Dad's Last Chew

CHAPTER 14

DAD’S LAST CHEW

“A sentimentalist is a man who sees an absurd value in everything and doesn’t know the market price of any single thing.”
Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan, 1892

On my desk at work, I keep a small wooden chest with a glass top, a gift from a close friend. Inside, I keep little relics from my past, including some of the baby pins my mother used on my diapers, Pepis bottle caps with intact cork linings, an old book of matches with the Winston cigarette logo, and some German currency my grandfather brought home from his World War II experience. Also, wrapped in it’s original cellophane, is a piece of dried tobacco. Dad’s “last chew,” I call it.
On the morning of Saturday, August 7, 1999, my father went down to his barn to watch a friend load several of his cattle to take to the local stock market. Soon afterwards, his next door neighbor stopped by, and they spent several hours talking. Around 11:00, my father decided to go home. He told his friend that it was both too hot and too humid for him to be outside any longer.

It must have occurred to my father soon after he went indoors that something was wrong. Later, on the kitchen table, I found a note written on the back of a bank envelope: A Here are keys to tractor on left [of the envelope]. Tractor needs air in front left tire. Air tank in middle part of old big barn. Here are other keys for car and meat house [slaughter house].” There was more evidence on the table. He had opened his old ledger book to the page where the August bills had been neatly written out. He placed the note on top of the book and used the keys as a bookmark. Then, between the hours of noon and 4:00pm , he slumped over in his chair at the kitchen table, fell to the floor, and died.
My father was wearing his favorite bib overalls that day. He had used regular scissors instead of pinking shears to cut them to size, thus the frayed bottoms dangled over his well-worn and thoroughly worn-out work boots. The newspaper was open and by his side. On the kitchen table was his unique calling card: a used chew of plug tobacco in its’ cellophane wrapper, saved for some future re-use. He loved tobacco and had used it since he was twelve years old. He had what was an annoying habit of saving a good, well-worn chunk if he thought there was a little life left in it and would, at meal times, take it out of his mouth and place it on the edge of the kitchen table next to his wallet and keys. It was an awful sight to see while we were eating and was a sore spot between my mother and him. My father was, however, kind enough to cover it so we would not see it while we ate. He had to be prompted, though.
I have a scene in my mind of my father preparing to die by leaving me a few last minute instructions but also by removing his last chew of tobacco just in case he was merely having angina pain instead of a massive heart attack. I can smile about his tobacco now. Many men in his era took larger chunks from life than my father took but they savored them no more than he did his own. The Last Chew is an odd, perhaps absurd, souvenir, but I am as sentimental as was my father. It is not on top of my little chest, however, but buried deep inside so that I do not look at it. I still do not like to see a piece of chewed tobacco. Even sentimentalists have their limits.