I never used tobacco but am sure I have the residue of years of second hand smoke deposited in my lungs. I lost a brother to lung cancer in 2000 and another went through chemotherapy for lung cancer, and passed away from development of brain cancer in 2009.. My father had prostate cancer and later died of congestive heart failure and my mother suffered from the loss of a leg then and eye and for years with bronchial problems that eventually was the cause of her death in 1999. Although neither of my brothers had anywhere near the habit my parents did both enjoyed a “smoke” every now and then out of sight of their non-smoking spouse.

Have you noticed that there are many changes taking place in New and Old Tazewell. Good job and lots of luck. The old wooden part of the Centre Brick or the Farmer's Central Tobacco Warehouse is gone.

For several years while my father was building his house in Tazewell my family lived in New Tazewell very near the Centre Brick Tobacco Warehouse. I had friends that lived just next door to the warehouse and we played around and under the large tobacco warehouse. Had one of the girls not reminded me a few years back of our sneaking cigarettes from our parents and smoking them under the warehouse I would have forgotten. I guess that was my first experience with tobacco. I evidently didn’t like the taste because after we moved to our new house in Tazewell in 1956 I only tried tobacco maybe one or two more times.

There were the fun times of the Tobacco Festival and the floats and horses. My sister finally talked my father into buying her a horse to ride in the parade. We didn’t have a barn but our neighbor, Marshall Dyer allowed us to use his tobacco barn. Unfortunately the stalls were in dyer need of repair and no matter how my sister and I tried to repair the stall door the horse kept knocking it down. Wheeler Lyford, who my father had purchased the horse from lived below New Tazewell and the horse would head home for Wheeler’s every time it escaped. I don’t know how many times we had to chase the horse all the way below New Tazewell from our house in Tazewell but I know it had to be 6 or 7. One day just before or may have been the day of the Tobacco Festival, before my sister ever got to ride the horse in the parade the horse made it’s final and fateful trek down the new four lane through New Tazewell. It met a most unfortunate and untimely death at the intersection where Danny England Motors is today. It collided with a rather large Buick and died instantly. My sister and our family never really got over the tragedy. My sister now has two horses and a barn right next door with wonderful barn stall doors. She pulls her horses and her and her granddaughter enjoy riding at every opportunity.

Now back to tobacco. My second job after my paper route was as a “bag boy” at Milt and Vida Brooks B&B Supermarket that stood about where C&C Office Supply stands today. During the selling season, which usually started soon after Thanksgiving and lasted till just before Christmas the town was full of excitement with plenty of out of town buyers and sellers and lots of money to spend. Tazewell, as many of you know was always either first or second, depending on Greenville’s market, in tobacco sells. It was always competitive to see which town sold the most burley. The B&B’s co-owner was Roy Brooks and when Roy and Milt both were together in the store during the busy tobacco season there were always lots of story telling and fun for everyone. We would usually stay late one night a week to stock, I think Wednesday. I always looked forward to it because Milt had a slaughter and packinghouse up Cedar Fork and always brought us the largest cuts of loin and occasionally T-Bone to eat on those long nights. The tobacco buyers from North Carolina would always come by for the best of the best of beef to take back home. This was at least for three years that I worked at the B&B on a part-time basis.

Once I started L.M.U. I worked all but one or two quarters on the work-study program at the campus, except for the Fall of 1967 when I worked with a group of students that planted trees along the high walls of the strip mines near Pruden and Clairfield, Tennessee. My on campus assignments were either the Burt-Vincent Memorial Library or the Abraham Lincoln Museum.