A few mornings ago, just after daylight, I found myself knee-deep in a row of Roma green beans in my brother John’s garden, face-to-face with a monster “careless” weed that had no doubt escaped his attention for weeks.
I retrieved my knife from my pocket, chose the sharpest blade and prepared to rid myself of the prickly nuisance. I pushed back the bean vines to get to its base and was amazed to find its main stalk as big as a mop handle.
I drew back my arm with pocketknife in hand and applied a swift, measured stroke. As the knife blade sliced cleanly through the stalk it yielded a crisp, popping sound that was all too familiar to the ears of this farm boy. It was exactly the same sound made when the knife is laid to ripe tobacco.
The combination of the heavy dew, and the coolness of the air and that unforgettable sound took me back in time, and I found myself in a tobacco patch.
Every year about this time something will trigger my memory and I will return to those days. It might be a certain smell, or a feeling, or the sight of yellowing tobacco; or a sound, or a tobacco leaf left on the side of the road. A thousand things can stir one’s memory.
A few years back I wrote about tobacco barns in this column. A few days after the column ran I saw one of my Cato friends in the grocery store.
“I really enjoyed your column about tobacco barns,” she said.
“I appreciate your saying so,” I returned.
Then she smiled a sly smile. “I saw somebody the other day who said they bet you had spent precious little time in a tobacco barn.”
“Really,” I said.
“Uh, huh,” she smiled.
I continued my shopping, but the more I thought about her words the more curious I became. To be honest, it began to irritate me just a little. So, I circled back to catch up with my friend.
When I found her still in the store, I made my approach and asked, “Who said they bet I had spent precious little time in a tobacco barn?”
I saw a hint of mischief in her eyes as she ducked her chin and whispered, “Ira Watson.”
“You just wait until I see Ira Watson,” I said good-naturedly. “I’ll straighten him out.”
She smiled as if she had let the cat out of the bag.
The late Ira Watson was one of my favorite people. As a boy, he lived on my grandfather D.T McCall’s farm in Smith County. He grew up with my daddy. Mr. Ira often said to me, “I always thought a lot of Frank.” And he seemed to enjoy teasing me about being from Punch, Tenn. He was my buddy.
But after my conversation in the grocery store I went looking for him. As the old folks used to say, “I was a-layin’ for him.” It was a good two weeks before I ran into him again.
When I did see him, I opened our conversation by saying, “Mr. Ira, I heard you told somebody you bet I had spent precious little time in a tobacco barn.”
At first he furrowed his brow as if in deep thought. Then he said, “Ahhh, hummm.” Then he looked at the ground and muttered something under his breath I couldn’t hear. With that being said, he looked up and smiled. And that was it. I really liked Mr. Ira.
I had planned to say, “See this scar over my left eye? I got it when I fell and hit my head on the wagon tongue in the tobacco barn when I was two years old. And I was in the middle of every tobacco crop Frank McCall raised from that time until I was 28.”
And I was going to tell him about all the places I had a hand in hanging tobacco, the many different tobacco barns, the sheds, and the feed barn lofts. But as it turns out, all that really didn’t matter. The memories are mine.
And every time late summer and fall rolls around, something reminds me to go back and visit the tobacco patches and tobacco barns of my yesteryears. And I recall the weird-looking stain tobacco sap left on your hand that held the tobacco spike, and how tobacco gum would build up on your other hand, and how sore your right wrist and left hamstring felt on the morning after your first full day of spiking tobacco, and the people who labored with us, and the blisters, and that dog-tired feeling at the end of a long day.
As much as I enjoy revisiting those days, I have no desire to relive them. But I would take nothing for the memories.