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Prickly
Pear Cactus | 
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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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