Night Work and Stories

The old flue-cured tobacco barn is almost gone. I am 73 now, but the memories made here will never fade from the backroads of my mind. One memory comes to mind of a giant of a man and a small, busy 7-year-old boy with a thousand questions for his grandfather. Me and my “Daddy Bob.”

Daddy Bob had talked my mother and grandmother (Mama Cora) into letting me spend the night with him at the tobacco barn, in the edge of the deep woods, while he “killed out” another barn of tobacco. Wow was I excited! I don’t know how much we slept that night. Every time Daddy Bob would get up out of our makeshift bed (two tobacco trucks) to put more wood in the furnace, we would have ham biscuits and buttermilk for a snack.

We spent the night eating with Daddy Bob telling me stories about Noah and the Ark, David and Goliath and many other adventures from the Holy Bible. I will never forget that night and many others like it.

By the time I was 10 years old, he was gone to be with Jesus. That was too soon for a little boy to lose his Daddy Bob.

Precious memories, how they linger, how they flood my soul ...

Bayard Woodard, Jr., Goldsboro, a member of Tri-County EMC