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.