Tobacco Basket
Grateful thanks to Petra Hernandez for hosting The February Poetry Challenge.
Whether you want to write a poem to share—or just fill a notebook for yourself—I hope you’ll come join the relaxed and supportive community that Petra has created.
My poem was written for today’s prompt: Basket
Tobacco Basket
woven slats, sweat-stained backs, sun-dried,
tacked and tied—bright leaves stacked,
heat-smoked plats, plodded, toiling, broiling,
front porch swinging, banjo-picking, selling, shelling
peas while sobbing, hob-knobbing, corn cobbing,
apron strings, angel wings, flapping and flying,
trying (again) while dying—smoke
Rising.
A Note About Tobacco Baskets
Growing up in rural Illinois, I was surrounded by cornfields and worked alongside my friends every summer “detasseling” corn for minimum wage. Always it was hot. Sometimes, we went without a drink of water for several hours if the rows of corn were especially long that day. For us kids, it seemed like a way to earn a small fortune, as we were too young to have most other paying jobs.
After college, my husband and I moved to Durham, NC to work as R.N.s at Duke University Hospital. Being new to the American south, I was unfamiliar with the labor-intense practices of families who were growing tobacco on local small farms. While not being a smoker, myself, I do find something beautiful about the old baskets, which were once used for bringing this crop to market. Today, you will see them for sale in most antique shops around here.
For whatever reason, these hand-crafted North Carolina tobacco baskets were the first thing that came to mind when I saw today’s poetry prompt. I’ve promised myself just to go with that first impulse for the duration of this month’s challenge. I’ll probably keep most of these impromptu poems unpublished, as a form of writing practice and playfulness within a supportive group of kind people.
After sorting and grading, the [bundles of] leaves were tied into “hands.” A hand of tobacco weighed about 1 pound if made of tips or lugs and about 2 - 3 pounds if made from cutters. A hand of tobacco is a group of leaves tied together at the stem end. The end is wrapped in another cured leaf.
The hands were then laid in the tobacco basket in a circle with the stem ends pointing to the outside. The baskets were then loaded and taken to the tobacco warehouse where they were sold at auction. The song of the tobacco auction is another story altogether.
At the warehouse, the baskets would be stacked about two high to reach a pile weight of 250 pounds of flue-cured tobacco.
The baskets were made from hand-rived oak, primarily in Yadkin County, NC. The oak strips are nailed together. The open spaces in the center of each side are to allow room for a hook to be attached. The hook was used to pull the baskets onto the scales and to load the baskets into trucks after the sale.1
Music
The music I listened to while writing this piece is from the life's work of William Ferris—celebrated recordist, filmmaker, and folklorist. It’s a collection of blues, gospel music, and stories recorded on front porches and in small churches.
Bill is a lovely and loving human who, along with his wife, Marcie Cohen Ferris have devoted their lives to preserving and cherishing the music, food, culture and traditions of the American South.
This album is available from Bandcamp or you can buy directly from Dust-To-Digital.
Here’s where I found the explanation of the process of tying “hands” of tobacco. http://www.inseason.com/baskets/tobaccobasket.html
There's a lovely bouncing rhythm which carries on the working life of an object such as this. Love it.
I do enjoy object poems! This one has all the soul and history you spoke of woven into it. Also, that bandcamp reference is a great blues collection! I will have to check it out.