Raising Tobacco

When I was born, my family lived in the country on Mud Creek Road. At the age of about four, we moved to the little village of Rodney. We had a few acres of land and at various times had hogs, chickens, a horse, a milk cow, and a couple of ponies.

Dad had a regular job, but enjoyed the animals and gardening. Like many people at that time, he grew tobacco as a cash crop. This was before the related health issues were a concern. Actually you would find smokers just about everywhere.

I remember, several years ago, making a reservation with an airline and specifying non-smoking. They gave me non-smoking alright, but the row behind me was smoking! I don’t remember where I was going, but I remember smelling (and smelling like) smoke long after the flight.

Back to the farm:  I well remember checking every leaf of the tobacco plants for the suckers that grew at the base of the leaves. We rubbed dirt on our hands to keep the sticky residue from building up.

For even more fun, we had to pull off the tobacco worms that somehow found our plants. These florescent green worms were about three inches long and about three-fourths inch in diameter. We had to toss them to the ground and step on them to keep them from returning to the leaves. An older boy came to help us work one time as we were suckering and worming. He said the best way to kill the worms was to bite their heads off. He never could talk us into trying it though.

When the plants grew to about five to six feet high and started to yellow, we would chop them down and split the stalk in order to place four or five stalks on a wooden stick. The sticks were then hung in a barn. Nearly every trip to the barn resulted in a battle with angry bumblebees. My brother kept an old license plate handy to fight off the attackers. You can see the yellowed plants hanging in the barn pictured above. I photographed this barn in WV, on Route 2 between Point Pleasant and Huntington.

When the leaves dried sufficiently, usually November or early December, we would strip off the leaves, grade them by quality, and tie them into what we called hands. Several of the hands were then placed back on the stick and stacked, waiting to be trucked to the tobacco market in Huntington.

It was a big day when the truck driver stopped by with the check he brought from the market. My Dad once told me that without the tobacco money, there would be no Christmas gifts. Many farmers depended on the money from growing tobacco to pay the bills and many farm kids have had their college tuition paid by tobacco money.

Don’t get me wrong, tobacco is a nasty, harmful habit. My grandfather is the only one in my close family who used tobacco as far as I know. We would save a small quantity of leaves and my Dad would tightly knot the leaves into what they called “twists.” I remember my Grandpa cutting off a small part of the twist and placing it into his mouth and then cutting off a small piece of Brown’s Mule and chewing it along with the homegrown. He told me this added flavor. Brown’s Mule was a small square of chopped and compressed tobacco treated with molasses and other things.

I just had to try that once, and once was all it took. I have no problem now keeping my distance form what many Old-timers call “that vile weed.”