Chewing tobacco

My father ran a trading store on our farm.  A beautiful stone chipped building, which stood to the left of the cobhouse and diagonally across the road from the front gate leading into the garden of the old house.  The shelves were filled with all sorts of things from candles and dry goods, to bolts of different coloured materials and tinned items.  I remember him telling me much later, that he stocked tins of sardines at a tickey a tin! 

At the back of the shop in his office, stood a large roll of chewing tobacco.  It looked very much like a big, thick, black, ball of rope.  If anyone wanted to buy a short section of this sort after commodity, there would be a big fight between the three of us, as to who would do the honours of chopping it off, using the miniature guillotine standing on my fathers desk.

It always fascinated me to watch the farm workers chewing on this rolled up, wet, cigar looking stuff.  The part I liked best, was after it had been sufficiently chewed, a long stream of dark tobacco juice would be spat onto the ground, a good metre away, followed by more chewing.  This alternate chewing and spitting would go on for most of the day, interspersed with small breaks when the plug of tobacco would be pushed up into the back of the cheek.  I did my best to imitate them, but only managed to dribble all down the front of my dress!

Each year the suppliers would send my father small squares of material in the latest range of colours.  These, he always passed on to me to play with.  I loved these little squares.  I think all in all there were thirty six.  I would line them up in a whole array of combinations.  All the checks here, the spots there and the florals there.  When they got a bit grubby from too much handling, I would wash and iron them, using a heavy iron, which had been heated up on the cob stove in the kitchen.  They were then carefully stored away in a box I kept in my drawer, to be pulled out and examined from time to time.

The shop proved not to be too successful, and at some point when I was quite young, he sold everything and closed it down.  Still, it gave us a lot of pleasure at the time, and the rolled tobacco, the chopping block and the tobacco juice remain one of my earlier, pleasant memories.