Tobacco
by John Riley
When you prime tobacco the old way, moving down a row, hunched over at the waist, snapping the bottom three leaves off the stalk and stuffing them under your arm, you'll get thick black wads of tobacco gum from your armpit to your waist. The bottom leaves, the ones you're picking, yellowing a bit at the tip and along the veined edges, are the last to dry. If you're lucky you get the row closest to the wide sled row so that, when you're loaded with all the tobacco you can carry, it's only a short shuffle to drop the leaves into the sled. If you're unlucky, or are too young or too old or too slow, the field hand in charge of pulling the sled forward might leave you behind and you'll have to walk twice as far to unload. But it'll be okay. When they reach the end of their rows the rest of the primers won't mind taking a minute to catch their breath. Maybe they'll even have a short Coke and a package of nabs while they wait.
Beautiful and poignant. Well done!
Terse evocation of a world already a few lives away.
This reminds me of "walking beans" which means as kids you litterally walk through humid, extremely hot rows of sow beans to hand hoe weeds. It's nasty work. With all that cotton juice, I wonder if your body takes in nicotine through the pores. As you can see, I'm so taken by this whole process and the heat stroke I'm getting from simply reading this, I haven't paid any attention to the writing. But why would I? It's clear and tight and moving me into the tobacco rows where you want me. Please let me out.
I feel the work of this, and the relief of the possible short breather at the end.
Perfect gem of a story.
Reminds me of working the corn-fields in Indiana as a kid ("detasseling" i.e., pulling off the pollen tops so the field can be artificially pollinated).
Also wondered about absorbing nicotine through the skin...
Nice work, John.*
Great snapshot. *
You've worked hard to depict hard work.I've seen the tobacco fields and wondered how this was done prior to mechanization.*
rich details, great scene*
Some writers would give us at least a chapter to do what you've done here. Having said that, I could read a whole chapter of this if you wrote it.
Rhythmically lovely. Well-wrought prose.
*
Politically loaded.
Thanks, everyone for the nice words. I'm happy you enjoyed it.
* John. This fine story captures so vividly the job description, the work content and how it felt to do the work. I love how you fleshed out and gave texture to a day in the life of a prime tobacco "picker". Picking cotton is similar except the day my uncle Elmer let my try at age 6 or 7, I quit after about 30 minutes. The difference of course is the narrator here actually worked the job. Great telling.
Like it, John. *
Thanks, David and James