“We will have to slip it out of his room without his knowing it.”
“Yeah, we’ll wait till he goes out and then get it.”
Clarence and I were busy planning how to slip into “Grandpa Harper’s” room and “borrow” his snuff. All we wanted was just a little bit of it to see what it taste like.
Grandpa Harper, like many other men had stopped at our house one day asking for something to eat. Like the others, he was going from town to town looking for work. He had no home and no family. After Mama had fed him a good meal, he asked Papa if he could spend the night. Of course my parents said yes.
Papa was real busy with the crops in the fields, so the next day after breakfast the old man asked Papa if he could stay on a few days and help with the crop. Papa agreed. The few days stretched into weeks, and the weeks into months, and the months into years. We were taught to call him “Grandpa Harper” even though we knew he was not our real grandpa and that he was not even related to us. He became just like one of the family and had his own bed in our home.
The day he came he had a grindstone attached to a strap over his shoulder. He earned a little money by sharpening knives and scissors for people. Sometimes when he was not helping Papa in the fields he would walk to Irondale, Gate City, or over towards Lake Purdy with his grindstone to earn whatever money he could.
And he dipped snuff. We had never been around someone who dipped snuff. We would watch him after supper as he took some of the snuff between his fingers and put it in his mouth behind his lower lip. His lower lip would stick out and it was funny for us to watch him. He would smile and we would know he liked it. We often wondered what it taste like.
“It must be good. Grandpa Harper liked it,” we reasoned. “Why else would he use it?” But Mama told us it was not good and that it would make us sick. “But it doesn’t make Grandpa Harper sick, does it?”
We could not get our minds off of trying it out for ourselves. So after many months we finally decided the time had come. We planned our strategy carefully. We would wait until one day when he went out to sharpen knives and then we would snitch some snuff. He kept it on the dresser in his room.
That week we thought he would never go out. Day after day he would help Papa or sit on the porch, but at last he went out with his grindstone. This was the day! This was when we would get to try some snuff! We waited until Mama went outside to the garden. Then we ran into his room and grabbed Grandpa Harper’s snuff box and went out to the barn.
I had a hard time slipping the lid off. Finally the lid popped off and snuff flew up in our faces. We started sneezing and coughing at the smell. But we were determined to taste it, to “dip” the snuff. So we each got some and placed it behind our lower lip.
“Gosh! What is this stuff! It was terrible! It tasted like…, it tasted like…, well, what did it taste like?”
All we knew was that it was horrible. About that time our stomachs began to churn and cramp. We had swallowed some of the snuff. We did not intend to swallow any of it but some got down just the same. We spit, we sputtered, we coughed, and we sneezed. Then we began to vomit. As we both bent double with pain the contents of our stomachs kept seeking a way out.
Clarence told me, “You have turned white as a sheet.”
As I looked at him I shot back, “So have you!”
It took us some time before we were able to slip back to the house and put the snuff where it had been. When we were able, we went to the wash shelf on the back porch and washed our faces and hands. Mama was in the kitchen cooking dinner. We thought she had not noticed what we had been doing, but she had. She did not say anything then, but a little later when she called us in to eat she said, “I guess you two have had enough punishment for what you did. Now get ready for dinner.”
“But I am not hungry,” I said.
“Neither am I,” Clarence answered.
So Mama said we could skip dinner. It took all afternoon for our stomachs to quit hurting and for us to feel good again, but by supper time we were ready to eat. Mama knew and we knew that was the end of our “dipping” snuff.