Short Stick

When hanging tobacco in a barn, you position "rails" (movable barn rails) so that the ends of a 5 foot long stick (holding the tobacco) will rest on the rails. Sometimes you would get a tobacco stick that was a little too short. So you would get a little broken piece of stick and place it across the ends of a couple good sticks and hang the short stick there. When one of the workers up in the barn would encounter a short one he would holler out "short stick" and someone like me, hanging out and watching the evolution, would run and fetch a little "short stick" and throw it up to whoever had called for it.

Once upon a time, one of the uneducated Darkies was helping house tobacco and encountered a short stick. He called out and someone on the ground threw him up a short stick. He wasn't smart enough to adjust it properly and called out for another short stick because the one he was trying to hang was short on both ends.I wasn't around for the original joke, but the first time I ever helped to house tobacco I heard it over and over again. I was just a kid, so fetching "short sticks" was my job.