Faith, Folklore, and Friends

The tobacco farm on the Natchez Trace Parkway is near Mile Marker 401.  If you go during the summer months, you can observe the tobacco in the field.  Before last Friday, it had all been harvested and is now hanging in the barn to dry.   I had seen tobacco barns from the road before, but was never  inside one.  It smelled sweet, although I am not a fan of tobacco in any shape or form.  The barn was full; I'm thinking they had a good crop this year. The smell reminded me of my Grandma Stricklin.  Like just about all of the women her age, she was a huge fan of snuff.  I was spending some time with her one weekend, and one of her long-lost cousins dropped in to visit her.  He had brought her a gift--a six inch long twist of tobacco he had grown himself.  She acted very pleased, but I can't recall seeing her use it.  Behind the barn, the land slopes into a beautiful valley.  The leaves were pa...

Last Thursday night, Hub and I went to the Bailey Auction House auction on Chisholm Road north of Florence. I was able to buy these eleven snuff glasses for $4.  SCORE!!! I buy these old glasses just about every time they are offered at auction.  We love to use them for drinking glasses, and so do lots of other people we know.  There are some lead crystal drinking glasses in our kitchen cabinet, but I always get the snuff glass.  In the box of glasses we bought last week, we found this little tin, almost full of snuff.  Hub said we could keep it to use on insect bites.  Grandma kept a little can like this in her apron pocket, and refilled it regularly with snuff from the 8-ounce glass. This can is not too old, because it has a UPC code and a warning. Tooth loss? Gum disease? My toothless grandmother told us she started dipping snuff when she was six years old.  Her teeth were long gone before I was born, and her tongue and gums we...