I was walking around our shipping and receiving area recently and found it impossible to reach Bobby's office, farther back in the building. There were boxes of McClelland tobacco all over the place. Ted looked up at me with desperation in his eyes, waiting on my reply to his question of "Adam, do you have a lot of stuff on your plate today?". Feeling suddenly like a moonshiner unexpectedly confronted by a man with a badge and a large hat, I quickly came up with a reply which I felt best matched my assessment of the situation.

"Um...Yep. I really have a lot of stuff do, including history and material paragraphs for a peppering of pipe brands". Ted, of course, understanding that this was a project I began a few months ago and needed to update. Would anyone blame me? Ted, Susan, and Pam were all moving boxes full of tinned tobacco and five-pound bags of bulk like sandbags around a fort. Naturally, I had taken his question to be a fingers-crossed-behind-his-back inquiry to see if I would like to help them. As it turns out, we just needed someone to write a blog for today. I carefully navigated my way back to Bobby's office to see what he was working on, which turned out to be a lot. It is a Thursday (update day) after all. Talking with him for a few minutes over the prospect that he take a photograph of something for me to write about, he giggled at my first idea, which was something about Ted looking like a Civil War soldier with his beard and pipe. We figured that taking a candid photo of the three of them working frantically to unpack tobaccos yet seemingly building an impromptu fortress in the receiving area would be perfect.

Fort McClelland. It has a nice ring to it, and was an accurate description to what they were building, albeit more the sort that boys might build to keep girls out, or use as a redoubt during a snowball fight, than to protect against cannon and rifle fire. Though I was only there for a few minutes, I would estimate that the number of tins was in the hundreds, and the boxes alone seemed to be counted in the dozens. As I sit here at my computer typing without the fear of mortars-shells of tobacco going off or an invasion of the shipping crew to pirate away tins as "forage", I wonder how they are getting along. Is that Sid giving a rebel yell from the back ground? Ted seems to be raising a knife, as if to fend off from invaders... Okay, so maybe he's just opening another box - but I still like to think of them building a fort.