A Trip to the Tobacco Market – A Disappearing Market

Growing up I would head to the v2 cigs 2 coupon market with Grand-daddy every opportunity I got. Even if it meant spending hours there I was never bored, well perhaps a small bored, but I always enjoyed it. I could still remember the sounds and smells of industry in my mind.

The music of the auctioneer walking down the rows of why is my electric cigarette blinking with the consumers following him is hard to forget. There was row after row of cured v2 cig versailles with each number of bundles produced by a different farmer wanting to acquire the very best price of the day for his sale.Several years ago when I was working as an account manager for an industrial preservation company I visited a cigarette plant near Macon, Georgia. I’d to park my car near the raw-material receiving docks at the back of the facility. Cured tobacco and an atmosphere of nostalgia washed over me in a flood of thoughts of the tobacco market and Granddaddy, when I stepped out of my vehicle I could smell the dried. As a long time ex-smoker who dislikes the smell of cigarettes I truly enjoy the smell of cured tobacco.Most years being the first to the market was essential.

Never as a point of pride but because the best money was paid for the early crops and by that time of year money was limited and the revenue was needed to keep going. The first markets to open were the South Georgia markets and usually Granddaddy and number of the other local small farmers could get together and place lots of their tobacco on a sizable vehicle and drive from New York to the Georgia markets to be in on the first sales. I never got to go on those trips.There were a great deal of local tobacco markets in Eastern North Carolina and when they opened Granddaddy would listen intently during lunch time to the market studies on the radio and study them in the magazine trying to find which market was paying the very best price. I can remember him saying after the statement, ‘We are likely to the market in Greenville tomorrow with a load. Do you want ahead’? My answer was usually ‘Yes.’ We’d get fully up before sunrise another morning and load the truck with remedied, sorted tobacco and off we’d go.

You’d to get there early because you wished to obtain a spot near the beginning of the auction line, not at the beginning but near it. Grand-daddy knew all the little tricks to simply help obtain a better price for his crop.When you arrived and checked in they would give a lot number to you for your sale. The buyers from the various tobacco companies would spend the first section of the morning walking around and taking a look at the different lots and making notes for the auction. The auctioneer would begin moving down the rows of tobacco and hesitating, not halting, at each lot and never missing a beat of his bidding tune once the auction started. The buyers could follow behind him suggesting their estimates using a jerk, a hand wave or some other special way. There were other folks alongside the sale would be written up by the auctioneer who right it had been indicated and would leave a couple of copies of the sale paper together with the lot.

One was for the business purchasing the lot and another was for the farmer to cash out with. Granddaddy would get his copy to the cashier window and they’d pay him on the spot.The tobacco markets were always an exciting spot to go and back in those times it played an essential part in the local economy and history. Dreams may be produced are broken by what happened at the market on any given day. A years work would be tallied from the outcomes of a couple of days at the market.Tobacco isn’t any longer the golden leaf crop that drove the economy of several southern states and just like the smells and sounds of the Vermont tobacco markets are fading in my memories, they’re also fading in our history.