Picked up your page looking for info on the Cummer Cypress Company. My father worked for the company in 1935 in the cypress swamps on the pile driver putting in the railroad that was used to haul the logs from the swamp to the main line. Cummer bought used street car rails to run the lines into the swamps and ties were as far as 5 ft apart across pilings cut off after driven into the swamp bed. By the time the area was logged (the distance logs could be moved by skidder to the railroad and loaded on cars), the rails had a sag in them between the ties, so the train in and out was slow going. The camp houses were two room and brought in by truck and set up side by side with segregated quarters for black and white workers. You could sit at your supper table and see what the guy was eating 3 houses away as all windows were in line. The workers worked in mud and water up to waist deep. They protected they feet from the water by pouring oil in their shoes before putting them on and topping up after. For those that owned cars or trucks of some kind and had room, everybody went to town on Saturday and came back late at night. The road in and out was so bad that they would go in groups in order to help push one another through the mudholes. My grandfather on a Saturday night drunk trying to help push one car slipped and the car drove over his leg. The mud and the liquor resulted only in a good bruise. My uncle's father was head of the railroad gang at the camp and my uncle would become a section foreman for Seaboard until he retired. There is a great story when the switch was thrown wrong at the main line and one of the rails was torn and twisted from the mainline and nothing to replace it with. My uncle's father rebuilt that twisted rail adequate enough for the mainline to continue operating until a new rail could be brought in for replacement.
My dad's brother in law scaled the logs that came into Lacoochee. He was provided a house next to the commissary during his employment. I visited there as a lad in the late 40's and early 50's. My aunt is still living in her 90's and most of her married life was at the mill. Logging and building a short line into the swamps was hard and dangerous. Dad decided that there were other jobs less hazardous and did not stay with it too long. He figured an average of a man killed on the job per week while he was there. Later the company would perfect the Cummer Block by mixing limerock with the cement to produce a varied yellow orange concrete block for home building.
In my teens and later I would punch quite a few holes in these type blocks as my dad taught me the plumbing trade in Gainesvville, Florida. Dad left me a treasure throve of stories of his first days of marriage working for Cummer Cypress. Someday I will write them I hope for my descendants. I am not familiar with Mosstown, but as a youngster I tried to hold the long bamboo pole my uncle used to pull moss with. It had nails driven through the end in alternating directions which was twisted into a clump of moss until tight and then pulled from the tree. My uncle would twist the pole into the moss and let us try to pull it down. When we could not, the we would hang on and lift out feet and we had a swing until our arms tired or the moss gave way with more than one grand niece or nephew on the pole at the time. Computer games can never compare with that experience. Just an old guy's memories.
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