People thought him whacky when they first learned he was trying to make
money from the sun and the salt water all around him. But, Sleepy John
(an ill-chosen sobriquet, if there ever was one) had the last laugh and
rolled up a nice fortune meanwhile when he demonstrated that it is not
only a good idea to have ideas but, also, to carry them through. For,
salt was a lot more important in his era; it was needed then as now to
go with ones’ vittles, though the greatest value was its indispensable
use in the curing of fish.
Dubbed “Sears Folly”, the first salt-making plant got off to a merry
start in 1776. Skipper Sears built a vat, or “water room”, that was a
crude affair, 100 feet long, 10 feet wide. There were shutters over
the top so that the vat containing salt water could be covered when
it rained, or exposed to the full rays of the sun. As the hot sun
poured down on the water, salt began to crystallize and the Dennis
idea man must have danced a ’76 jitter jig, conjuring up pictures
of what he would do with all his wealth, amassed from just a simple
contraption and no expense whatever. At the end of the sunny season,
however, Captain Sears had produced only eight bushels of salt, and the
neighbors were laughing louder.
The old sea dog wasn’t in the habit of quitting when the going got
rough. Having discovered that production was held down by leaks in the
vat, he persevered and found a way to make the vat tight as a drum. The
second year he crystallized 30 bushels of salt. But, a labor problem
was slowing his progress. The salt water had to be poured into the vat
from buckets, a tedious and time-consuming handicap, for John soon
learned that for every 350 gallons of water he poured only one bushel
of salt formed. He kept plugging and, meanwhile, he was doing some tall
scheming. The neighbors were still laughing.