horses to have claimed the Triple Crown, eight of them were foaled at Kentucky horse farms, beginning with Sir Barton in 1919 and ending, most recently, with Seattle Slew in 1977. And for each of those horses, their first step toward claiming the first jewel in that crown came at the Kentucky Derby, held at Louisville’s historic Churchill Downs.

  At the time of Churchill Downs’s first race in 1875, Thoroughbred racing in Kentucky had already enjoyed nearly nine decades of history in Kentucky—a legacy that predated the commonwealth’s entry into the Union in 1792. The U.S. Mint was founded that same year, a coincidence that perhaps explains Kentucky’s legendary affinity for the mint julep. Or perhaps not.

  At any rate, in Louisville itself, reports of horse races can be found as early as 1783 that detail racing being held on Market Street in the downtown area. Market Street was, however, a bu
sy thoroughfare— and thus, ironically, no place for Thoroughbreds—and by 1805, a racecourse had been constructed on Shippingport Island. As the years passed, one could find other racecourses at the Elm Tree Gardens, the Hope Distillery Course, Peter Funk’s Beargrass Track, the Oakland Race Course, and the Woodlawn Course.

  In 1873, however, M. Lewis Clark returned from a tour of Europe infused with the idea of building a racetrack capable of showcasing Kentucky’s then-struggling Thoroughbred breeding industry. To fund his track, Clark raised $32,000 by selling 320 membership subscriptions to the track at $100 each. He then leased eighty acres of land, approximately three miles south of Louisville’s downtown, from his uncles, John and Henry Churchill. The Churchills, in turn, eventually lent their name to Clark’s racecourse, which Clark opened for its first race on May 17, 1875.

  On that day, Clark’s new racecourse hosted four races. A Thoroughbred named Bonaventure won Churchill Downs’s first race, although a three-year-old chestnut colt named Aristides soon overshadowed Bonaventure’s feat in the day’s featured race—a race christened by Clark as the “Kentucky Derby” and patterned after England’s Epsom Derby. In a nearly forgotten piece of American cultural history, Aristides was trained by and ridden by two African Americans, Ansel Williamson and Oliver Lewis, respectively.

  In the years to come, Clark’s Kentucky Derby shifted to being run on the first Saturday in May. As it did, it earned an enviable reputation in America’s racing set as “the first race in which the best horses from one crop of foals meet at the accepted classic distance of a mile and a quarter” carrying 126 pounds. It was the alliterative pen of writer Bill Corum that dubbed the race “the run for the roses,” in homage to the derby’s official flower and the traditional garland of roses draped over the winning horse’s withers.

  Despite such promise, Churchill Downs’s financial fortunes ebbed and flowed both metaphorically and literally—such as in 1937, when the course was inundated by that year’s great flood of the Ohio River. Nevertheless, its triumphs, and that of the Kentucky Derby, have outweighed the travails. In 1894 to 1895, new owners constructed a new grandstand that incorporated two spires atop the roof, thus creating the simple but enduring symbol of both Churchill Downs and the Kentucky Derby. The race was nationally televised for the first time on May 3, 1952, and, in 1974, when the derby celebrated its 100th running, a record 163,628 spectators were on hand. Meanwhile, combined Kentucky Derby Day wagering, on-track and nationally, snowballed from $26,805,205 in 1985 to $123,215,302 in 2002.

  Therefore, the appearance of a Thoroughbred on Kentucky’s quarter likely surprised no one. Nevertheless, its inclusion was not a foregone conclusion. In order to develop and select an appropriate design, Kentucky’s first lady, Judi Patton, chaired the Kentucky Quarter Project Committee. Patton’s committee received 1,800 design suggestions, narrowed the submissions down to twelve finalists, and, from June 15 to 17, 1999, displayed the design finalists in the front lobby of the capitol and over the Internet.

  The dozen finalists illustrated the panoply of Kentucky’s history. Successful concepts included a portrayal of the mansion Federal Hill, an antebellum plantation house in Bardstown, Kentucky, where Stephen Foster reportedly visited his cousin John Rowan long enough to pen “My Old Kentucky Home.”

  Other design concepts did not fare as well. One unsuccessful design sought to commemorate Daniel Boone, the famed “long hunter” who helped blaze the so-called Wilderness Road through the Appalachian Mountains’ Cumberland Gap and into Kentucky shortly before the American Revolution. Unable to legally validate his land claims in Kentucky, Boone eventually settled in Missouri. Nonetheless, his settlement of Boonesborough, and his reputation as a mythic frontiersman, remained firmly in Kentucky.

  Another unsuccessful design featured Abraham Lincoln, claimed by Illinois—the self-proclaimed “Land of Lincoln”—but born near Hodgenville, Kentucky, in 1809, where he spent the first seven years of his childhood before moving to first Indiana and then Illinois. Lincoln’s wartime rival, Confederate president Jefferson Davis, had been born a few miles away in present-day Todd County a year earlier. Suffice it to say that Davis did not join Lincoln in the ranks of design finalists for Kentucky’s quarter.

  Offered such options, over 50,000 residents of Kentucky cast votes for their favorite concepts. Finalists underwent review by the Citizens Commemorative Coin Advisory Committee and the Commission of Fine Arts. In the end, Governor Paul E. Patton selected the final design that features an iconic Thoroughbred, the phrase “My Old Kentucky Home,” and Federal Hill—where the U.S. Mint unveiled the commonwealth’s quarter on October 18, 2001.

  But one final word of caution with respect to Kentucky’s state quarter: The next time you purchase a Thoroughbred, do not let the spare change jangling in your pocket inspire you to name your steed “My Old Kentucky Home.” The Jockey Club limits horses’ names to eighteen characters—punctuation marks and spaces included. “Federal Hill,” on the other hand, would seem to work just fine.

  16

  TENNESSEE

  “Here’s a Quarter . . . ”

  Tennessee is blessed with a remarkable musical heritage—one that stretches across the state’s 432 miles, running from Bristol, in the east, past the site of the legendary Grand Ole Opry show in Nashville, and westward onto the streets of Memphis, where the blues were born.

  Nevertheless, Tennessee’s history and culture includes more than simply music, and when Governor Don Sundquist launched a statewide contest on March 27, 2000, to select a design for the Volunteer State’s quarter, nearly 1,000 suggestions arrived. Culling through the submissions, the seven-person Tennessee Coin Commission created by the governor identified three finalists.

  One design finalist celebrated Tennessee’s ratification of the U.S. Constitution’s Nineteenth Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. In August 1920, thirty-five states had already voted to ratify the amendment, leaving Tennessee to deliver the suffragists with the so-called Perfect 36. Tennessee delivered, but only after a nail-biting 49–47 vote in the state legislature.

  A second design finalist depicted Sequoyah, a Cherokee Indian born on the Little Tennessee River in present-day Monroe County. Sequoyah’s single-handed invention of a written alphabet for his people—the first written language for Native Americans—played a critical role in fostering what amounted to a national identity for the Cherokee people.

  The winning final design, however, was entitled “Musical Heritage” and was submitted by Shawn Stookey, a teacher at Lakeview Elementary in New Johnstonville, Tennessee. In its final form on the Tennessee state quarter, the design incorporates sheet music, a fiddle (representing the Appalachian music of East Tennessee), the trumpet (acknowledging the blues of Memphis and West Tennessee), and the guitar (symbolizing Central Tennessee, home to Nashville, the self-proclaimed capital of country music). Three stars emphasize the existence of Tennessee’s three regions—east, central, and west.

  When music scholars think of East Tennessee, the so-called Bristol Sessions of Ralph Peer come quickly to mind. As the new head of the General Phonograph Company’s Okeh record label, Peer had realized that changing musical tastes and the easy availability of radio music threatened Okeh’s traditional stable of classical musicians and opera singers. In response, Peer decided to give the American people what they wanted to hear—which seemed to be what Peer called “hillbilly music,” the songs of Appalachia and the rural South.

  Peer’s success with his “hillbilly music” led him, in July 1927, to hold a recording session in Bristol, Tennessee, for aspiring Southern musicians. Renting an abandoned hat factory to serve as a makeshift studio, Peer, who now worked for Victor records, placed an ad in local papers declaring that “[t]he Victor Company will have a recording machine in Bristol for ten days beginning Monday to record records” and extending an open invitation to local musicians to perform.

  Scores of local musicians responded to what became known as the Bristol Session
s. Their numbers included Alvin Pleasant (A. P.) Carter; his wife, Sara; and Sara’s cousin Maybelle Addison—all of the soon-to-be-legendary Carter Family. When the Carters drove from Poor Valley, Virginia, into the town to join with the likes of Jimmie Rodgers to record for Peer, Bristol became known as the “birthplace of country music.”

  In total, the Carters recorded six songs in Bristol, earning a grand total of $300: Sara led the group on such songs as “Poor Orphan Child,” singing alto, while A. P.’s voice provided the bass. Sara accompanied her singing on her autoharp; Maybelle played her guitar. Together, they, and the Appalachian folk music genre that they represented, ensured that East Tennessee earned its due acknowledgment on the state quarter—even if symbolized by a fiddle that none of the Carters played.

  Fortunately, that oversight is remedied by the decision to allow a guitar to represent Central Tennessee. In central Tennessee, guitars have logged thousands of hours of playing time on Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry, the longest-running radio show in U.S. history. Not only is the Opry Tennessee’s preeminent stage, but it is the undisputed epicenter of American country music.

  The Opry dates to October 1925, when the Nashville-based National Life and Accident Insurance Company opened radio station WSM (for the company motto, “We Shield Millions”). Based on his previous experience in Chicago with The National Barn Dance, WSM station manager George D. Hay started a similar program with an informal collection of local string bands and performers.

  Hay’s show scored his first big break with the appearance of fiddler Uncle Jimmy Thompson in November 1925. Responding to a delighted public, WSM began offering a regular Saturday night “barn dance.” By the following spring, the barn dance had been renamed the “Grand Ole Opry,” and the show grew steadily in popularity, thanks to such performers as the banjo-picking, joke-telling David Harrison, a.k.a. “Uncle Dave” Macon.