Tobacco chewing turns out to be too much for one little girl. Nausea and an unforgettable taste are more than able to deter a first-time snuff-dipper from forming a habit.

My cousin and I shared many childhood experiences. She was an only child, while I was the last born of eight children. Her dad, my Great Uncle John, was a good bit older than Alice. I didn't call her "Aunt Alice", but I definitely called Uncle John "Uncle John". By the way, it was Uncle John's cellar that my sister Mary's very unique brown frog came from.
Uncle John thought the world revolved around my cousin. If it rained she didn't have to go to school. If she had a cold or a tummy ache she stayed home for days. She even had a bedroom of her own in their small house! I went to school in the rain, sleet and snow. I can't remember being sick, but I am next to positive that it would have taken a serious malady to have been an excuse to stay home from school.
Uncle John had an old T-model Ford -The kind that had to be cranked for it to start. The one who did the cranking had to be careful for the crank handle could jump back and break an arm. She even got to work the throttle and the choke while Uncle John cranked. He even let her drive it!
Uncle John dipped snuff, and you guessed it, he let her dip snuff too. She must have wanted some of it when she was a toddler and he couldn't refuse her. I knew her all my life and she always dipped snuff.
Well, one summer day we were down the hill behind her house, sitting on a slack pile. A slack pile is a sort of residue left from a strip-pit where coal had been mined. We were sitting there talking, when out of her pocket she pulls this small tin that contained her supply of snuff. She put her fingers into the can and lifted out a dip of snuff, which she promptly put into her bottom lip. I sat there and watched her for awhile as she spat here and there and I thought "I believe, I'd like to try that." Well, I asked her for some, and a generous soul that she was, she gave me it to me. The Surgeon General warns that it may be harmful to our health - he doesn't know the half of it!
I knew I was dying! I had to walk about a mile home in the hot sun and I was so sick. Mom wasn't home but my sister Levada was. Nobody lies on the beds in the daytime, that was an unspoken rule at our house. I chose the next most comfortable thing I could find which was an oval shaped braided rug that was in the doorway between the front room and bedroom.
I'm sure Levada must have guessed what I had done to have made myself so sick, but I have always felt that she didn't tell Mom. Or if she did tell her, they figured I'd never forget what a nauseous, nasty mess that stuff is. They were right, I never will.