Back in my preteen years sometimes walking from school we would take a shortcut to bypass downtown by walking from Wright Street down Trammell Street to Powder Springs Street. Not quiet directly across the street from the hosiery mill was the KENNESAW CIGAR COMPANY.
The same houses that were there are there now. They are little houses in a row. One of the houses had a little shed on the side of the house. A sign, about poster size, read KENNESAW CIGAR COMPANY. On the front porch of the house sat what I am sure was the board of directors of the cigar company watching people on the sidewalk walk by. The board of directors was the CEO and the treasurer. Also the workers were all on the porch. If you counted all the people sitting there you would count two people – and elderly man and his wife.
We waved at him from time to time when we saw them looking at us and sometimes they were looking at something else and didn’t notice us.
One day one of us asked the man, “Do you really make cigars in there?” He said he sure did. He asked us did we want to look around. We said we did and he said, “Comon’ then.”
The CEO left his vice president and treasurer, aka wife, on the porch and pulled out his key and we followed him as he unlock the door and went inside. It was dark with the exception of long window on the back side. You could just about stand in the middle of the room and almost run every operation by pivoting and stretching your arms. Hanging were two or three huge leafs which I think were tobacco leaves. He demonstrated with a black metal machine how to roll a cigar. As a souvenir he gave us each a KENNESAW MOUNTAIN cigar box.
How many times has a CEO of a tobacco company given you a personal tour?
(note – the above is a recycled adventure)
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