(The following was written as an exercise to describe a photo and the story it tells.)

During summers throughout the Tobacco Valley that extends south from Massachusetts to Connecticut, white cloth tents cover thousands of acres of transplanted tobacco seedlings that will grow quickly into nine-foot-tall shade tobacco cultivated since 1901 for the outer layers of premium cigars.

The tobacco industry depends on workers like Polish farmers Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Lyman, whose harvesting expertise has allowed it to flourish. Pictured below in a black-and-white photo taken in 1940 by the Farm Security Administration near Windsor Locks, Connecticut, they stand just outside a tobacco barn where tobacco leaves hang from rafters. The barn, now filled with harvested leaves, is ready to be closed to allow the leaves to dry.

Mrs. Lyman tilts her head back and to the side, amused by something the photographer has said. She is dressed in a patterned dress covered by a light-colored, soiled apron with a design. Her eyes squint as she laughs, with her mouth opening wide to show a missing tooth. Her arms look disproportionately large and long for a woman of her height. They appear to be suntanned, even though the tents filter direct sunlight, or possibly her arms show the dirt from the black tobacco juices or the rich soil that nurtures these prized tobacco plants.

Mr. Lyman stands to the right of his wife, dressed in a tattered light-colored shirt over an undershirt, and ill-fitting pants that he seems to be holding up. In fact, the photographer, Jack Delano, later explained that he made the couple laugh by telling him his pants were falling down. ‘The thought of such a catastrophe apparently made them break up [laughing].’ (History by Zim). Mr. Lyman’s laughter is more restrained than his wife’s as he peers to his right. His parted lips show decayed, worn teeth resembling tiny kernels of corn on a corncob. A well-worn hat covers his head and shades his eyes. His face is covered by the stubble of a gray beard.

Outside the picture frame stands the photographer from the Farm Service Administration. Likely, there are also bedraggled children as young as nine years old waiting to board a bus to take them home after having spent hours scooting on their buttocks through damp soil to harvest tobacco leaves. Their fingers are likely crusted with black tobacco tar, and their faces are streaked with dirt, which they will soon scrub away. Their sad eyes reflect fatigue and pain. Or perhaps there are the African American college students who have been recruited from the South when labor becomes scarce (ConnecticutHistory.org).

As I look at this photograph, I’m reminded of the other Polish workers who worked alongside me during the summers of the 1960s. I was always amazed by the heft of the Polish women – their thick legs and arms suiting the arduous tasks of picking tobacco in the humidity of stifling hot tents, their bodies layered in clothing, and their heads covered with bandanas. I wondered then, and now, how many leaves they had picked and carted, how many hours and years they had labored to perfect the art of harvesting. This expertise consisted of repetitive, mind-numbing tasks. It’s an expertise that is burned into my memory. More than sixty years later, I still remember the monotonous steps of sewing tobacco leaves: pair two leaves, insert them into a slot, repeat until all the slots are filled, press a button to send a threaded needle through the leaf stems, attach the string to a wooden lath, pull a lever to remove the lath, shake the leaves to make sure none fall, and hang them on a rack so that another worker can pick them up to hang from the rafters. So, the process began again and again, eight hours a day, five days a week.

While I worked just to earn money during the summer, many of the migrant workers like Mr. and Mrs. Lyman had no other options. Their expertise, together with their inability to speak English well, bound them to a back-breaking job. Their expertise did not lead to a life made in the shade.

Mr. and Mrs. Lyman

Child Workers

Teenager Sewing Tobacco Leaves; Sewn Leaves Hanging from the Rafters

Shade Tobacco Field