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Aging Tobacco in Baby Coffins

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Southern Planter

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Many years ago the bad influence in my life was my crazy Uncle Dave. Handyman, schemer, ne'er-do-well, and general jack of all naughtiness, if it was illegal, for him it was worth a try.

One day we went to a Navy surplus auction with another plan to get rich quick. One of the lots was a mountain of baby coffins. Hundreds of them. We would resell them and make a killing. The bidding started. Nothing. The auctioneer dropped the starting bid. Nothing. We got the lot for fifty cents. That should have been our first warning, but no, the golden greed gongs ringing in our heads clouded our judgement. The Navy informed us that the pile was now ours, and we had a very short time to get the mountain off their property before we went to Leavenworth for trespassing.

And so with my '48 Chevy pickup, and his 62 Ford we started the Herculean effort of moving them. They were stacked to the moon in the bed, stacked on the roof of the cab, stacked on the running boards, and tied to the bumpers. Trip after trip. We divided the pile, half for him, half for me. Neither of us sold a single one. One day Uncle Dave disappeared. The bankers wanted his ass, the cops wanted his head, and about four and a half ex wives wanted his hide. A bus load of lawyers fought over the title to his little desert farm. Tumbleweeds drifted between the studs of his unfinished house. Years went by, and one day during a thunderstorm lightning struck his pile of baby coffins, and the resulting bonfire could be seen for twenty miles. Last I heard, Uncle Dave had found his niche, selling ice makers to Eskimo's.

I was not so lucky, like Phil Harris who drifted from place to place with the "thing", the pile would follow me everywhere I went. It sat for thirty years in the back yard of my old miners shack until I sold the place. My new loving wife would not let me take them with me, much to the disgust of the new owner.

Oh bitter bitter wormwood, if I only had them now, I could line them with spanish cedar and make great boxes for aging tobacco.

The moral of the story? Never ever throw anything away.
 
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