The Pack House

By Wayne Easter © 2014

An excerpt from his book, "In the Foothills of Home."

Online: November, 2014

(Editor’s Note: Wayne Easter lives in Mt Airy, North Carolina with his wife of 57 years, Helen. He has written three books about his early years growing up, “way out in the weeds at the foot of the Blue Ridge.” His talent for taking one along on memory trips to his early days on Stewart's Creek, makes reading his stories a genuine pleasure. He has written three books, “Stewart's Creek: (The End of an Era) ,” “In the Foothills of Home: Memories of growing up in the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains,” and, “Roads Once Traveled: In the Foothills of the Blue Ridge.” All are available on amazon.com.)

The tobacco pack house of George Washington Easter, the author's grandfather, just off Pine Ridge Road in the Stewart's Creek Township of Surry County, North Carolina. Drawing by Wayne Easter.

My Grandfather (George Washington Easter) lived just off Pine Ridge Road in the Stewart's Creek Township of Surry County, North Carolina. He and my grandmother, (Alice Berrier Easter) moved there from Carroll County. Virginia around 1901, set-up house-keeping, and became one-horse red-dirt farmers, like most people in our mountains at that time.

Above is my drawing of his log tobacco pack house, as I remember it from the late 1930s and '40s. My family and I lived just over the hill behind the pack house. and until Grandpa died in 1947, we cured our tobacco in his barns and stored it in his pack house.

One late Fall, we tied tobacco all day long in the pack house basement, as rain poured on the tin roof, We were trying to get it all tied and sold before the Mt Airy tobacco markets closed for the year. My brother Warren and I talked about all the great things we'd seen in the Sears-Roebuck catalogue. We didn't expect much for Christmas, but miracles were known to happen, so it didn't hurt to daydream.

Grandpa's old run-down buggy sat under a side-shelter, and hadn't been used for
many years. The black top and red wheels were faded, and I learned first-hand that bumblebees had built a nest in the cracked leather seat. That was the last time I sat in the buggy.

When my dad's older brother Manuel got his first job in Galax, Virginia. (probably in the mid-1920s) Dad drove him to the top of Piper's Gap Mountain in the buggy. Uncle Manuel never moved back to the farm. and became one of several people from our area who herded sheep in the state of Oregon.

Like his dad before him, my dad became a farmer and times were hard in the early years. We sharecropped the fields of our neighbors early on, but eventually, the Gods smiled and our situation improved. We were never drowned in money, but looking back from today, we were very wealthy in the things that mattered. In those days, my biggest problem was whether I could find enough fish worms to go fishing.