I can still remember in 1953, when I was very young, taking a family vacation out west. It would be a couple of years later that Mom decided to abandon the family for greener pastures. Greener, meaning more money. Anyway, back to the story.

I remember our first major stop was the Mitchell Corn Palace in South Dakota. This was the first time I had ever been out of Indiana, so everything seemed strange and exciting. I couldn’t imagine a building made from corn.

One of the things that surprised me were the sides of many of the barns was the image as shown above. I was seven years old, so every other thing that came out of my mouth was a question. I knew dad, like most men at that time, smoked cigarettes. But I couldn’t understand why someone would want to eat tobacco. It just didn’t seem very tasty. Dad explained to me that, like cigarettes, this was a grown up thing that I didn’t need to know about. That wasn’t a very satisfying answer, but whenever dad said, “grown up thing”, I knew no further explanation was coming.

Fast-forward to today, almost all those wooden barns are gone now and along with them the Mail Pouch Tobacco ads on them. I don’t know if people still chew tobacco, but I suspect that is now pretty much reserved to mostly rural areas.

On that vacation, we went to Mount Rushmore, Wall Drugs, and a few other memorable places. I think that trip in 1953 light the initial lamp in me to learn more about our country. Seventy years later, I am still doing just that.