Time travel back to the 1960s because of one short question

My oldest sister is writing her memoirs between rounds of shovelling snow from her laneway in Bracebridge and in a recent email asked for information about my summers working on tobacco farms southeast of London and so I thought I’d knock off a few lines but, and I’m sure this has happened to you too, once I got started I couldn’t stop and pretty soon I found myself in a bathing suit at 6:30 a.m., ankle deep in freezing cold water, lifting a heavy, hand-numbing, half-filled irrigation pipe over my head, carrying it through several rows of tall, dew-covered tobacco plants, coupling it to a long waiting row of aluminum pipes and hoping I’d thaw out during the hot summer afternoon, at least in time for the first feature at the drive-in theater later in the evening.


Among many other tales I wrote:

Once the crop ripened I did more tractor work than pulling or priming tobacco leaves. I delivered empty boats to field hands, picked up full ones, delivered and unloaded leaves from boats for the ladies who then sewed leaves onto flat sticks. They needed tobacco in a hurry so I was always on the go. 

When the sewing machine got clogged with string I crawled under the sewing table and unclogged it. It was a 4 - 5 minute job and I got good at it. The string would be caught around the razor-sharp spinner, right next to a six-inch needle.

Mrs. Edwards stepped back to the table one day, hit the start switch while I was still under there. I saw her moving shadow just in the nick of time, instinctively pulled my hands back several inches, otherwise I'd have 1 or 2 less fingers today. Did she ever get an earful.

When sticks of tobacco were ready I'd pass them to someone inside the kiln or throw them onto a conveyer belt. That was easy work and I could do it all day. 


Some times the hardest part of the day was at 10 o'clock in the morning. I'd been working since 6 or 7 and the ladies, who started at 8, would start talking about what they brought for lunch. Then they'd mention what they had for supper the night before and what they were making for supper when they got home and, holy cow, I got so hungry listening to them I said they couldn't start talking about food until 11.

That plan only worked for one day.

Hard work for sure but the money was good, and after we got off the farm I'd go back to Maedel's Red & White grocery store and start work for Art and Bruce as if I'd never been away.

Earth to self! Earth to self! You’ve been away long enough. Back to the real world.