When I was a kid I picked up the bad habit of chewing tabacker and snuff. I use to hide it under my mattress from my momma for years. I was about 15 before my momma found out about my habit and it broke her heart.
Anyway.
One time I was plowing for Lee Roy when I was a kid and I had me a pouch of RedMan chewing tobacco. I was getting to the end of the field and Lee Roy needed my help with something and stopped me when I was turning the tractor around. We were walking back to his Jeep and he says “Hey Don, gimme some o that RedMan and maybe I won’t have to tell your momma your chewing” guess I didn’t hide it well enough from him, so I forked it over.
We lived about 15 miles from town but west of us about 4-5 miles was a truck stop. I was out and desperate for some snuff and I use to buy some from Lee Roy from time to time, but when I asked him he said he was out too! We were in a pickle. He handed me $20 and told me to go to the truck stop and get a roll for him and whatever I needed. I said “I don’t have a ride” because we both were up there on tractors. He said “take that 4020 up there and get us some.”
Looking back I can’t imagine what people thought about seeing a 14 year old dirty kid, pulling up to a truck stop on a tractor, then going in and asking for a roll of Copenhagen! I bet that was a shocker to some folks.
Years later after I had kids of my own, I took them with me on the tractor. They were in the cab while I was outside while I was fiddling with something, Matthew was 4 and Roy was 2 years old. I somehow left my snuff can in the tractor. After a little bit I heard retching from the cab and found both boys had got into my snuff can and had turned green with their heads spinning.
On another occasion a few years later, we had gone camping at willow creek which was miles from nowhere. I had taken enough snuff to last the trip. One day I ran out so I went into the camper to get a new can, there was none to be found. I tore that camper apart and found nothing. The boys had been off fishing and when the came back I asked them if they’d seen my snuff. They looked at each other and simultaneously said “nope.” Red flag!
I went outside and saw a can on the table by their fishing poles. Relieved I went and picked it up but when I opened the can it was full of worms. I called em out and they said they needed a can to hold their worms and they found a can of snuff and dumped it out to put worm dirt in.
After that I decided it was time to quit, for their sake. It sure saved me lots of money too. If you add all you spent on it, it sure amounts to a small fortune!
Addictions can be hard to break, but they can be broken — you just have to have the right motivation. Like worm dirt.
