Thursday, September 11, 2014

Slim, part2


We piled off the trailer and Slim took Chuck and me aside to show us the ropes.

“First thing you got to do is cut down the plant. Get it down by the root.”

Slim demonstrated, effortlessly slicing through the stalks of three tobacco plants one after the other, using an implement similar to a hatchet, but with a much thinner, sharper blade.

“Here you go, young man, you try it.”

Chuck took the hatchet and swung hard at the base of a plant but it bounced right off. Slim laughed, “What’s the matter, Junior, them little girlie arms ain’t strong enough to cut down a little weed? Try again.” All the deference was now gone from Slim’s demeanor. Now he was the boss and the boss was having a little fun at Chuck’s expense.

Chuck reared back and swung again, much harder this time. The blade bounced back again, this time leaving a little cut in the green stalk.

Slim chuckled to himself.

Chuck pounded away on the poor tobacco plant until the stem was split and chewed up, but he never severed it. Slim laughed harder and harder as he watched Chuck's useless flailing.

“Okay, okay, Mister Badass, have some mercy on the poor thing.” Slim took the hatchet back. “See, I’m just tryin’ to show you, you got t0 do this right, or you just gonna wear yourself out and ruin all my tobacco. You cain’t come straight at it, you got to chop down on it!”

Slim demonstrated by trying to make a horizontal chop, which bounced off the plant, just as it had when Chuck tried it. He then showed how to slice cleanly through the plant by attacking at a 45-degree angle.

“If you gotta chop hard, you ain’t doin’ it right! If you get used to chopping hard, one time you gonna get it right and chop your damn leg off. My tractor only goes five mile an hour, so if you go an’ chop off your leg, you gonna be a dead white boy before we get anywhere near a doctor. Got it?”

We shook our heads, but it took most of the day before we really got the hang of it. Sure enough, I would swing harder and harder to make up for my imprecise aim, and then eventually strike a plant just right and the blade would slice through as if cutting paper. Each time, the blade struck my shin on the follow-through before I could stop it. Good thing I wore jeans. It just left a welt, but no cut.

After one member of the team chopped the tobacco, the second member picked it up and impaled the stalk onto a six-foot stick. To accomplish this, one end of the stick was placed on the ground. Over the top end was placed a device that looked like a small funnel, except it was hardened steel with a very sharp point where the drain hole would be. The plant was rammed over the point, which split it so it could be shoved down onto the stick. We soon found that it was easy to ram that spike into your hand, leaving a nice puncture wound. Soon after that, we found that green tobacco juice, mixed with sweat and dirt, really stings when it gets into a cut.

After the sticks of tobacco were made, they were loaded onto the trailer and hauled to the barn to be hung. The barn was arranged with four levels of parallel rungs. We worked from the top down, with a vertical human chain made from the tractor up the four levels, where the forty-pound sticks were handed up and up and up. The top man stood with one foot on each of the rickety rails and reached down between his feet to pull up the tobacco stick and hung it on the rails before him. While filling the top layer, it was hard not to rise up and burn your bare back on the tin roof.

As the morning progressed, the dew burned off and the ground fog rose to the treetops and then disappeared into the hazy sky. The temperature rose above ninety, matching the humidity level. The oppressive heat sucked the energy from my body and the hatchet began to gain weight until it felt like a ten-pound sledge. Chuck and I frequently traded jobs, not that one was easier than the other, but because we just grew tired of the repetitive motion until any other action seemed more attractive by comparison.

At noon, Slim called us to the tractor and we all piled on for lunch. As we rolled down the road to Slim’s house, I welcomed the slight breeze in my sweaty hair. I was exhausted. I looked at Chuck and he didn’t look much better. I looked at the other laborers but none seemed too much worse for the wear. They didn’t speak – to us or to each other. Their eyes never met mine, but not out of deference. Defiance was more like it. We were being ignored.

Lunch was ready back at Slim’s. On the table were a large bowl of beans and ham and a pan of cornbread. We ate in silence with the same woman glaring at me every time I looked into the kitchen.

After the heavy lunch, we returned to work under an even hotter sun. Soon, we felt weighed down as if we wore 100-pound sumo suits. It took all my determination just to move in slow motion. Sweat poured off my body and into my eyes, stinging them. I could hear the sounds of chopping from various parts of the field and the occasional engine noise of the tractor as Slim moved it around to keep up with the workers. I could hear my own rapid heartbeat fading in and out in an aural dance with the cicadas vibrating in the nearby woods.

As frequently as I thought I could justify it, I stumbled over to the tractor for water from the communal Coleman thermos. Each time, Slim reached under his tractor and held out his bottle of Richards’ Wild Irish Rose. “Hey man, wanna tap?”
Each time, I just shook my head no, not having the energy to speak.

Richards’ Wild Irish Rose is a nasty second-pressing fortified wine along the lines of MD 20/20 or Night Train. He kept the bottle in the toolbox of his tractor, which was located beneath the engine. Between the heat of the motor and the boiling Maryland summer, Slim's wine must have approached 150 degrees. The one time I accepted a drink, the heat of the wine hit me first, then the heat of the alcohol, which seemed to immediately evaporate from my body and escape through my eyes. I became dizzy and Slim chuckled at my reaction. I never accepted another sip, but I could not go to get water without him offering, “Hey man, wanna tap?”

14 comments:

Pink said...

Nice piece :)

Champagne usually escapes through my eyes.

xx
pinks

Molly said...

Champagne, if you are seeking the truth, is better than a lie detector. It encourages a man to be expansive, even reckless, while lie detectors are only a challenge to tell lies successfully.
Graham Greene

Bugwit said...

Hey Pinks! How was (is?) Der Schweitz? Hope you got your fill of fondue and chocolate! Happy, happy birthday, baby! :-)

Molly: What did Mr. Greene have to say about Wild Irish Rose? ;-)

Spilling Ink said...

Sheesh, Bug. "Wanna tap?" I'd have been laid out drunk in the field...

I sent you an email.

Bugwit said...

Lynn: I looked that stuff up. 18% alcohol! Wine is typically 7 to 9%.

I got it Lynn, thank you.

(((Lynn)))

ChickyBabe said...

Weren't you too young to tap? :P

MarmiteToasty said...

Still wanna be ya agent lol

Me dad bought back from when he was working in Ireland once, some bottles of pure irish illegal distilled whiskey, it was clear like water........ I remember sneaking a sip....... it bloody near burned me lips off........ god knows what would of happened if I had taken a swig LOL

boxer and a t-shirt ya say LOL

x

general_boy said...

Does the name "Slim" have the same ironic connotations there as it does here?

And I am still trying to figure out what precisely this Wild Irish Rose stuff is! Sounds like Sherry gone horribly wrong to me...

Chicky Pea said...

That whole experience sounds utterly horrible. I felt exhausted just reading it, and I'm a worker bee.

~d said...

HAHA! I think I would have had to learn my lesson the hard way. Yea, man...bring it on! Hey man, wanna tap?

Bugwit said...

SuperCB: Yup, too young. It didn;t seem to matter. He could probably tell that we were the kind of boys that drank whatever they could get their hands on. But even we had our limits!

Marmy: I've had some stuff like that - reminded me of paint thinner! After one sip, I could feel every bump and groove in my tongue - like it had been dry cleaned or something!

Yup, we have no jammies here! It's very comfortable, I assure you! :-)

GB: Welcome! Yes, the nickname slim can be ironic here, too, but in this case is was straight up -
Slim was about 5'5" and 125 lbs.

Wild Irish Rose and other similar 'street wines' are made by re-pressing used grapes and then adding additional grain alcohol to boost the potency.

Here's a link that may help to explain:

http://www.bumwine.com/

CP: Yup, it was very difficult, but I'm glad I did it. It was the hardest thing I ever did before the Army.

Bugwit said...

Tildy: Read that bumwine link. I'm not too big on the name, but they do desribe these wines quite well.

I had a very nasty experince with MD 20/20 once. Geez, what a brain crusher that stuff is.

Anonymous said...

I'm really enjoying reading this. Brings mack memories for me of picking grapes in the vineyards of the south of France.

Cheers, Bug.

Bugwit said...

Winters: I remember your story about that and wanting to know more details.

I'll bet your boss didn't drink Wild Irish Rose, though! :-)