Mama's Secret Vice

My mother's secret vice was chewing tobacco.  It was a secret she kept from everyone except the family.  She started chewing tobacco at age 10 when her mother gave her small pieces of tobacco to hold in her mouth.  This was a common practice at the time for mountain women such as herself. This tobacco was grown on our farm, air cured, and part of our annual income. During my growing up Mama used King Bee Twist or Day's Work brands along with her Garrett's Snuff.  Her 'tobaccer' was the first thing she put in her mouth in the morning and the last thing she took out before she went to bed at night.  This vice was shared with Aunt Ruby.  They often discussed some aspect of chewing in daily conversation; they had spitting contests; and conversed about good spittoons - those that were fancy and made with ceramic or the type they used which were empty sixteen ounce pork and bean cans.  She preferred the latter. 


She told me I should NEVER develop a chewing habit and said that it was bad for me. Her habit along with no dental care had rotted all her teeth out by age 35. But the thing that stopped me from chewing tobacco was running through the house and tripping over her pork and bean can. The rule was whoever knocks over the spittoon has to clean it up. It seemed like it was always me. The rags I used for cleaning up my mess were found in a kitchen drawer and it always took too long to get the clean up rag before the ambeer had done its damage to Mama's floor or carpet.


With my bare hands I dragged that rag through the slimy, molasses colored spittle, gagging the whole time. Mixed in with the slimy spittle were flakes of brown chewing tobacco.  It ran out of the pork and bean can like mud and the smell was distinctly that of our barn as those firm green tobacco leaves dried and turned dark and limp. Mama's carpet appeared to soak it up in seconds and once there it left a brown stain no matter how hard I tried to get it out. I hurried to stop the flow while Mama stood over me, looking down, judging my every move and secretly enjoying my suffering because I had been "clumsy enough to knock it over in the first place!"


While Mama's filthy, nasty habit stained my hands it also told me something about my mountain roots and what it meant to be a real mountain woman. Today I vomit easily at the sound of someone else vomiting, or at the sight of vomit. It reminds me of the ambeer I cleaned up many times in my youth.   Even now I can gag at the thought of cleaning up this mess because of the memories of the molasses colored spittle oozing across the living room floor. I never tried to chew tobacco.  I suppose Mama's solution achieved it's purpose after all.

Family and Lifestyle Choices

It was January 2, 2012 and there we all were dressed in the new work out clothes we had received as a Christmas gift only a week ago.  Some of us were pounding away on treadmills; others running on a padded oval track; others walking at a fast pace; others chasing basketballs and shooting hoops. Some of us were aging couples; others were middle aged; and still others were young adults. I assumed the one thing we all had in common was overindulgence over the holidays and knowledge about the need to stay fit.  

One lady always carries her rather large purse as she walks the track; another brings along his caregiver to help him navigate his steps; other women and men have a friend walking along side them for conversation and some walk at fast paces while making odd gestures with their hands, arms, and mouths as they keep pace with the music pounding through their earphones. Although we differed in many ways we spent an hour or more together today trying to pick up where we left off a week or two ago before our Christmas journeys.  I was happy to be there sweating and doing my run because my pattern of running a mile each day is well learned and rehearsed.

At some point in today's routine I began to think of my father and what he would think and say about this scene if he were able to drop in today at the gym to see me. Surely it would have been very odd for him because he died in 1964 from a massive heart attack when I was just 16. I'm fairly certain that he would have understood little about what we were doing and very certain he would have called it nonsense. 


Daddy was a mountain man who spent his life farming and hauling freight from Knoxville and Morristown to Sneedville.  He had an eighth grade education, chewed tobacco, smoked heavily and was overweight. He was the proud father of three sons who had managed to escape the rugged mountain life by getting college degrees and moving to cities where there were more opportunities. One son became a doctor. As the only daughter I followed in the footsteps of my brothers; I earned a degree and moved away as well. Somewhere along this path of education we all learned the connection between lifestyle choices and healthy aging that Daddy never understood. If  he did get the connection it was too late to undo the damage because he died at age 64 from a massive heart attack. One of my brothers chose to ignore the information like daddy and he died at age 64 from a heart attack.


Today as I did my workout routine with the masses at the gym I thought about Daddy, my brothers and how life has turned out so far for all of us. While I am now 64, the age of my father when he died, I believe my life will end differently from Daddy's and my one brother. As I ran on the track soaking in the sounds of my music I couldn't help but wish that both my dad and my brother were able to stay around longer so that they could see what an incredible family we are.  I certainly wish they could have known their grandchildren.