Dibble

There was no hodad plating in NC. It was a team affair where one guy carried the trees and a long pair of tweezers and the other carried a dibble. The dibble made a square hole into which the tweezers after having firmly grasped the tap root by the very end thrust the root. This kept the root from being curled up at the end in the shape of a j which will eventually kill the tree.
The van trip north took us past the Ogeechee river swamps and forests we had worked in. The Georgia Pacific trees we had marked with blue paint signifying a boundary to GP property.
Soon the topography began to change to dryer farm land. Forests of wispy Loblolly pines became denser, more orderly, planted like rows of corn sixty feet high.