Sammy Visits The Farm

      A younger first cousin named Samantha, who we affectionately called Sammy, was a blood relative on my mother’s side of the family. She was also visiting from one of the northern states. It was decided that Sammy would stay the summer. She and Dennis developed a major crush on each other. She was a physically precocious twelve year old and looked eighteen. She turned the heads of many men in Beulaville. She helped my Aunt Trudie and Nana around the house while my cousin Dennis and I helped my uncle with his farm.

      At seven AM the regular hired hands would show up. There were a variety of jobs to be performed on the tobacco farm. There was handing, (handing over three or four leaves of tobacco to the women who would tie them to pole). Tying of course was another job. After the leaves were tied on to the stick, then you had to take the full sticks and put them up in the curing barn. These sticks would stay in the curing barn for a week, before going to the pack house.

      Cropping tobacco was what most of the men did. You either followed a mule or a tractor. One of the richer farmers had a new fangled cropper, which had stations that allowed all of these tasks.

      I loved working the fields with the men. I was  proud that I was able to keep up with the sturdiest and most experienced of them. A lot of the field hands were African American sharecroppers that were referred to as colored hands. They were always the hardest workers and they were always very polite and proud.

      They also were often invited to my Uncles and Aunts dinner table, but they often chose to sit outside among themselves, eating the lunches they brought with them. Sometimes, they would take my aunt and Nana’s invitation to eat what they made. These relatives of mine were very affectionate towards all of the people that worked for them.

      Dinner was always served around noon, and this meal was always my favorite. Every vegetable was served and I was in heaven.

      Many of the hands that worked for my uncle traded labor. Many of them had their own tobacco farms. On Monday they help my uncle. The remaining four days of the week we would work the farms of the other tobacco sharecroppers. Saturdays were set up for repairs on the farm. Sundays were for rest. I made money only when I worked on the other sharecropper’s farms.

      Tobacco is cropped once a week. A little piece of trivia that most people don’t know about is the unusual tobacco use of tobacco farmers and their families. I noticed is that almost all of the women in the area used powdered snuff, which was a type of processed tobacco that women scooped into their mouths. Most people had spittoons all around their houses. I thought it was gross. I have seen so many young beautiful women with a dark viscous dribble running down their chins, like a grasshopper with spittle running down their mandibles.

      Most of the men in the area, especially the tobacco farmers did not smoke cigarettes. In fact I only saw one cigarette smoker among them. I only saw one cigar smoker and two tobacco chewers.

      Sometimes on Saturday my uncle would take us to go fishing. During those fishing trips or some of the hunting excursions my Uncle VD would get into high spirits and he loved to yodel. He could yodel as well as anybody and like Muhammad Ali, he could make up a ditty on the spot. A few times over the years he had taken me hunting for squirrel, possum and raccoon. I loved barbecue squirrel and raccoon, but possum always tasted wrong to me. If I wasn’t always so hungry I believe I would have left possum alone.

      As I said, except for Mondays we worked at another sharecropper’s farm, that’s when I would make some personal money. The locals use to treat me as a bit of a freak because I was a fourteen year old and I could work as hard or even harder than any of the adult men.

      The African American workers use to look at me with curiosity because during the lunches I would often be seen playing with large snakes, sometimes chicken snakes, and sometimes King snakes. They thought I was more than a few cards short of a full deck, after all why would anyone with any sense play with a snake that was trying it’s best to bite him.

      My Nana and some of the other farmers use to mention that I was built like a damn ape. These comments made me very self conscious and perhaps may have been the underlying reason why I was obsessed about keeping my weight down and staying as skinny as possible most of my life, (Until I met my fiancé’ that is).