The Chair Falls At Night by Chris Vaughn

Author:Chris Vaughn [Vaughn, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Good Lord Publishing
Published: 2014-09-14T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

The windfall Buddy hand come into had taken the stress off of the Joy's family for this summer. Tobacco farming was hard work and Buddy had remembered his promise to Uncle Frank to make him work hard. He had in fact made him work hard every day all day for the rest of the summer, usually taking him with him when he helped Rudy Fryar farm his land too.

Harvesting of tobacco was a fun time for the two young girls. Their daddies let them go to work and help as much as they could either carrying leaves that had been picked or they took water to the workers. Joy and Jackie never understood why, but Buddy Hand had found his finger that was cut off some weeks back at the pulpwood mill and had kept it. He never told anyone why he kept it, but everyone remembered what he did with it. For several weeks he kept it in his pocket and chased the young kids on the farm around threatening to touch them and see if it would come back to life. It may sound terrible to people now days, but in those days there wasn't much entertainment, and anything was better than nothing when a hot sun beats down on you from morning till night.

Those days of summer had come to a close and the work of bringing in and curing the tobacco crop had started to come to an end. Whether or not anyone has ever smoked, everyone should take a trip to a curing barn and smell the heaviness of tobacco leaf that has cured. Curing the tobacco took about a week after it was placed in the barn. The smell of a curing barn is thick and full, almost wet to the nose of someone walking in for the first time. In those days, there was as much an art of the curing process as the science of knowing what it took to make a barn full of tobacco ready for auction.

Buddy and Rudy worked together to keep the fires lit during the curing process. Once the fires were lit and the temperature brought up to curing, they had to be watched until the tobacco was fully cured. Too hot and it would be burnt and brittle; too low and it would be too wet and spoil. The two men prided themselves on the science of their work as much as the art. The wives brought meals and visited, but the men had their hands full making sure a full summer of work wasn't destroyed by an unwatchful eye. When they were done, both men and their families took a few days off to rest and make plans for the next round of planting and harvesting. Buddy and Rudy had decided to take their tobacco to auction together, and hopefully get a better price for a larger crop. They had decided to go to the auctions in Brunswick and for Buddy to handle the business.

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