By Rick Houser-
I am sure I have said it before but I’m going to say it again. A tobacco crop is the most labor intensive crop there is. This is a fact and I will bet any person who ever dealt with this crop will vouch that I am not stretching the truth one bit and this didn’t just go for the adults either. It covered everyone in a family from the adults down to the youngest member. Here I can tell you I was the youngest member and no I wasn’t left at the house. Dad didn’t want me to miss any of the fun. (Looking back, maybe I should have wished that he had let me miss it.)
I have covered how much fun it was to pull tobacco plants so they could be transplanted to the patch. Pulling plants was a job that required staying bent over. (Again, no fun.) It is only natural to try to find a position that was comfortable but as our neighbor, Ed Maus told me one day as we were pulling plants and I was laying on my side and he said, “Get up from there. Everybody knows you can’t get many plants pulled being in a comfortable position.” He was right, but just because it was right didn’t make it any more fun.
At least that was what you might think. The thing was that in a week or two and after a shower, we would pull a couple of baskets of plants and return to the patches we had set. Even though as we set those patches we always had a person follow the setter and if a plant was missed, that person made sure there was one put in. You would think that would be good enough but sometimes the conditions were not good for a tobacco plant to make the switch from the tobacco bed to the field.
To be certain we would go back and walk the patch and replace any plants that failed to make it. Most years this wasn’t too much of a backbreaking job and after a good rain we had to walk barefoot in the patches and I must admit that the feel of the warm muddy soil squishing between your toes was a good feeling. I guess that was the reward for resetting.
Of course, while we were doing this I might have complained some about having to do one more job that consisted of a lot of back bending labor. It was on one of these mornings when we were had to reset more than the normal amount of plants that my Dad turned to me and said, “Son just be lucky you don’t have to set on the season.” This was the first time I had ever heard of this term. I asked Dad what it meant and he explained that back before the days of tobacco transplanters they would have the ground worked into shape and wait for a good rain. After the rain, they would hit the field with a person dropping plants in front of a man and that person would poke a hole in the ground and set the plant. He also emphasized that if you were the man setting you were in a bent over position all the time and it wasn’t as easy as it was now.
Well, the first thing I did was stop complaining. However, I thought about that setting on the season and in my little boy mind I really didn’t see it being that bad. After a while, I put the subject to the back of my mind and almost forgot about it. That is until the next year. In 1960 the rains came and didn’t give up as it seemed to become a daily event. As we were trying to keep dry, the warm weather with all that rain caused the tobacco plants to continue to grow. It got to a point where Dad, my brother Ben, and I all pulled the tops off the plants to stunt them for a few days and pray for sunshine. During this time, my Dad was preparing for the only alternative he had left. Little did I know I was about to experience what a conversation covered a year before really meant.
When the rain didn’t stop Dad, Mom, Ben, our hired hand Wilbur, and I would go to the tobacco beds and begin pulling plants. Those plants were so big my Dad was concerned that even setting them might not save them. I have said we raised several acres of this stuff and there was one farm where the patch was up on a ridge that allowed it to drain better than most so Dad decided that was where we were headed. This crop was one that belonged to Homer and Sadie Mefford, an older couple. The base was almost two and a half acres in size. We took a lot of plants with a line made out of baling twine that traversed half the distance across the patch. Dad had tied a stick to each end and as he would measure off the distance between what was to become a row of tobacco the job began.
Mom and I were the designated plant droppers. The job sounded easy but the plants had to be spaced properly so the guys setting could pick up the plant and with two fingers poke a hole in the ground and set the plant. The procedure sounds simple enough. It was repetition and I tell you it was some of the hardest work I have ever seen done. It took almost two entire days and I know it was a lot of labor just dropping the plants and staying ahead of three men jobbing the plants into the wet ground. We had the easier part but I felt I was giving my share. I was only 10 years old but feeling very needed.)
Dad, Ben, and Wilbur stayed bent over almost with no break in the action. By the first days end Dad and Ben had both jabbed into the ground and found that a rock greeted them and tore their fingernail, so they went over to a tree with some right size branches and with their Barlow knife cut off a part of the branch and formed a peg to use in the ground instead of a sore finger. Wilbur got to teasing Dad and Ben about hurting their fingers and they just needed to watch how he did it. It wasn’t long though before he hit a rock and peeled his finger. At that, he did use a few words that were new to me at that time.
By the end of the second day, we all were as tired as I can recall. In addition, those men were at their energy’s end. Since we were almost done, I begged Dad to let me do some setting. It didn’t take much persuasion and Dad said, “Go for it”. Well I grabbed a peg and asked Ben if he wanted to race. All I got in response was one very mean glare from my brother. I got to set for about an hour and it wasn’t too long before the old back was aching. The truth be told it didn’t take long at this job to realize I never wanted to see or do it again. From then on when we would reset I didn’t complain. The truth was I had learned I was lucky to ride the setter.
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