Rabbit Tobacco by Maxine

Let me tell you what I know about Rabbit Tobacco. My brother and I have asthma, and Mother was always searching the woods for rabbit tobacco to make us a pillow to sleep on. The smell of this weed, which is very distinctive, opens the airways and we would breathe easier. I grew up with lots of old Indian remedies, because my mother was Chickasaw Indian. She taught us about clay, coal oil, okra blooms on boils, flux weed tea, and too many to list.

What Is so funny is the story I am about to tell you about rabbit tobacco. Many, many years later, after we had moved to Houston, we bought some property in Conroe Texas. Lo and behold, what should I find? The property was covered with Rabbit Tobacco. It was spring time, so I knew I had to wait until the lower leaves turned a dry silvery color, sometime around September, before I could gather it. I waited until the time was right, and I stripped off the bottom leaves. The smell brought back so many sleepy time memories when I would be warm and tucked under 20 pounds of quilts, sleeping on my rabbit tobacco pillow.

I was so happy, and I took back several zip-loc bags to our office in Houston. I had stories to tell our employees. One of our employees had a grandmother who had asthma, and I told him that I would give her enough to make a pillow. The bag of "WEED" was laying on my desk, when in walked a police officer to buy some nuts and bolts for his boat. All of our employees started trying to hide this bag of "WEED" because they said it looked like "THE GOOD STUFF". I didn't know, because I had never seen the good stuff, as they called it. They looked so guilty that the police officer wanted to know what we were hiding. I told him RABBIT TOBACCO, which he had never heard of. Then I had to explain to him that it was the dried leaves of the SWEET EVERLASTING weed, and if he wanted some, he could go to Conroe and pick his own, but he was not taking mine!!!

Then I went on to tell him that the way it got its name was during WWII, you couldn't get cigarettes, so those who knew about it, smoked rabbit tobacco. A kid could make a few pennies off the old folks if we knew where to find it. It will not burn. It just smolders like tobacco. A couple of years ago, I found some here, and I was showing a lady friend how we rolled it and made cigarettes out of it. She smokes, but I never have, but she was going to try it. Her husband drove up and caught us smoking weed. HeeHee

It made a good story for him to tell on us.

Here is a sad story about smoking.

I was 5, Geraldine was 7. I looked up to her because she was so grown up. We lived in Mobile. It was during the war, and Daddy was getting ready to be called to go away any day. He was working in the shipyard, and we lived in a government house.

Geraldine was going to show me how to smoke. We went down the road to another big house that was built up off the ground about 3 feet. We had Big Chief tablet paper, matches, and pine straw. We couldn't find any rabbit tobacco along the beach. She showed me how to roll the pine straw up in the paper, and she lit hers first. I was watching intently so I could be just like her.

She lit her paper and took a big puff, fell backwards and starting gasping for air. Then she turned blue and got quiet. I was so scared because we were somewhere we were not supposed to be, doing something we were not supposed to be doing. I knew my butt was in big trouble, but I had to go get help. I ran home and told my mother that something was wrong with Geraldine, but Mother kept telling me to go play outside. Then she realized that Geraldine wasn't with me, so something must be wrong.

Mother got there and had a look on her face that I had just seen the year before when Her Dad had died. She said we had to call the police. She went and got Geraldine's parents, called the police, and they started questioning me. I was scared to death. I was sure I was going to jail. It took a long time for me to get over this. Geraldine inhaled FIRE, and it burned her lungs. She died almost immediately.

To make a LONG story short. I NEVER smoked anything, except maybe a turkey.