Putting Sir Walter Raleigh where he doesn't belong

I don't know if you are anything like me, but when I am told not to do something, I go out of my way to try and do it. Such is the case of one memory from my childhood.

The year was 1974, I was around 8-years old. My best friend Kevin, and I were up to our usual summertime hanging out and looking for trouble. My dad was working on building our new Jim Walter home. Jim Walter came in and framed and roofed it, and my dad finished everything else. We were really excited about getting into the new house because the little 4-room cinder block house that we lived in, was in really poor shape. I won't go into the details of all of that in this post though.

Anyways, like I said, dad was working on the house, hanging Sheetrock in the living room. Kevin and I had walked through the half finished house several times that day. Each time we passed through, we would stare at the pouch of Sir Walter Raleigh pipe tobacco that dad had sitting on the top rung of a step ladder. Dad used to smoke a pipe on occasion but had always warned me not to try it. I loved the smell of it. For some reason it always gave me a comforting feeling. I know that dad was referring to smoking the tobacco when he was warning me, however, for some strange reason, we figured that the tobacco in that pouch would be good for chewing. So it was drawing us like flies on a watermelon rhine. Yeah, I know...stupid kids.

So we decided we would somehow get that "backer" and try us some. Since it was my house and my dad's tobacco, it was up to me to pull this caper off. We sat in the front yard underneath an old Pine tree, gazing at that tobacco. We would watch my dad and try to learn a pattern to when he would be out of sight of it. Finally, he left the room and went down to the basement. That's when I made my move. Like a fox stealing chickens from the hen house, I ran to the ladder, grabbed that pouch of tobacco, stuffed it underneath my shirt, and made my way back to the front yard all before dad ever knew what had happened. We were both praying that he wouldn't decide to stoke up his pipe before I could get it back.

We slipped down to the darkness beneath the unfinished front porch of the house and leaned against the cinder block foundation. A mixture of excitement and fear mingled through our heads. I opened up the pouch of Sir Walter, and pulled out a good pinch of it. "Hm, seems pretty dry," I said. "Well, that's cause you gotta mix your spit with it," Kevin replied. Sounded reasonable to me, so I took that wad of pipe tobacco and shoved it into my right jaw. Now, I don't know if you've ever been ignorant enough to put pipe tobacco in your mouth or not, but honey, let me tell you, it ain't meant to be. It felt like I had stuck a burning chunk of charcoal in my mouth. I jumped up, hitting my head on the bottom side of the porch, nearly knocking myself out cold. I scrambled out from under that porch and started spitting tobacco out onto the ground. Kevin was jumping around me saying, "what's wrong, what's wrong!???" "It burns, it burns!" I was yelling. I took off running toward house to get some water, all the while pulling grains of tobacco off of the inside of my cheek. After several gallons of water passing through my mouth, it finally cooled off long enough for me to ask Kevin if he wanted to try some...he didn't.

Getting the pouch of tobacco back wasn't near as difficult as stealing it in the first place. I simply walked into the room when dad's back was turned and placed that pouch back on the top rung of the ladder. Much to my surprise, dad turned around and said, "what in the samhill are you doing with that tobacco?" "Oh, nothing," I said, "just looking at it." "Well, keep your cotton pickers off of it," dad replied. "Ok," and I sauntered away to get into more mischief.

Moral of the story: Children, obey your parents and never, I repeat never, put pipe tobacco in your mouth...it burns!