03/28/2024
Thoughts While Shaving
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Who would ever dreamed on Valentine’s Day that the local unemployment rate would go from near 4 percent to near 20 percent by the end of April? Actually have not seen the number, but should be coming soon and some are predicting 20 percent or more … A shocker…

I try not to worry about things I have no control over … attempt to think of better days … Sometime my mind wonders, back to my youth…

Remember when tobacco was king? Just about everyone had a few acres of the weed, some more.

We never had much more than 4 or 5 acres … It was the ‘cash’ crop in the 40s and 50s and later…

Plant tobacco beds in, many times in ‘new ground’, never understood why. Place a thin sheet type fabric over the bed to protect the young plants. When they were ready for moving to the field, pull them and set-out with a hand planter … A contraption that allowed the plant to be placed in the ground with water … One person, usually a male, would do the transplanting and another person, usually a female or a youngster, would drop the plants in the planter, one at the time. It was not unusual for the rows to be long. It was a tiring, back-breaking task. … Oh yes, the person dropping the plants walked backwards…

Do I miss those days, yes and no … Yes, happy that those days are over … but miss the income.

Smart folks learned that tobacco, when smoked, would kill you … and eventually the process was mechanized…

Not much tobacco grown in Bladen County today. … Miss going to the tobacco market where each pile of tobacco was auctioned off to mostly representatives of large tobacco companies … and happy I never developed the smoking habit. Cigarettes in the mid 50s were 19 cents for a pack of 10 or 12. Today, not sure but dollars, not cents…

Too be perfectly honest, I was not man enough to smoke. Tried it several times and it made me sick, really sick … today, looking back, I learned a lesson … I don’t fool with tobacco…

“Humble yourself or life will do it for you.

“Enjoy the little things in life, because one day you will look back, and realize they were big things.

“But one of the big things in life I have learned from my journey is you can’t please everyone, so don’t try.” Chris Colfer

robert g hester
rgh4612@gmail.com
910-876-2322

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