In the Tobacco Patch
by
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"By gum and dad blast it!" Elmer Crummins tugged at the long floppy beak of his cap. "If I jest had me a decent terbaccer base the way I useta have, I could make a decent living here on the farm." Elmer kicked a pile of dried and brittle tobacco stalks into the manure that lay eight inches deep in the barn. "But the gover'ment won't let a feller make a decent living no more, by gum and dad blast it, no matter how hard he tries." Mattie Belle Crummins stood in the open kitchen doorway to the unpainted clapboard house on Crummins Ridge and called to him. "You better come on here and eat your breakfast, Elmer. Hit's a gittin' cold on the table while you're a foolin' around out there in the stable." She waited a full minute for his reply, and when he did not answer, she turned back to the kitchen, muttering "I ain't never seen the beat of him." Elmer gazed longingly out along the weedy ridge of his forty acre Kentucky farm, then turned reluctantly toward the house. And towards the breakfast getting cold on the table. And Mattie Belle shuffling impatiently about the kitchen, muttering as she fed another stick of stove wood into the fiery maw of the cookstove. "I ain't never seen the beat of him. Forty years I have been cooking his breakfast first thing when we git outta bed in the morning and when I turn around to put it on the table he's out and gone and kickin' around in the stable and a dreamin' about what he's gonna do like he couldn't do his dreamin' while he's still asleep. Forty years!" Mattie Belle was slamming the stove door against the projecting stick of firewood when Elmer came in, kicking the manure from his brogans on the doorsteps. "Forty years and he ain't never et his breakfast hot in all that time." She turned, steaming coffee pot in hand, and shuffled toward the oil cloth covered kitchen table. "Hit was hot when I called you the first time but I reckon you don't keer whether it is hot or cold or you wouldn't stand out there in the barn door a watchin' the sun come up while your breakfast gits cold." "There ain't nuthin' in God's creation prettier than the sun a coming up and 1 reckon if God seen fit to create so much glory for the pleasure of man, hit's the least a man can do to show his appreciation by a watchin' it." Elmer stuck his fork into the fried eggs which were indeed cold but he did not complain. Instead, he opened a biscuit which was still very hot and inserted a generous slab of butter into it, then clamped the biscuit shut on the melting butter. "By gum and dad blast it. If it wasn't for the blessings the Lord sends upon a man here on earth I reckon it wouldn't be worth while the way the gover'ment pins his hands behind him to keep a pore farmer from makin' a decent livin'." Mattie Belle was not a stranger to Elmer's grumbling about the government, but she wondered about his siding with God in his struggle. "You ain't been to church in a month of Sundays," she said, scraping her chair across the linoleum floor as she dragged it to the table. "Since when did you begin to notice His blessings?" She began heaping food onto her own plate. "You have been a watchin' the sun come up for the past forty years to my knowledge and 1 don't reckon you jest started when we got married and it's the first time I ever knowed you to make the connection." "Well, Old Woman, that jest goes to prove that you don't know ever'thing that goes on inside my head. I allus knowed it was the hand of the Lord that was responsible for the sun a coming up and I ain't never doubted it." Elmer helped himself to another of Mattie Belle's hot biscuits and laid on another slab of butter. "And for your information I aim to start back to church the very next time there is preachin' which is the fourth Sunday in the month if I ain't mistaken." "You are right about it being the fourth Sunday, but they could of changed it six times since you was there last." Elmer ignored Mattie Belle's remark. "And that ain't all I aim to do neither. I aim to write a letter to Senator Beaufort and ast him to try to git me a decent terbaccer base so I can make a decent livin' out here on the farm. By gum and dad blast it they have done cut me back and cut me back till there ain't anuff left to cut no more. Ain't no place left fer a man to turn to neither but to them that we have sent up there to Washington to represent us and I aim to write to Senator Beaufort and tell him what a hard time I am a having down here." "You have been about to write to Jesse Beaufort for the past five years too and that 's something else you ain't never got around to doin'." "Well, I ain't much of a hand at writin'. The words jest don't seem to come when I pick up a pencil. But if I could talk to the man face to face, now that's the way I like it, face to face and man to man, then I can say what is on my mind and I can git my ideas across." "Well, I don't reckon you're gonna pack up and go to Washington D. C. to talk face to face and man to man with Jesse Beaufort but you might ketch him the next time he's in town. Ain't his term about up? If hit is, I reckon he will be a hittin' the campaign trail again soon. When he's a lookin' fer votes is the right time to talk to him."
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About the Book
In the Tobacco Patch is the story of Elmer Crummins. Elmer is an old Kentucky tobacco farmer. He is nearing sixty, and he is afraid he has missed the Dream. His one big concern though is that the government keeps cutting his tobacco allotment. Then he learns that his one son, Jim Henry, is dying of lung cancer caused by smoking cigarettes. Now Elmer's whole life is turned upside down. He turns things topsy turvy in the little county seat town of Scarrsville because he quit growing tobacco and everybody said he would "sure as God starve to death." This book is dedicated to Porter Mayo, M.D. PhD, a native of Kentucky, who practised thoracic surgery in Lexington for thirty years, then became professor of surgery at the University of Kentucky Medical Center there. He is now writing a history of medicine and he has been helpful to the author of In the Tobacco Patch in defining the medical aspects of Jim Henry Crummins' case. Unknowingly, he sat for the pen portrait of Doctor Northcut in this story
About the Author
Henry Buchanan, the Georgia born teller of tall tales, has lived among Kentucky's tobacco farmers for more than a half century. He has learned of their labors, their frustrations and their tragedies. And he has seen the rebirth of hope in them when they have faced with courage and determination the issues of life and death. In his tale of Elmer Crummins, Buchanan has drawn the word portrait of a simple ridge farmer who realizes his Dream in the fight for the life of his son, and of the grandchild yet to be born. Buchanan lives in Calloway County, Kentucky, where the local farmers grow corn and beans and wheat and TOBACCO. At the fictional Sunrise Café, the author and his neighbors meet and argue over politics, religion and sex, and TOBACCO. Some of them have died now, but others live to continue the argument. Buchanan is the author of And the Goat Cried, The Marriage Myth, and The Televangelist. More of his tales are in the hopper at 1st Books.