Many years ago, when I was small, my dad told us kids many stories about George Hart, who was an old bachelor neighbor and an avid "tabackie" chewer. George walked a lot and depended on hitch-hiking to get from place to place. He always took short little Japanese style steps, but moved fairly fast at that.

George often hitch-hiked to a small country store. One day, my dad picked him up on the road when he was on his way to the store. Daddy really didn't want to have an old tobacco spitter in his car, but back in those days it was common courtesy to pick up anyone you met walking down the road. Dad had the car windows open, so he thought that would help control the odor of the old man. George seldom took a bath, nor changed his clothes and had a putrid odor of stale tobacco. George always had brown drool on each side of his mouth and on his shirt sleeves where he wiped his mouth after a misguided spit.

As Daddy and George were driving along, the old man let a huge mouth full of tobacco "juice" accumulate in his mouth. Daddy watched as he drew his head way back to spit his tobacco wad right out of the open window into the wind. You could only guess what happened. Yep, it all came back splattering him all over his face.

George sputtered a bit and mumbled a few words, while my dad was trying to control the old Model T Ford and suppress his laughter at the same time. I heard daddy tell this story many times and every time he told it, he still cracked up with laughter. One can only envision how funny the incident was.