Bloodhound chew

Farmers may seem like and independent lot, and in many ways they are because there is no other industry to remotely compare to large-scale food production. Even the small family farms which used to dot the rural landscape and were the backbone of America until Ronald Reagan put them out of business in the 1980′s were extremely self-reliant. One thing nearly all of them had in common though was the uniform trousers they wore. You could just about bet that any owner of a small farm would pull on a pair of bib overalls as soon as his feet touched the floor when he got out of bed in the wee morning hours. He might place one of several various types of shoes or boots on his feet, and the type of shirt he wore changed with the seasons, but it was usually long sleeved and made of soft, absorbent cotton. On his head would go a comfortable, disreputable looking, sweat stained, manure spotted, old Stetson hat, or its equivalent. This basic attire was worn by those men born before World War Two; later generations wore Levis, sneakers, tee shirts, and baseball caps. But even they had at lest one thing in common with the old-timers; chewing tobacco. As I remember, chewing tobacco came in three basic types: loose leaf, packaged in a foil lined pouch; twist, usually wrapped in cellophane; plug, also wrapped in cellophane.
I was never a tobacco using person outside of hateful cigarettes, but like most country boys, I did try various things the adults used. I learned early on that any kind of tobacco I put in my mouth which generated a plethora of juice and that no matter how much spitting I did, there was always some of the vile liquid would trickle down my throat. The first response was gagging and then as my skin rapidly changed colors like a chameleon in a crayon factory–white, red, blue, green, and back to bloodless white–I started dry-heaving just as a drunk does after a big night out with the boys when he confronts a fried breakfast egg leering back at him. I always wound up laying on my belly  and hoping how soon I would die. Fortunately, the effects quickly wore off and mostly all that was left of the honor was a bad memory which was soon forgotten, and the guffaws of any of my friends who were around to witness my misery. For some reason, most of them never got sick from wayaward tobacco juice.
There were two basic types of plug users; one was the gentleman chawer and the other was the regular, uncouth chawer. It was never “do you want a chew?” but always “d’yer want a chaw?” It was ‘chawing terbaccy’ and not ‘chewing tobacco’. The uncouth , regular Farmer Joe chawer might remove the wrapper from his plug of Bloodhound®, offer it around, gnaw off enough for a chaw, and drop it in one of his bib pockets until he was ready for another refreshment. He generally didn’t get a lot of takers on his second offer of sharing; plenty of tooth marks and general dirt from his pocket almost always insured he would have the rest of the plug to himself.
The gentleman chawer would begin the process by first taking his folding knife from one of his trouser pockets. A lot of story tellers did it this way and by the time the plug was ready to serve, he had drawn a crowd of store porch-sitters and they wound up either laughing at some funny anecdote he had told while opening the blade of the knife or sadly shaking their heads about something that had happened somewhere in the community or about the latest misdeeds of the government as he was retrieving the plug from a bib pocket. He would top off his tale by slowly and carefully peeling back the cellophane wrapper so as not to tear it and just as slowly cut himself a piece of the black tobacco and then passing it around as his latest revelation was discussed. When he got the plug back, it was usually with the cellophane wrapper carefully refolded on the plug and the knife blade refolded back into the handle. When I was hanging around the store, I kept an eye out for the story telling chawers; to this day I still draw information and inspiration from their stories and the gleam in their eyes as they related them. There is much more to my tobacco chewing stories, but I will wait until allergies and taxes aren’t preying on my goodwill.
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Have a fine Wednesday, every body!
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