So now you have a field full of tobacco plant stubble and a bunch of stakes in the ground, each with 6 or 7 tobacco plants, each pierced through the middle of their stalks and turned sideways, impaled on those stakes. Now a guy drives a tractor down the rows. The tractor is pulling a large flatbed. The flatbed has a leaning wall at the tractor end. All of us tobacco cutters follow the slowly moving tractor down the rows, picking up the stakes.

The plants are stiff enough that when you pull the stakes up and turn them sideways, and the plants are right side up again, you can lean the sets of six or seven plants on a stick against the wall on the flatbed. You just keep handing them to the guy on the flatbed until it is full.

Yeah, it looks a lot like that there. Now you go to the hanging barn. Tobacco country is full of these big barns. They look like tall airplane hangers. This is where the tobacco is hung for drying. And there is no fun way to do this.

The barns have rafters running through them . I mean each narrow beam runs across the barn, and they are about two or three feet apart. And these beams run the length or width of the barn. And not just on one level, but every 6 feet up there are more of them.

And people need to climb way up there and balance with one foot on each beam. You get one guy on each level, all stacked up above one another. Then the guy on the flatbed grabs one end of the stake, swings it so it points straight up into the air, and hands it to the guy on the lowest set of beams. When you are standing on the beams, you need to squat and reach down between your feet and grab the stake’s other end, then using both hands you pivot the stake while lifting it. Then using just one hand you have to lift it, point up, to the guy on the beams above you.

Remember that there are six or seven heavy plants on each stake, and they weigh, altogether, somewhere between 8 and 15 pounds or even more. These get lifted to the very top guy, who can be 40 or 50 feet in the air. He then turns the stake sideways and rests it between the beams. The guy below him does the same with the next stake and so on down the pile. Then everybody takes a small step backwards and you begin again until the barn is full.

And it is hot in that barn. And humid. The guy at the top does less lifting, but he is up where a misstep can kill you and it is hottest up there. The guy on the flatbed never gets a break and has to lift every single plant. If you are in the middle, it is just hell.

All day long, with a few short breaks, you are squatting and lifting and then sticking your arm straight above you, holding wet, bug-covered plants above your head, while pouring sweat and balancing on two wide-spread beams high above a tractor and flatbed.

I suggest if you can that you try to Goggle a video of this. But I lived it for a couple of months. And I earned the respect of those guys.