Three Times When Smokeless Tobacco Didn’t Agree With Me (Pt 3)

Well, I know these last two stories concerning my smokeless tobacco escapades have been riveting for you. I figured I better dial up the last story before the natives get restless.

My first and second encounter with smokeless tobacco dealt with the product Skoal. This time it has to do with a different type of smokeless tobacco, Levi Garrett. Now this brand is different from Skoal in that it's not a form of dipless tobacco. This particular type I'm talking about is similar to brands that you may be more familiar with, i.e., Beechnut and/or Red Man. It is a chewing tobacco. You open the pouch, grab a wad, and stick it in the side of your mouth in the back between the cheek and gum. You've probably seen ballplayers back in the day with a bulging cheek of chew.

This particular encounter happened one summer day while I was down at my Dad's house. He and my step-mom were treating my wife and I along with our first daughter to a Sunday meal. If I remember right we barbecuing so we probably had chicken or pork steaks that day.

After the meal we would a lot of times put together the fixin's for home-made ice cream. So we go through the process of making the ice cream. In the meantime while we were churning the soon-to-be frozen delight, my Dad offers me his pouch of Levi Garrett chewing tobacco. I hadn't had any for a while so I declined at first.

We went on to finish making the ice cream and we all sat down to have a bowl or two. After we had finished I went back outside with my dad to help clean things up and I then took him up on the the earlier offer of the chew. I grabbed the pouch and put a medium-size wad of it in my mouth. Now remember I had just ate a bowl of ice cream just a few minutes earlier.

Now for those that don't know, sometimes the juices from the tobacco in your mouth don't always get spitted out. Some find their way back into your stomach, and such was the demise for  me. As some of these delectable tobacco juices slowly found their way into my stomach, they started churning with the ice cream. Needless to say I can bet you know what happened next. Yep, everything that went down came back up.

This happened in approximately 1981-82. For the record...I haven't had a smokeless tobacco product in my mouth since that time.