I never used tobacco but am sure I have the residue of years of second hand smoke deposited in my lungs. I lost a brother to lung cancer in 2000 and another is going through chemotherapy for lung cancer now. My father had congestive heart failure and my mother suffered for years with bronchial problems that eventually was the cause of her death in 1999. Although neither of my brothers had anywhere near the habit my parents did both enjoyed a “smoke” every now and then out of sight of their non-smoking spouse.

Have you noticed that there are many changes taking place in New and Old Tazewell. Good job and lots of luck. The old wooden part of the Centre Brick or the Farmer's Central Tobacco Warehouse is gone.

For several years while my father was building his house in Tazewell my family lived in New Tazewell very near the Centre Brick Tobacco Warehouse. I had friends that lived just next door to the warehouse and we played around and under the large tobacco warehouse. Had one of the girls not reminded me a few years back of our sneaking cigarettes from our parents and smoking them under the warehouse I would have forgotten. I guess that was my first experience with tobacco. I evidently didn’t like the taste because after we moved to our new house in Tazewell in 1956 I only tried tobacco maybe one or two more times.

There were the fun times of the Tobacco Festival and the floats and horses. My sister finally talked my father into buying her a horse to ride in the parade. We didn’t have a barn but our neighbor, Marshall Dyer allowed us to use his tobacco barn. Unfortunately the stalls were in dyer need of repair and no matter how my sister and I tried to repair the stall door the horse kept knocking it down. Wheeler Lyford, who my father had purchased the horse from lived below New Tazewell and the horse would head home for Wheeler’s every time it escaped. I don’t know how many times we had to chase the horse all the way below New Tazewell from our house in Tazewell but I know it had to be 6 or 7. One day just before or may have been the day of the Tobacco Festival, before my sister ever got to ride the horse in the parade the horse made it’s final and fateful trek down the new four lane through New Tazewell. It met a most unfortunate and untimely death at the intersection where Danny England Motors is today. It collided with a rather large Buick and died instantly. My sister and our family never really got over the tragedy. My sister now has two horses and a barn right next door with wonderful barn stall doors. She pulls her horses and her and her granddaughter enjoy riding at every opportunity.

Now back to tobacco. My second job after my paper route was as a “bag boy” at Milt and Vida Brooks B&B Supermarket that stood about where C&C Office Supply stands today. During the selling season, which usually started soon after Thanksgiving and lasted till just before Christmas the town was full of excitement with plenty of out of town buyers and sellers and lots of money to spend. Tazewell, as many of you know was always either first or second, depending on Greenville’s market, in tobacco sells. It was always competitive to see which town sold the most burley. The B&B’s co-owner was Roy Brooks and when Roy and Milt both were together in the store during the busy tobacco season there were always lots of story telling and fun for everyone. We would usually stay late one night a week to stock, I think Wednesday. I always looked forward to it because Milt had a slaughter and packinghouse up Cedar Fork and always brought us the largest cuts of loin and occasionally T-Bone to eat on those long nights. The tobacco buyers from North Carolina would always come by for the best of the best of beef to take back home. This was at least for three years that I worked at the B&B on a part-time basis.

Once I started L.M.U. I worked all but one or two quarters on the work-study program at the campus, except for the Fall of 1967 when I worked with a group of students that planted trees along the high walls of the strip mines near Pruden and Clairfield, Tennessee. My on campus assignments were either the Burt-Vincent Memorial Library or the Abraham Lincoln Museum. I have found that not to be anything to brag about, having to work your way through school. With James Frank White Academy came a new breed of pampered students. No longer is working for a living considered “The In Thing” among the Country Club Crowd. Along with those jobs I had several off campus also. Black Diamond Trailer Mfg and Centre Brick Tobacco Warehouse were two. Both these jobs involved very heavy lifting and were jobs where you were to “keep your mouth shut”, if you knew what was good for you. Now this was the early and mid 1970’s and I was evidently considered someone who would do this kind of thing “NOT”. I ended up filing complaints and writing my Senator about both of them. Jim Sasser was always willing to listen to a small town boy who at times thought he was the only Democrat in town.

I guess I should have been glad during the Christmas Holidays to have a job but when I saw how “things were done” and shown what could happen if I did say anything, “gun in pocket and keep your mouth shut warning” I became infuriated. Now I will never know if the threats were serious because they were never followed through on, or at least not that I knew, even though mistakes in prescriptions, assaults that went through court and out and out black balled by local employers may seem like the warning had some impact. I am still uncertain today if they were actually called in by the large families that control the Tazewell’s or just coincidences. Maybe someone would like to tell me while there is still time.

Anyway, here is what I saw during the time I worked at Centre Brick Tobacco Warehouse. I was assigned to the scale house with weigh master Tilmon Vannoy. Tilmon’s first move was to let me know either he was to protect me or was trying to tell me not to make anything of the tobacco that went out the back door in the wee hours of the morning that had been grown just for the Russell Bros. by non union drivers having never been either weighed or tagged for auction. His gun and pocket tactic was convincing but not enough to scare me into telling what I saw.

The family that grew the most Russell Bros. tobacco was the Hodge Walker family down Straight Creek. Now Wayne Walker was considered quite determined deputy sheriff and I definitely didn’t want a lot to do with him or his family so until now I haven’t spoken a word to anyone other that Senator Sasser. Do you reckon anything ever came of it? Who knows? I know those guys who came in the dead of night with those covered trucks and out before you knew it sure knew what they were doing. Wonder how many trucks of tobacco left New Tazewell without the usual government tariffs? Who knows?

You know I heard that Tennessee’s number one cash crop today is Marijuana. Wouldn’t the old tobacco growers love it if Marijuana was legalized and those days returned? Don’t sell all the farms yet boys it may come true.