In days long past, by this time in the month of May (or maybe a week earlier), my late father would have already gathered up every bushel basket, every wash tub, every orange crate, and as many cardboard boxes he could get his hands on in preparation for “settin” tobacco.
Let me pause for a moment to clarify the use of the word “set” as applied in settin’ tobacco. There is no past, present, or future tense distinction in using the word “set.” Simply put it, works this way. “We set tobacco yesterday.” “We are settin’ tobacco today.” “We will set tobacco tomorrow.” No one ever “sat” tobacco, although some of the old timers use to say, “We ‘sot’ out some tobacco yesterday.” Those who became more educated and/or sophisticated in later years would use the word “transplanting” in referring to settin’ tobacco, but what did they know?
The various containers gathered by my father would be used to transfer tobacco plants from the plant beds to the waiting tobacco patches. Unfortunately, the cardboard boxes only made it through one use, especially if the plants had to be “wet down.”
And by now, my father would have checked out and greased the tobacco setter (Ours was a New Idea, drag-type setter.) On day one of settin’ it was always in perfect working order. And the 2-hp pump used to transfer water from creek or farm pond to the setter tank? Tuned up and ready to go. In all the years I helped in the tobacco settin’ we experienced precious little down time. Frank McCall was a master at preparation in the work he loved.
With the coming of May the rye grass cover crop had long since been turned under and the tobacco ground disked to my father’s satisfaction. On the afternoon or the morning before we began settin’, he disked the ground one more time turning the earth into brown powder.
In the days leading up to tobacco settin’ time, the canvas had been removed to allow the tobacco plants to toughen under direct sunlight. In the earliest days I remember, if the plants were growing too tall, we “wrenched” off the tops of the leaves by hand before planting. It was a painfully slow process. In later years, we tied a push mower (lawn mower) to two long poles and carefully walked along the sides of the plant beds lowering the tops of the plants. In more modern times tobacco growers used weed eaters to trim the plants. In my boyhood days the only weed eaters we had were two old goats that kept the graveyard clean.
Speaking of plant beds, I came across a mass of “yellow vine” in a pasture last summer. There it was, right out in the middle of the field. I hadn’t seen yellow vine since my tobacco settin’ days. Yellow vine (Some folks called it “love vine”) is hard to describe. A parasite, it showed up almost every year somewhere in our plant beds. Bright yellow in color, looking like fishing line or dental floss, it grew in a tangled mess. (I you ever experienced a backlash with a spinning reel you would have some idea of how hopelessly tangled it grew.) It could be traced back to where it was attached to the spongy stem of a tobacco plant. Its point of attachment left a tiny ridge on the plant which could be removed easily with the blade of a pocket knife or a long fingernail. I don’t ever remember a tobacco plant being sacrificed to love vine. And I don’t remember a piece of love vine making it to one of our tobacco patches.
So many memories - the dank smell of the water in that tobacco setter water tank – the rhythmic click of the setter as it released a shot of water for each plant- the feeling in the tips of the fingers of my right hand as I “searched” for the next plant to be passed to my left hand for planting – the satisfaction that only comes from a job well done at day’s end. All these recollections and a thousand more make up the fabric of who I am. I, like so many other farm boys and girls, grew up in a “golden age.”
Copyright 2022 by Jack McCall
