Ozark White Lime Company

The 12 men in the accompanying picture, provided to "The News" as part of is 100th anniversary, worked in those early quarries, according to a Washington County man. They warried stone, fired a kiln to produce lime and put it in metal barrels to be used for a variety of things. They worked for the Ozark White Lime Co. of Fayetteville.

John Bailey Jr., 65 of Brentwood remembers there were two quarries when he worked at Johnson. One was located south of Johnson and the other across Clear Creek near where the Johnson Mill stands today.

The ime, he explained, was primarily used in an insecticide used to kill oill weevils. "Buniness picked up during cotton season," Bailey said, adding that he worked in the quarry on two occasions for about six months when extra hands were needed. Other uses included plaster for houses, limestone for laying bricks and to make cement.

The tools of the tradce -- pick, shovel and hammer -- weighed about 16 pounds. The wages of the time were 15 to 20 cents an hour.

The quarry in the picture caved in during the 1930s, according to Bailey, but he explained that the quarry was designed to do that. His uncle, Arch Bailey, was the company foreman for a time. He engineered the quarry to fall because "it was getting dangerous," Bailey explained. Spools held the roof intact until Arch Bailey started dynamiting the pillas. "There were no injuries -- nothing like that, " Bailey said, adding that his uncle let nature take its course and the quarry collapsed.

"There was a lot of originality there," said Bailey. "They never consulted anyone that I knew of. It's kind of like old airplane pilots flying by the seat of their pants."

Bailey labored in several parts of the process, including firing the kiln. Cord wood was originally used to burn the lime. "A lot of land was cleared that way," he remared. With temperatures in the 2,000 degree range, Bailey said the men used 14-foot metal prods and took care not to keep them in the fire too long. "There's an art to coooking lime. If it wasn't cooked all the way through, it would be waster," he said, nothing that in those days no one thought much about skill, they just did the job."

The company started using natural gas in the early '30s. Some lost their jobs and it did away with crosscut caws and horse teams, Bailey said.

His father and his wife's uncle also worked for the lime company owned by O.F. Gulley. Prella Bailey's uncle, Vine Q. Bloomingberg, was a company manager. Other supervisors recalled by Bailey include Andy Cardwell and Edgar Bookout.