Tuesday, October 25, 2022

Automobies Destroying Night Life Traditions at Tobacco Warehouses, Oct. 25, 1922

“Night Life” at the Tobacco Warehouses

The “night life” around the tobacco warehouses in the towns of North Carolina is rapidly disappearing. Good roads and the automobile have all but done away with it. It was a bustling and wholesome kind of life, says an exchange, with which we don’t agree, especially as to the wholesomeness. Up to a few years since, hundreds of farmers spent the night at the warehouses each time they carried a load of the weed to market, arriving at all times of the night and day. Crude bunks with musty, germ-filled bed clothing were always available on which they perhaps could snatch a few hours sleep. Free stables sheltered their horses. Rustic dances done to the music of fiddles and banjoes often entertained the farmers far into the night. The farmer always returned home with reddened eyes from his experience with the dust and other things and the loss of sleep.

Things have changed. Now the farmer leaves home in the morning with a load of the weed on his car or truck and if he gets in on first sales, he can be home at his work by noon or soon after on the same day, minus the red eyes, the cold, etc., which he invariably got when he had to spend the night.

From the front page of The Danbury Reporter, Oct. 25, 1922

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