Those who tend to regulating the heat and humidity inside the barn will keep round-the-clock vigil during this crucial phase when green leaf transforms into various shades of golden brown. It is said that nearly a thousand hands will touch each leaf on its journey to the humidor.

It’s a scene that few legislators who’ve made it their business to separate American citizens from their ability to enjoy a cigar in the company of friends have ever experienced. Scratch that - it’s a scene that no anti-tobacco activist or legislator has ever seen, smelled, or touched.

That’s because their fight is against some great evil empire, some faceless enemy. It’s against a free society of individuals who they’ve deemed incapable of choosing intelligently for themselves, who must be protected from their own poor judgement.

But inside the curing barns of the Dominican Republic, of Honduras and Nicaragua, of Connecticut and Pennsylvania - where farmers have passed their knowledge down from generation to generation - there is no evil empire. There are only craftsmen whose work is dedicated to completing their small portion of a long chain of labor that produces small pleasures for others to enjoy.

When the rains kick up and the humidity is too high for the hanging leaf to dry, coals from small fires are tended to inside the barns to warm the air and dry the moisture. The farmers act from instinct and experience, from knowledge shared with their peers. The raging battles thousands of miles away, over the right to smoke in the “land of the free,” of taxation and repression, is of little concern to them. Seeing that their leaves reach their peak condition is. Wouldn’t it be nice if all legislators focused their energies as productively, as earnestly, and as passionately?

E.H., M.B.