TOBACCO FARMING

I got introduced to tobacco as a baby. My Mother took me in basket to the tobacco barn while she looped tobacco on a stick. As my Father was a farmer, everyone in my family was expected to help. It was early in the morning and very late in the evening when the chores got done. Not only did my family grow tobacco but there was corn, cotton, soybeans, wheat, peanuts and sweet potatoes, not counting the huge vegetable garden my family planted every year.

The main reason tobacco stands out in my memory was that it was very hard work and we were expected to keep going until my Dad thought we had a barn full to cure. We got up at 4:00 in the morning to take out a barn of cured tobacco so we could put a fresh truckload of tobacco in the barn in the late evening. My Dad had five tobacco barns and after about three or four days we had them all full of tobacco curing. So by the first of the week we were taking out and putting in again. To a small child, it was endless work.

It made me feel better though when I went shopping for school clothes and had enough to buy practically everything I needed to wear. Back when I was growing up we went shopping three times a year; Christmas, Easter and back to school. So that made it worthwhile.

When I was about twelve years old my Dad bought a Tobacco Harvester which I guess made his life easier. My life got worse because I had to drive it down the rows and being so little and short I got dirt and sand thrown in my face from the tobacco loopers which were my Mom and another lady. My Dads job was to load the tobacco on the racks of the harvester as they were looped. Even though I tried to keep it in the middle of the row, sometimes the rows weren't even and I would get screamed at. But Dad couldn't do any better.

Then the time came when we were walking to another field one morning and all of a sudden my Dad's truck came flying down the path. My Uncle had found Dad and the harvester in a big drainage ditch. It appeared that my Father was moving the harvester to another field and had to go over a bridge and something called a card-i-key, that controls the steering, came out. My Father thought he would be killed or hurt, decided to jump off and when he did, he fell in the ditch and broke his back. So my Dad was laid up for the rest of the tobacco season. With a lot of help from family and neighbors the crop was saved.

After all the tobacco was cured and stored in the "pack house" it was sprayed with water to keep moist and taken off the stick. The tobacco was then tied up into neat little bundles and stored until the day to be taken to the big tobacco warehouses to be sold.

After the accident, my Dad decided not to farm tobacco. The following years until I grew up, I helped other farmers harvest their tobacco and made money to buy my school clothes.

I always said I would never marry a tobacco farmer and I never did. But I still miss the farm.