People walking around with straw or hay hanging out of their mouths

[bandit957]

This was a thing around here back in the 1970s. Anyone else ever see this?

We lived near the edge of a big urban area, but a lot of people who lived on farms would go to stores around here. They would often have a big, long weed or a piece of straw or hay hanging out of their mouths the whole time. I think someone on 'Sesame Street' or 'Hee Haw' did it too.

I remember playing in the yard and pulling a big, long weed out of the ground and putting it in my mouth and pretending I was a farmer.

[Max Rockatansky]

It was a thing in a lot of media before then which was used to depict a stereotypical farmer.

[LilianaUwU]

I remember playing in the yard and pulling a big, long weed out of the ground and putting it in my mouth and pretending I was a farmer.

Heh, I did that in elementary school.

I do wonder why farmers would have hay hanging out of their mouths, though.

[MATraveler128]

I used to do that with toothpicks at restaurants.

[Roadgeekteen]

I chewed on all sorts of stuff when I was a little kid. Glad that's over.

[Dirt Roads]

I was so prone to having a toothpick, fieldstraw or broomstraw hanging out of my mouth that friends in North Florida starting calling me "Grits". 

[bugo]

No, but at the redneck school that I went to in 9th and 10th grade, about half the boys dipped snuff. Some of the girls even dipped. Talk about a dealbreaker. They would chew it up and spit it on the walls or on the floor. It was gross and stinky. Sometimes, I'll see somebody carrying around a plastic Coke bottle with a napkin to spit a dip in the bottle over and over all day. It's a really fucking disgusting habit. Tobacco in general is gross. Dipping and chewing tobacco is nasty. Cigarette smoke is noxious, gives me a headache, and makes the smoker stink really, really bad. Smoking cigarettes is another dealbreaker for me. Smoking cigars or hookah tobacco isn't quite as gross as cigarettes, but very few things are as gross as cigarettes. Smoking weed doesn't bother me in the least. Some weed stinks, and some of it smells wonderful. I haven't been around nicotine vapes very much, so I don't know if they stink or not. Cannabis vapes smell OK, and dabs usually smell good, depending on the strain the concentrates were made from. But tobacco is just a vile substance. But as much as I abhor it, I don't think it should be legal. It should be illegal for anybody to smoke it in a location where an innocent person could get a whiff of it, but it should otherwise be legal. I hate second hand smoke. Sometimes, I'll be sitting in my car at a traffic light when some of that rancid smoke wafts into my car, raping my lungs with the breath of death and giving me a headache. Disgusting.

[bandit957]

No, but at the redneck school that I went to in 9th and 10th grade, about half the boys dipped snuff. Some of the girls even dipped. Talk about a dealbreaker. They would chew it up and spit it on the walls or on the floor. It was gross and stinky. Sometimes, I'll see somebody carrying around a plastic Coke bottle with a napkin to spit a dip in the bottle over and over all day. It's a really fucking disgusting habit. Tobacco in general is gross. Dipping and chewing tobacco is nasty. Cigarette smoke is noxious, gives me a headache, and makes the smoker stink really, really bad. Smoking cigarettes is another dealbreaker for me. Smoking cigars or hookah tobacco isn't quite as gross as cigarettes, but very few things are as gross as cigarettes. Smoking weed doesn't bother me in the least. Some weed stinks, and some of it smells wonderful. I haven't been around nicotine vapes very much, so I don't know if they stink or not. Cannabis vapes smell OK, and dabs usually smell good, depending on the strain the concentrates were made from. But tobacco is just a vile substance. But as much as I abhor it, I don't think it should be legal. It should be illegal for anybody to smoke it in a location where an innocent person could get a whiff of it, but it should otherwise be legal. I hate second hand smoke. Sometimes, I'll be sitting in my car at a traffic light when some of that rancid smoke wafts into my car, raping my lungs with the breath of death and giving me a headache. Disgusting.

I knew a lot of people who smoked, but very few people who used chewing or dipping tobacco. There were a few people in high school who chewed tobacco. We had a Walk-a-Thon where they chewed it.

In college, people used to spit tobacco and bubble gum into the drinking fountains. Someone finally hung a sign on one of the fountains telling people not to spit "chewing substances" there.

[bandit957]

I also remember how in high school they had in-school suspension. One day, some kid got sent to in-school suspension, and he smoked in the room.

[Dirt Roads]

I never associated anybody with a haystraw hanging out of their mouth with the kids who smoked or chewed tobacco (both of which were quite common in West Virginia).  But I did pick up the smokeless tobacco habit for a few years on the railroad.  Maybe that means that chewing haystraw is a gateway drug.   

All of which reminds me of a crazy story:  When I worked on the railroad in Southwest Pennsylvania, a new track supervisor came up from Louisville and was the first L&N guy to hop over to the Chessie side of things.  One day after a trip home to Louisville, he showed up with a huge bag full of chewing tobacco and snuff along with a few of my favorites (Levi Garrett plugs).  He said "my boy works over at the Red Man plant and sent some of these over to you'all".  A few years after I left the railroad, I was watching the news about the nicotine spiking scandal and it turned out that his "boy" was the long-term CEO of Brown and Williamson Tobacco Corporation.  (In actuality, the B&W scandal was over a flavor enhancer that was believed to have been a carcinogenic).

[triplemultiplex]

Reed Canary Grass is usually good for this.  It's an invasive species from Europe and grows basically everywhere humans don't mow or plow; gets as tall as person.  Picture an overgrown former farm field in your area, it's probably there.  Little bit sweet when you pull it apart about halfway up the stalk and chew on the inner stem.  Should be light colored; not the grass-green part; that's too bitter.

[kphoger]

I still do this occasionally–if I'm hiking somewhere that has tall, dry grass of some sort.  I'll break off a piece off and chew on it a bit.

I do wonder why farmers would have hay hanging out of their mouths, though.

I used to do that with toothpicks at restaurants.

Yeah, it's just something to chew on, like gum or a toothpick.  Heck, I've got a toothpick in my mouth right now.  That's because I ate some peanuts and I have a hole in one tooth, but I finished cleaning the food bits out several minutes ago;  now it's just in my mouth for no good reason.

Reed Canary Grass is usually good for this.  It's an invasive species from Europe and grows basically everywhere humans don't mow or plow; gets as tall as person.

Sounds about right.  I've never really paid attention to grass species, though.

[MCRoads]

Wait, that is a real thing? I didn't think people actually did that...