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'Pear,'
to a Texas rancher, isn't the succulent fruit of the tree, but the
prickly pear cactus. He curses it, grubs it out, and attempts to hate
it to death-until dry times. Then it's his best friend. When the sky
turns that bright metallic blue that almost burns your eyes and the
few clouds blow by without offering anything, not even momentary shade,
and the grass withers from lack of rain, then ranchers sing the praises
of pear.
The prickly pear cactus is an amazing plant. It has one of the most
beautiful flowers in nature, the cactus rose-so beautiful that John
Nance Garner, who would later be vice-president of the United States,
got the nickname 'Cactus Jack' after years of advocating the cactus
rose as the Texas state flower. Its flowers give way to a succulent
reddish-purple fruit called a tuna that is rich in sugar, makes a
pretty fair candy and jelly, and can be used as the basis for a sweet,
smooth wine with a mulekick hidden in each jar. Its pads, called nopales
in Spanish, are rich in both carbohydrates and roughage, and contain
a lot of water when nothing else does.
Prickly pears are also-well, they're prickly. They're a lot more than
just prickly. They're covered with long, strong, sharp spines to protect
the plant from grazing and browsing animals, afford small animals
refuge from larger predators, and-strangely enough-protect the remaining
grass seeds from seed-eaters so once the rains return the seeds can
germinate and the grass can grow. After a drought the first place
you'll see grass growing on the range is around the edges of patches
of pear.
Animals can eat pear, and some do-but most pay a fearful price. The
spines stab them in their most sensitive anatomy-lips, tongues, gums,
and snouts-and remain imbedded in the flesh, festering and creating
pus pockets that make it impossible for the animals to eat. Old Texas
longhorns, tough as saddle leather and cattle best suited to hard,
dry country, could usually chew the pear spines and all, but the with
importation of European and Asiatic beef stock-Herefords, Angus, beef
shorthorn, and Brahman-chewing pear meant dead stock.
Pear
was-and remains-an excellent source of nourishment and water for livestock,
but only if they can eat it. That's how the concept of 'burnin' pear'
originated.
When you 'burn pear,' you don't burn the cactus itself. The object
is to singe the spines off the pads and stems so your stock can chew
the food value and moisture out of the thick, succulent nopales. In
early Texas pear was burned with a long-handled torch made of rags
soaked with coal oil, today called kerosene. A green pole about six
or seven feet long was the basis for a pear torch. You wrapped the
end of it with old, absorbent rags, wired them in place with baling
wire, then soaked them in coal oil. You stood next to the pearbush
you were going to burn, put a match to the torch, and began to rub
the flaming torch across the pads, burning away the spines without
burning the pads themselves. It could take a man a whole day to burn
the spines off a patch of pear half the size of a small city lot,
and his cattle could eat the patch in an hour and a half.
Sometime in the early 1900s some ingenious individual took a look
at a gasoline blowtorch and said "You know, if that outfit had some
reach on it, it'd be just plain jim-dandy for burnin' pear." The result
was what Sears, Roebuck and Montgomery Ward sold in their farm-and-ranch
catalogs for years as 'flame throwers' and ranchers called 'pear burners.'
The pear-burner was a tank with an integral air pump for pressurization
much like the blowtorch from which it originated-or like a Coleman
lantern, if you've never seen a blowtorch. The tank held about a gallon
of 'white' (unleaded) gasoline. Attached to the tank was a long wand,
and at the end of the wand there was a nozzle with a cup below it.
When properly pressurized, it put out a flame of about 2,500°f about
a foot and a half to two feet long. It came with a sturdy canvas strap
so you could hang it over your shoulder, because it weighed about
20 lbs with a full tank of gas.
Dry times are usually hot times. The temperature hovers around the
100° mark most of the day, especially in the sun-and pear grows in
the sun. Putting out a 2,500° roaring flame on a 100°+ day is hot
work, so you'd expect a man to dress accordingly. Pear-burning attire
consists of heavy boots, jeans, a pair of leather chaps-and not chinks
or batwings, either, but shotguns or Texas-legs-a heavy shirt, a brush
jacket, a bandanna, a felt hat-straw is liable to blow off into the
flame, leaving you hatless in the burning sun-and a pair of White
Mule gauntlet gloves. There is reason for this. First, you're about
to wade into a patch of pear. Spines will be deflected by your boots,
chaps, brush jacket, and gloves, but not by Bermuda shorts and tennis
shoes. Second, you never know what might be in that patch of pear
besides pear. Rattlesnakes, copperheads, and a host of assorted nasties
including scorpions, centipedes, and wasps like the shade pear provides.
With a pear-burner you don't smoke. You've got a gallon of pressurized
gasoline hanging right under your backside, and the potential for
a fried behind is great enough without adding to it with a cigarette,
cigar, or pipe. Pear-burnin' time is when the pouch of Red Man or
plug of Day's Work comes out.
You are producing a very hot tongue of flame that has the potential
to set things afire that you might not want afire. In the pickup you
carry a 55-gallon barrel of water with a hand-pump and hose attached.
Your drinking water is in a burlap-covered gallon jug in the pickup's
cab. Periodically you soak the burlap with a squirt from the drum,
and evaporation keeps your drinking water cool. That barrel of water
has another purpose, though. You use the pump and hose to soak the
ground and vegetation around the patch of pear you're going to burn
so it won't catch fire while you're burning the pear. You can also
use it to put out any fires you accidentally start.
Once the grass and ground is soaked, you fill the tank on the pear-burner,
pump it up, and pour some gas into the lighter cup. You set that gas
afire and then open the valve on the wand. If the sudden rush of pressurized
gas doesn't blow out the flame in the lighter cup, you're rewarded
with a sudden roar as eighteen inches to two feet of flame leaps out
of the nozzle. You shoulder the strap, hang the tank under your behind,
and wade into the patch of pear, spewing spine-singeing flame as you
go.
A good man with a pear-burner, if he doesn't dehydrate and die of
thirst in the process, can burn the spines off an acre or so of pear
in a day. It will take his cattle most of the next day to chew the
nopales to a stringy mass while extracting both nourishment
and moisture. As they do so the pear-burning cowboy burns another
acre or so of pear. With luck-and enough pear-by the time he burns
the last patch of pear on his place the first patch he burned has
grown new, succulent- -and heavily-spined-nopales, and he can
start over. And those are just a few of the things about being a cowboy
Roy, Gene, Hoppy, and the rest never bothered to mention.
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Texas Books
by C. F. Eckhardt
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Escapes, in its purpose to preserve historic, endangered
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