When the Union County Heritage Festival (UCHF) committee announced the theme for the 2021 Heritage Festival to be "Take A Country Road," my mind immediately went to what a one might have seen as he or she traveled down a country road in Union County some fifty-plus years ago. For sure, one would have seen a tobacco patch, or 'bakker patch' as it might have been called back then.

Tobacco once was a way of life and a tradition. It is where people came from and how they grew up. A lot of hard work and pride went into the crop, but over the years it has become a dying tradition for many reasons, with little remaining in East Tennessee.