[Granville-Hough] 4 May 2009 - Tobacco

[Trustees for Granville W. Hough]

Date: Mon, 04 May 2009 08:26:49 -0700
From: Granville W Hough <gwhough at oakapple.net>

Good Morning, God, and thank you for April and the great days of Easter. 
May you give us guidance through this new month of May!

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Tobacco

Smoking Joe Sullivan was addicted to tobacco and kept a pipe in his 
mouth at all times. The only time I recall him visiting the Elisha Hough 
farm, he walked through the barnyard gate with a smoking pipe. Elisha 
Hough, a non-smoker, proceeded to push him back through the gate and 
give him the scolding of his life. Smoking Joe was much embarrassed and 
apologized in every way he could. (Everyone knew a barn full of new hay 
was a fuze just waiting to explode into flames. Sometimes we had to turn 
the hay to cool it down. Even so, barns caught fire from spontaneous 
combustion. I describe one such tragedy, the McAlpin barn, elsewhere.)
Neither my mother nor father used tobacco in any form, but we knew 
plenty of women who used snuff and a few who smoked pipes. As for snuff, 
which was tobacco ground into a powder form, you could either sniff it 
or dip it. I cannot remember anyone sniffing snuff, but it must have 
been done. People would say: ôI need a dip of snuff.ö Dipping it meant 
placing it in the lower lip, where it could create a messy sight. Among 
men, few used snuff, but many chewed tobacco or smoked. We grew tobacco 
for our uncle Elijah and our brother Dueward who had become addicted. I 
also saw people use snuff for an aching tooth; and I suppose it did make 
the pain more bearable. Among those who used snuff or chewing tobacco 
out of sight of children or visitors were Grandpa and Grandma 
Richardson, and Aunt Joan (Sullivan) Richardson.
The tobacco plant required constant care, and we had to remove the 
tobacco worms by hand. They were a large catepillar û the larvae of a 
native moth û which got about two inches long, were a garish green and 
yellow, and had a big horn on their heads. Birds did not bother them. 
They must have tasted terrible. We learned they were harmless, and that 
we could pick them off the tobacco and put them into a bucket for later 
destruction. It took a lot of nerve, but we all became accomplished worm 
pickers. The moth normally laid its eggs on wild plants, probably 
milkweed, and we would see the larvae on these plants in the woods.
When the tobacco plants were grown we cut them and stored them in a 
cotton house until the leaves were wilted and almost dry. Then we could 
take a big leaf, or two small leaves, and make a twist. Then we would 
let the twist get dry and it was in a form for carrying in your shirt 
pocket. These twists were also known as ôcrosslegsö to distinguish them 
from ôboughtenö chewing tobacco which came in flat ôplugsö which would 
fit into your pocket. When you wanted a chew, you cut off as much as you 
wanted with a sharp pocketknife, got it into a wadded ball in the side 
of your mouth and let saliva do its work, spitting out the excess. 
Enough worked its way down your throat to give the nicotine effect you 
sought. You could also cut it up finely and smoke it in a pipe, which 
was Uncle Sid RichardsonÆs approach. That was not so messy. But it was 
all mean, nasty stuff. There were fanciful names for both plug tobacco 
and dipping snuff such as Red Bull, Schnapps, Brown Mule, Winesap, etc, 
but we had little contact with them as we grew our own. Grampa Hough.