Despite the fact that it is too early for the birds to be up and my pubescent body aches for more sleep, I am the first of ten to be sardined into a wet rusty pickup bed and shuttled to a green sea of broad leafs . Without a word spoken; each in our own barefooted way - quietly slips into a wet, crunchy, cold crop of "bacca" that soon turns limp, hot and resiny after the sun evaporates the dew. There is nothing enjoyable about the field work accept the comradeship that comes from helping each other finish their row, or picking up the few leaves they drop carrying an overstuffed arm load to tractor and slay.
Church services served the only respite from spring through fall. I wished for Wednesday night bible study, choir practice, vacation bible school, or any other excuse to be in the only air-conditioned place in the county. The nicotine absorbed in my skin made me so nauseous by late afternoon, it kept me from ever taking up the smoking habit. I suspect it was the same for farmers as I can only recall one in a congregation of 200+ that smoked.
My Mother however, devoured cigarettes, as if God himself made the perfect elixir for abused women of John Wayne wanna-be husbands. Join the club; every plane, bus, car, restaurant, lecture hall and meeting room was clouded in nicotine, insecticides, phosphates, nitrates, sulfates and the like. Every movie star had a Marlboro hinged on thier bottom lip. I can still hear the theme song from the Archie Bunker show, ""...and you know where you were then, girls were girls and men were men"
At 43, I buried my young mother of 65 who denied her arteriosclerosis, emphysema, congestive heart failure, high blood pressure and diabetes had any relation to the cigarette in her hand. The fact is, I contributed to her death and so many others with every leaf I picked as a youth trying to make enough cash by summer's end to buy my own school clothes, else face the wrath of my mother's selection of clothing from Sears. Pick your poison, today tobacco is fading but chemical fertilizers, growth hormone and antibiotic feed stocks, insecticides, carcinogenic pollutants, fossil fuel toxins are poisoning the honey and we feed it to our larve. "...those were the daaaaaaays."
