I’d not yet got my license but Johnny Rummel had his, which means it was the winter of 73-4.
Johnny had his father’s truck and Jack Baker’s dogs and we set them loose out by the old bridge across Turkey Creek and they treed four big coons on the top of the hill just minutes after we started.
Four big coons in late 73 or early 74 meant $60 if we were lucky, from the fur buyer.
On that hill that night I opened a new plastic package of Apple Pipe Tobacco by RJ Reynold’s and it smelled just like ripe apples.
When I lit up it tasted like ripe apples.
Johnny and Jack’s son Wayne smelled it and asked if I’d put apples in my tobacco.
About then the dogs hit another track with a long bawl and three boys went after them. By daylight we’d skinned 15 and I was sure that coon hunting was about the most profitable thing a kid could do.
At the auction later on the early spring of 74 the market had crashed and I think we averaged $5 each.
But I discovered apple flavored pipe tobacco that evening.
In the fifty years since I’ve smoked cherry, peach, plum, vanilla, strawberry, chocolate, blackberry, raspberry, maple, and probably others I’ve forgotten.
But tonight I found a package of Apple Pipe Tobacco and it tastes just like apples, as it did that night I smoked an entire package on an all night coon hunt.
My tongue was sore for days then, today it wouldn’t hurt me.
How, do they get those flavors to be so good?
Do they use an extract from real apples, cherries, blackberries and such or all of them worked up in a laboratory somewhere and sold by the gallon to the tobacco makers?
They get it flavored like the package says, somehow.
Johnny had his father’s truck and Jack Baker’s dogs and we set them loose out by the old bridge across Turkey Creek and they treed four big coons on the top of the hill just minutes after we started.
Four big coons in late 73 or early 74 meant $60 if we were lucky, from the fur buyer.
On that hill that night I opened a new plastic package of Apple Pipe Tobacco by RJ Reynold’s and it smelled just like ripe apples.
When I lit up it tasted like ripe apples.
Johnny and Jack’s son Wayne smelled it and asked if I’d put apples in my tobacco.
About then the dogs hit another track with a long bawl and three boys went after them. By daylight we’d skinned 15 and I was sure that coon hunting was about the most profitable thing a kid could do.
At the auction later on the early spring of 74 the market had crashed and I think we averaged $5 each.
But I discovered apple flavored pipe tobacco that evening.
In the fifty years since I’ve smoked cherry, peach, plum, vanilla, strawberry, chocolate, blackberry, raspberry, maple, and probably others I’ve forgotten.
But tonight I found a package of Apple Pipe Tobacco and it tastes just like apples, as it did that night I smoked an entire package on an all night coon hunt.
My tongue was sore for days then, today it wouldn’t hurt me.
How, do they get those flavors to be so good?
Do they use an extract from real apples, cherries, blackberries and such or all of them worked up in a laboratory somewhere and sold by the gallon to the tobacco makers?
They get it flavored like the package says, somehow.
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