Festival Celebrates Fading Tobacco Culture

Source from:  Thomas Goldsmith, Staff Writer 09/10/2007

Auctioneers, buyers, even hornworms gather at Homestead Tobacco auctions are far from ancient history in North Carolina; warehouses routinely held them as recently as the early 2000s. But the treatment they got Saturday at a Duke Homestead festival was worthy of a Civil War reenactment, as former world-champion auctioneers rapidly "sold" piles of real tobacco to buyers with decades of experience. "The concern we have is that all the generation that helped us put this on is getting older, and there's no younger generation," said Dale Coats, a regional supervisor for historic sites for the state Department of Cultural Resources, which operates Duke Homestead in the suburban north side of Durham. A Duke anthropology graduate student and a UNC-Chapel Hill filmmaker documented the auctioneers' rhythmic chants for the ages, as dozens of onlookers watched from beneath shade trees. Now that most tobacco in North Carolina is sold on contract to large companies, something important is being lost, educator and tobacco historian Billy Yeargin said. "We lost jobs, but more importantly than anything, we lost a culture," said Yeargin, 68. "We can't re-create the color and the culture of a tobacco auction." Participants in the mock auction said it felt just like the real thing, except for the tension and excitement that auctions often caused during more than a century of the sales. Farmers learned what they'd made for a year's work, as buyers tried to make the best use of their client's money. "They had a good time with it," auctioneer Les Hobbs, 77, of Clinton said of the re-enactment. The auctioneer also delivered his distinctive, high-speed spiel under pressure, said Yeargin, who, as warehouseman at the event, called out an initial price for each pile. The buyers used winks, nods and complex hand signals to bid on each "sheet" of tobacco, and each transaction took only four to seven seconds in the hands of an expert auctioneer. "He needs to sell as much as he can as soon as he can," Yeargin said. The Duke historic site started mock auctions on a smaller scale 30 years ago, when real ones still took place in tobacco warehouses throughout Eastern North Carolina. This year's event added another element, a celebration of the tobacco pest called the hornworm. "They are ravenous," Alison Holcomb, historic interpreter for Duke Homestead, said of the defoliating bugs. Children and adults who took part in a hornworm race got to choose one from a selection supplied by the site. Placed in a clump and surrounded by tobacco leaves, the green worms crawled with deliberate speed toward food. "Keep your eyes on your worm!" Holcomb urged. "The race is on!" A fast and competitive worm named Luke took first place for his handler, Rhyan Smith, 6, of Hillsborough. "He moved the most -- he was climbing over the others," said Rhyan, a student at Orange Charter School. Hornworms are controlled these days by insecticides, but a different method held sway in the 1930s, said retired tobacco farmer J.B. Brogden, 77, of Granville County. "My daddy gave us a bucket, and we would go in the morning when they were feeding and catch 'em," Brogden said. Saturday's event, called the Tobacco Harvest and Hornworm Festival, also presented historic farming techniques, costumed interpreters and bluegrass and gospel music. Hobbs, the auctioneer, said too few people are aware of the longstanding economic and cultural contributions of the Duke family, who settled in 1852 on what's now a state historic site. "I bet there's not five people in that whole hospital and school who know where it all came from," Hobbs said, gesturing toward the Duke campus and medical center. Enditem