Chewing Tar

Has anyone every heard of someone engaging in this unsavory practice? It seems to have been a thing.

i was put off of it when i was in middle school and a big cowboy stepped behind me in shop class and hawked a giant chewing tobacco loogie in my hair

Lol, I think

back in the day .. a kid would chew bits of the street

jainz

https://i.imgur.com/12vbkmn.jpg

Apparently this goes back, way back

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/abs/chewing-tar-in-the-early-holocene-an-archaeological-and-ethnographic-evaluation/58FF8D89AA89E5A791477E44F5EC65AE

https://community.cartalk.com/t/chewing-tar/63134

Thought this was going to be about using black tar heroin like Skoal. I'm not sure that wouldn't have been preferable.

http://searchesworld.blogspot.com/2013/03/chewing-tar-yummmmmmy.html?m=1

I'm genuinely interested in the differences, if there is any, between modern road tar and the early 20th century version that was apparently hard to resist

Yeah, good question.

Here, among the racket and excitement, was the place F. Jasmine saw the ghost of the old Frankie plainest of all—hovering close to the commotion, chewing a great big lump of tar, hanging around at noon to watch the lunch-pails being opened.

You folx know they're referring to pine or birch tar, right?

Just googled it, and apparently this is about chewing road tar. Never heard of it.

Yeah, same just now! Apologies James, I assumed that “tar” was a regional variant on chaw or tobacco, my bad!

I’ll try anything once, so

*heads out to the lonely roads*

I've chewed pine tar. It's not pleasant. If you've drank pine needle tea, you know the flavor.

there sure are a lot of intriguing google results for this

bookmarked

https://talkroofing.com/t/chewing-tar/4327

I've chewed pine tar. It's not pleasant. If you've drank pine needle tea, you know the flavor.

― Christine Green Leafy Dragon Indigo, Saturday, April 3, 2021 4:14 PM (eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

The Czechs have a pine needle liqueur, thought it was borovička but apparently that's juniper berries, anyway I liked it but all of my friends thought it was horrible.

yeah, tried a pine tar liqueur as an after-dinner refreshment in Finland, although the server was like "i'm not sure what you would call it, maybe the word is... tar?"

which without the "pine" part did lead us to similar visions of blacktop repair, roofing goo, etc. it didn't taste great to my palette, but it was interesting cause i never really ingest anything piney in that way.

Some people really put the omni in omnivore.

The Czechs have a pine needle liqueur

must have stolen the idea from Greek retsina.

bump

https://www.genealogy.com/forum/general/topics/memorylane/24247/

https://letterfrombunkerhill.blogspot.com/2012/02/chewing-tar.html

https://www.thebraziltimes.com/blogs/2048/entry/66186

My mom, born in the 30's, remembers kids chewing tar.

My sister and I, born in the 60's, thought that was weird. Then again, the kids in our neighborhood liked to run around in the cloud behind the bug spray truck.