The man handed the bottle of amber colored whiskey over to me.
“Here. Want some?” he said. I was twelve years old.
I grew up on a farm in eastern North Carolina during the 60’s and 70’s when tobacco was the cash king. In those days everything from food to school buildings, churches and highways were made possible by tobacco. By the age of nine I was working in the tobacco fields as a “trucker”.
A “trucker” was the best job of all because you got to drive the tractor from the fields to the barns pulling trailers loaded with big green tobacco leaves. Tobacco was hot and dirty work in 95+ degree weather with humidity so thick you fought for every breath. Truckers hung out with the “primers”-- men who pulled each leaf of tobacco from the stalk by hand. As a farm boy I spent most of my summers with these men who discussed at great length the subjects of sex and drinking. By the time I was ten years old there was nothing I had not heard about human reproduction and the bottle. One of these men was a tenant that lived on our farm and he was like a big brother to me.
He was a tall muscular black man named Jack Daniels-- just like the whiskey and everyone would kid him about his name. Jack never could afford to buy his namesake drink so instead he bought cheap liquor every pay day.
Jack didn’t treat me like a kid—he made me work like a man. When we topped and suckered tobacco Jack set the pace with no mercy.
I followed Jack around the farm like a puppy and he taught me to shoot a .22 caliber rifle before I was suppose to, taught me how to smoke cigarettes and to change the water pump in a 440 Plymouth engine. By eleven years of age I could blow perfect smoke rings and adjust the timing on anything that had cylinders.
On this particular day during lunch break Jack was enjoying nips from a bottle of whiskey he had brought to the field. In the field everyone shared mason jars of water so it seemed natural when Jack offered me a drink from the bottle. The white label had a picture of a black crow walking across it.
So here I was, taking the bottle from his hand.
I was thirsty and took two big gulps like it was iced tea. Jack’s eyes went wide with alarm and he reached out to stop me and yelled “No! Not like that Joey! Just a little bit!”
But it was too late.
My eyes crossed! My belly, throat and all organs were hot and getting hotter. I couldn’t breathe! I dropped the bottle and went to my hands and knees trying to find fresh air—had to be some somewhere. The other primers started heehawing while Jack pounded me on the back laughing, “It’ll be alright Joey boy—breathe!”
I suddenly knew why preachers said don’t drink liquor--don’t even look at it. I had gone to Hell from the inside out! I saw small points of light and wondered if my brain had exploded on the inside. My mouth tasted like diesel fuel and I promised myself that if I lived I would never put whiskey in my mouth again!
I lived-- barely.
High school and college are tempting years for a young man and though people tried-- I could never be tempted by liquor. I am one of the few people that can honestly say that Jack Daniels kept me away from Jim Beam and Johnnie Walker!
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