Percy Martin and Perique Tobacco
PERCY MARTIN: See, what they call stripping they getting that ridge out of that leaf, when it’s dry. See that ridge? When it’s dry you got to get that off and put, and tie it in a bundle. And that’s women work. They all sit around this box here. We put the tobacco in there and keep it covered with the right amount of moisture and the women do the stripping.
PERSEPHONE HINTLIAN: Why is that women’s work?
CAROL ANN MARTIN GAUTREAU: [Percy's daughter] It’s a sit down job I guess.
MARTIN: I don’t use any of the tobacco at all. I smoked one Perique tobacco cigar, we roll our self, me and my cousin Johnny, and when I was young, I was about thirteen or fourteen years old. We couldn’t smoke that in front of our parents or the neighbors parents but we used to go to Catechism with a horse and a gig you know. At that time that was the only transportation we had. So we had our cigar made and after Catechism, we smoke our cigar when we were coming back home with the gig, of course we took our time. By the time we got home, I was sick and then I fall off the gig, and pass out, they all come run outside they thought the horse had kicked me or something you know and when they smelled my breath they knew what it was, and I never did smoke nothing since then. [laughs]
HINTLIAN: I was wondering if you had any thoughts on about how Perique got its name?
MARTIN:Well the only story that I know of it was the Indians that really started with the tobacco . . . And they said, Pere Perique that was his name and he got the formula and the seed from the Indians and as the white settler settled back here they continued using the same seed from the Indian and that’s where they picked up the name of Perique from this old man. So they call it Perique from him. I heard that story from my grandpa and all the old folks.
In the old days. Whenever I started working with my daddy we had no tractor, it was all mule labor. All mules, everything was mules and then in 1936 that’s when I told dad I said, “I’m not going to stay on the farm, not with them damn mules.” That’s when I bought that little tractor. And the type of work that little tractor used to do compared to the mules and all that it was no comparison. And our crops start developing in better crop and better crop.
HINTLIAN: I know you said it wasn’t any comparison between the two but how much more work could you get done with a tractor compared to the . . .?
MARTIN: Well I tell you, you’re not used to it but in mules . . . You got to make one or two rounds and then give them a blow in other words. And that tractor don’t take no blow, that tractor keep on going whether it’s hot, cold or what. That’s why I call the tractor revolutionized the farming industry completely.
BARBARA ANN MARTIN YAMBRA: [Percy's daughter] If you come here and dry tobacco and then work the dried tobacco, talk about a high. It makes some people sick. They how do you call it, hallucinate? When you’re sleeping at night they have real, real vivid dreams.
MARTIN: If you’re working all day and you breathe that fume that’s coming out of the other tobacco, you know, and it really gets to you at night. Make you dream all night.
Martin, Percy, interview by Persephone Hintlian, audio recording, 2000, 4700.1365. Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley Collections, LSU Libraries, Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
