Tobacco - A Vanishing Crop

As long as I can remember coming to visit my grandparents and family who lived in south Georgia, tobacco was always a big crop. However, through the years with I've watched the amount of tobacco being grown diminish since there aren't as many people smoking anymore.

Lots of my cousins grew up "working in tobacco" and it was their way of earning good money during the summer to buy new school clothes or a car. I think the pay was about $25 per day. That was a lot of money at that time. More than I would make babysitting. Being a "city girl" I had no idea what it was like to work in tobacco. I got a chance after my family came back from Japan. According to an entry in my diary dated July 24, 1965...Dear Diary, I got to work in tobacco. Stood in the truck and handed it down.

The reason I probably didn't write anymore was: (1) I was way toooo tired to write anything more; and/or (2) I could never explain what torture I had been through that day. I was staying with my grandmother at the time and she thought it would be a great idea for me to have the experience and I could make some good money! Let me just say that at the end of the day there wasn't enough money to EVER work in tobacco again.

My experience as I remember (and I may have to go into therapy after recalling this day) - I had to get up at some ungodly hour of the morning since we had to be in the field very early. I got to ride on the back of a pickup truck and stack sticks as they were handed to me when the tobacco had been "strung" on the stick. One of the problems was that the leaves were damp and the nicotine from the leaves started to stick to you and your clothes. It wasn't like you could just wipe it off and you couldn't wash it off since you were out in the middle of a field with no water.

Anyway one of the other things I did that day was hand off the tobacco that had been strung and was ready to be hung in a barn to be dried. There were lots of leaves hanging on a single long wooden tobacco stick (clever name, huh?) that had been piled on the back of the pickup truck. I had to hand these sticks down to someone on the ground who then handed it to someone else who hung it in the barn. By now the sun is high in the sky and it is hot! Especially hot to someone who has never done this type of work before. I was only 13 years old and apparently a wimp!

One of the next jobs was the worse!!! We went to a drying barn where the tobacco had already dried and cured. I stood in the bottom of the barn and the sticks (which were very light now since the moisture had been sucked from the leaves) were handed down to me. No problem you say - wrong. The leaves were now full of dried sand and nicotine particles that fell into your eyes. It didn't matter if you had a hat on your head or not - you had to look up to get the stick and all that dried stuff fell into your face and eyes.

By the time I made it back to Grandmother's house that night, even she didn't recognize me. I was covered in black/brown nicotine, dried dirt, sweat streaks, etc. As far as I remember that was my first and last time ever working in tobacco and I never plan on doing it again in my lifetime!