Living Stories: Getting Grandma's Snuff

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My grandma was a snuff dipper. Now I don't know if you know what that is. But it's where you take Garrett snuff, that was the only kind she used, it came in a brown bottle. And she used the bottles after they are empty, to line the walkway, into the house or into the yard. So when she would run out of that Garrets, she would send us into town to get her another bottle of snuff. And she would give us specific instructions, she would say, “go to the store and make haste”. But she would always send two of us, we never went alone, and there was always two people together. So what “make haste” means is that you run all the way there. And then you run all the way back. No problem. and we were barefoot.

So we would take off like two scalded apes on down the road, we'd go you go out in front of the house for about a quarter-mile. And then you make a turn to the right. And you go down into the woods where the trees have all grown over. And so you're running in the shade, and then you had to jump a couple springs and branches that ran across the road. Then you would get down to my aunt Sarah Ann’s house. Then there at Sarah Ann’s house you slipped through the barbed wire fence and there was a trail that went from there straight into the store. And at the store, there was the church, there was a school, there were like two or three other buildings and we would get grandma's snuff. And of course, they had these great big cookies. They were about the size of my face. We get one of those, and then we would come back at a full run grandma was all happy.

James Banks

Banks Family Group

The Banks and Extended Family Group

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