The woman answered, “Law, yes, but I can’t buy them any more!” so Miss Thornton told her that it was made long ago, in her home town, and that she would try to get her some.
Her next problem was to find some pipes. After several days she thought of the pipes that she felt sure were covered with earth and still in the basement of her father’s old store, so she talked to her cousin and next door neighbor, Mrs. Bess Franklin Mattox.
Shortly after that, they dug at the site. Mrs. Mattox thinks it was around 1958, though possibly 2 years earlier. “Erosion through the years had covered the pipes and when we first started to dig we found none, then there they were, under the dirt. We found two or three sugar barrels full. Tar was on a few of the pipes, from road tar that was also stored in the basement and spilled”. (This tar, in hard-dried rough spots, is present on some of the pipes we examined; however it chips off readily and leaves the pipe relatively clean).
So the colored woman who couldn’t find a Pamplin pipe to buy received “either 15 or 16” and Miss Thornton received a letter of thanks from her from Atlanta.
Miss Thornton still had approximately 1,450 of the home manufactured pipes for us to see when we visited her in July 1969, and Mrs. Mattox had a few.
Dr. Clyde G. O’Brien of Appomattox has had a lifelong interest in the clay pipes of his area and in the history of their manufacture. He has a collection of pipes as well as two pipe molds, and has given us much information.
HOME INDUSTRY PIPE MAKING METHODS
We asked Dr. O’Brien for an account of the method of making pipes in the homes. The following is his contribution, in a letter dated March 11, 1971.
“I talked to Jack Price, age 86, he had worked in the plant for years. His mother, Mrs. Betty Price, and grandmother made pipes at home in Pamplin.
“The clay was made up and put into molds, when the pipe was removed from the mold the shaper was used to smooth mold marks, if the pipe was to be identified with ‘Original’, ‘Hayiti’, or some other marking this was impressed on the base with a stamp at this time. The pipe was then sun-dried on a board in summer, or in the stove oven in winter. Then after they had ‘set-up’ the pipes were put into an iron pot, the pots were put into an oven in the back yard and dry chestnut wood was placed around the pots and this was then set on fire. They did not have a thermometer so he did not know the temperature, but when the wood had burned completely the pipes were brought out to cool.