On a drive to Smithfield the other day along N.C. 96, I passed several fields of tobacco, tall and starting to yellow along the bottom. In just a few weeks I suspect I could make the same trip and the bottom row of leaves will likely be missing. At the risk of sounding too nostalgic, I miss the old tobacco tradition that was so important to this community.

The only job I remember my mother ever having outside our home was at Banner Warehouse in the summertime.

She worked in the office with three other women. It was their job to keep track of who bought what, how much they paid and to whom the money was supposed to be paid.

Each woman’s calculations had to balance at the end of the day and I remember my mother telling me once that they had to match to the penny.

If any of the four women was out of balance, they all had to stay in the office until the books were reconciled.

Most of the time, that was pretty quick and painless. A few times I remember my mother staying at the warehouse for what seemed like hours.

At the beginning of the season, we children liked going to the warehouse to see all the action.

Old men wheeled the piles of tobacco onto a set of scales, weighed them and then placed the big piles of tobacco into straight rows.

After what seemed like an interminable wait, the sale would begin with an auctioneer leading a line of men up and down the rows.

Mama would let me and my brother stay out in the warehouse for a while and watch, but then we had to go into the office. The only good thing about that was that the office was air conditioned.

After the first sale of the year, the excitement wore off a bit and Mama would let us stay at home while she went to the warehouse.

There were sales two or three days a week and each of the four warehouses in Wendell rotated so that no one warehouse always got to go first.

I was working for a newspaper in Oxford when the beginning of the end of tobacco began.

I remember going to a meeting called by the Stabilization Corporation at one of the warehouses in town.

Farmers from all over the region were gathered in that cavernous building to listen to a report on the coming trend: contract farming.

Big tobacco companies were in the midst of negotiating the Tobacco settlement and it was clear that business as usual was over. Instead of selling their crops in an auction system, farmers were going to have to contract with tobacco companies to grow their tobacco.

I had already experienced contract farming through my father who was raising hogs on contract with a national pork producer. My father was so busy following the company’s rules he didn’t have a chance to use his own common sense to tackle whatever problems arose.

And when the company said it wanted something done differently, they expected Daddy to do it.

Tobacco farmers now face the same future.

Many of them quit rather than become part of the corporate machine that tends to stifle innovation and independence.

To be fair, though, I’m sure a lot of tobacco farmers quit because their profit margins fell considerably once prices were set before the crop was ever delivered.

Granville County has always had a great respect for its tobacco farmers.

The Masonic Home for Children, long called the Oxford Orphanage, held a special celebration on its campus on the opening day of the tobacco market.

Farmers from all over the county came to the orphanage after the final sale of the day to enjoy a meal and an entertainer. Wendell, of course, celebrates its own tobacco heritage, too. The Harvest Festival is no longer a celebration of tobacco farming, but its roots are still tied to the soil.