what’s grown here is certainly of interest to us since
we’re surrounded by the family fields and woodlands.
Both of us grew up working in tobacco—hard, physical,
dirty work. From picking up dropped leaves at the barn
when we were toddlers, to driving the tractors that fer-
ried the leaves from field to barn as preteens, to actually
pulling the leaves (Dwight) or racking them (me), we
each did our part to help get the family’s money crop
to market. We never needed lectures at school to know
about the tar in tobacco. After working in it for a few
hours, we could roll up marble sized balls of black sticky
gum from our hands.
Now the old way of marketing has changed. The
farm subsidy program has ended and the money’s been
used to buy out the farmers who had always raised it.
Instead of the old colorful auctions where competitive
bids could net a grower top dollar for a particularly at-
tractive sheet of soft golden leaves, tobacco companies
now contract directly with the growers for what’s pretty
much a take-it-or-leave-it offer that can be galling to
independent farmers who are more conservative than
cats when it comes to change.
My eleven brothers and I had grown up in tobacco
without questioning it. Tobacco fed and clothed us, and
those who stayed to farm with Daddy—Seth, Haywood,
Andrew, Robert, and Zach—pooled their labor and
equipment to grow more poundage every year and buy
38
HARD ROW
more land until we now collectively own a few thousand
acres in fields, woods, and some soggy wetlands.
The morality of tobacco itself was something else
we didn’t question. Our parents smoked. Daddy and
some of the boys still do. But only one or two of their
children have picked up the habit. Those grandchildren
who hope to stay and wrest a living from the land were
hoping to find an economically feasible alternative to
tobacco.
Each of my farming brothers has his own specialty
on the side. Haywood loves to grow watermelons, can-
taloupes, and pumpkins even though he makes so little
profit that by the time he pays his fertilizer bills, he’s
working for way less than minimum wage. Andrew and
Robert raise a few extra hogs every year and they get
top dollar for their corn-fed, free-range pork. Those
two and Daddy also raise rabbit dogs, and Zach’s bee-
keeping hobby now turns a modest profit because he
rents his hives to truck farmers and fruit growers. Seth
and I have leased some of our piney woods to landscap-
