After finally finding Versailles Kentucky we then proceeded to try and find a tobacco farm to hire us.
Rural Kentucky is a very beautiful place. Long narrow, well maintained, tree lined, country roads snake between tobacco fields and huge grassy pastures. This is the home of the famed, "Blue Grass of Kentucky." Legendary home of thoroughbred race horses. The site of Churchill Downs and the infamous Kentucky Derby. The first race in the Triple Crown of horse racing. Many famous champions have been bred, raised, and trained here. And the grass does have a blue tint.
We drove around asking folks where we needed to go to find work. One guy suggested that we stop at one of the local small stores located at most country road intersections. Since most folks in the area shopped there they are the best place for gossip and information. So we found a crossroads store.
The store was quite like the corner store up the block from my home in Santa Monica California. They sold meat, vegetables, canned goods, potato chips and naturally Beer and liquor. There were some chairs and a table or two outside where you could eat a sandwich or drink a beer in the shade. Every thing was country and laid back. Being a surfer I really like laid back.
I think I need to describe how we looked. We were all in our mid to late late twenties, Victor was younger. Keven was well built not too tall nor too short with longish hair and a full beard. Twig was tall and thin with shoulder length hair. Victor was the youngest thin, short, with a full bore huge curly "natural " hair cut that stuck out evenly all around his head. Then there was me five nine, long (to the middle of my back), blond, straight hair with a blond mustache, and a long foo Manchu beard. Needless to say we were not the ordinary folks seen in rural Kentucky. So when we showed up asking for work in tobacco fields people were very polite and kind but you could detect a hint of a smile and a little twinkle in their eye.
I was designated to ask folks about anything because I was the only one who could, "talk southern."
So I asked a guy who was sitting outside the store if he knew anybody who was hiring, He said that a man by the name of Jack White over at Bonny Bray Farms just had his crew leave and he didn't have anybody to put his backer in his barns. So he pointed in the direction we should go. With, naturally, no other directions, "Everybody knows Bonny Bray Farms you'll find it," he said. So off we went, after buying more beer, of course.
After asking multiple people we were no closer to finding Bonny Bray then we were at the store. We stopped one fellow how to get to Bonny Bray and he scratched his head and said, "I don't think you can get there from here."
I'll have to admit I was a tad bit frustrated by then. Given that the planet we inhabit is basically a globe, and if you go in any direction far enough you will probably end up where you started from. I asked him if Bonny Bray Farms were on another planet? He said, "No but the way the roads around the fields are laid out the road you are on would not connect with Hedden road. You all will need to go back bout twenty miles to get too Hedden road. When you get there turn left and keep going you will see it, it's a big place."
So eventually we found Bonny Bray Farms and we ask where we could find Jack White. We were told to head down the road a couple of miles till you see a big dirt driveway on the right, Jack should be there.
Well sure enough we pulled in the dirt drive and we saw a few men milling around, we all got out of the van and I walked up to the men and said, "We are looking for a man named Jack White."
They pointed to a large man in his forties with close cropped blond hair, a good sized beer belly, and a red baseball cap on his head. I walked up to him and said, "Mr. White?"
He said," That's me. What can I do for you?"
I said, "We heard that you were looking for some guys to work for you there are four of us here looking for work.
By then the rest of us had walked up. Jack looked skeptical at us and said ok come with me. He lead us into this huge 4 story high barn probably fifty feet wide and one hundred fifty feet long. Inside there was just a bare dirt floor with a lot of floor to roof telephone like poles and above our heads connecting these poles was a scaffolding like structure. The air in there was hot and humid.
Jack then waved his arms upward and said, "Get on up there let's put some baccer in here."
Of course we never had seen a tobacco barn much less climbed into one, and it showed.
"Alright, alright, get down." Jack said.
"You guys said you know how to work in baccer! That is obviously not true."
"No sir we said we wanted to work for you. We never said we had worked in tobacco."
"Shit" Jack said.
Then Keven stepped up, "Let me put it this way, We are, young, strong, and very smart and learn fast. None of us are afraid of hard work. How about if you show us what to do and how to do it we, will work for you for free today. At the end of the day if you don't like the way we work no harm no foul. But if you are okay with us we will help you put your tobacco in your barns. What do you think?"
Jack White reached up and picked his red baseball cap up and scratched his head. Then smiled. "I think that is best goddamned offer I have had in weeks. You got a deal."
Thus began a whole summer of the hardest, filthiest, most dangerous work I had ever done. And an adventure I will never forget nor regret