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THE MAGIC OF TOBACCO By Julia Mills M y parents both smoked throughout my entire childhood and I hated it. I hated it when they would buckle me and my three young sisters into the van and then smoke outside while we waited impatiently. I hated the cloying, clinging smoke that made my asthmatic lungs seize up and my head ache. I hated the regular gas station, convenience store, any store stops to buy another pack. But when we moved to the rented ranch-style house on a tobacco farm, out Highway 53 between Brantford and Burford, I didn't connect their habit to the tall, green, leafy tobacco plants that lined the fields in impossibly straight rows. For me, the tobacco farm wasn't the source of all evil--it was a new beginning. The summer before fourth grade, we moved from a cramped, century-old, draughty house outside of Paris, just off the banks of the Grand River, to a rental property that was 29