Burley: Kentucky Tobacco in a New Century

Chapter 6. “Now is the good old days”: Burley Tobacco Production and Nostalgia

193 Chapter 6 “Now is the good old days” Burley Tobacco Production and Nostalgia Living in Kentucky, I came to understand that most people have family ties to tobacco, and many worked in tobacco as children or young adults. This is not surprising; I was repeatedly told that at one time “every little farm” had a tobacco base, and indeed, throughout the twentieth century tobacco was grown on most Kentucky farms. People talk about tobacco work with a mixture of emotions, and descriptions from memory are often saturated with sensory details. They describe the comforting smell and atmosphere of the tobacco stripping room on winter days but also the oppressive heat and stickiness of working in the fields, suckering, topping, or cutting tobacco. But even the memories of miserable work are often framed in prideful reminiscences of having worked hard and having participated in an experience shared by so many Kentuckians. Tobacco is woven tightly into Kentucky culture, and many feel that tobacco made Kentucky what it is today. Many also lament lost family time, as raising the crop once depended on the entire family working together during particular stages of production. Tobacco is often referred to as “the glue that held families together.” Not only did tobacco mean time together as a family, but tobacco was the economic mainstay—it “paid the taxes, paid the insurance, [and] put the kids through college,” as Jerry Bond told me in 2005. The crop was, at one time, the sole source of cash for many families, and I was told over and over that there was a time when the value of a tobacco base was enough to 194 rAiSing Burley ToBAcco in A new cenTury serve as collateral on a farm mortgage because it meant a guaranteed income. Tobacco quite literally made it possible to own a farm, for full-time farmers as well as for those who worked off the farm and either raised their small tobacco quota or rented it out to others . Tobacco also helped Kentucky maintain a small-farm culture far longer than other regions of the country. The objects of tobacco nostalgia are many and are dependent on the context and on the speaker. Some expressions of tobacco nostalgia resemble the more general nostalgia many feel for a rural life of the past, which, from the perspective of the present, is described as a simpler, happier time. Other expressions of nostalgia are quite specific and unique to tobacco. One such thread of nostalgia focuses on the production of the crop itself, and that is the subject of this chapter. In 2005, a man who has worked in tobacco part-time all of his life, but who does not raise his own crop, told me that today “they treat it like . . . baling hay or something .” He went on to say: “They just pick it up by handfuls sometimes and throw it in there. And when you’ve worked the other way you just can’t, you don’t treat tobacco that way.” This comment speaks volumes about the reverence with which the crop has historically been treated within tobacco communities. Raising tobacco is often described as “an art” because of the specialized knowledge required at every stage of production—knowledge that is sometimes described as residing in the blood rather than as learned. Because so much of burley tobacco production continues to be carried out by hand, burley has long been understood as a handcrafted farm commodity. I assumed that the perspective of the tobacco worker quoted above was representative of what I would continue to hear as I interviewed more and more growers— that farmers were moving away from traditional and “right” ways of doing things and no longer treated the crop with the respect it deserved, with pride. I have heard additional, similar lamentations, but expressions of nostalgia are far more varied and complex than I initially understood. They are dependent in part on the position of the speaker in the present. In his examination of the expression of nostalgia through the collection of material culture by members of a Northern Ireland community , Ray Cashman demonstrates that the immediate object, the literal thing, that nostalgia appears to be about is in fact symbolic of much more. He argues that “nostalgia is a cultural practice that “Now is the good old days” 195 enables people to generate meaning in the present through selective visions...