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Coming of Age in America
Part 11 |
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Cotton. One little word with six letters. But those six letters created wealth for some, a living for others and misery for even more. It was domesticated over 5,000 years ago in India and Pakistan. Alexander the Great brought it back to Europe with him, and it was worn by wealthy Romans and it eventually launched the industrial revolution. It shadowed the Civil War as plantation owners tried to keep slavery alive so they could plant and harvest their crops. It’s the first fabric we wrap our babies in and it has been used to bury our dead. Cradle to grave, cotton envelops our lives. Cotton is among my first memories when I reflect on my childhood and the farm. So many in the South relied on it for their livelihood. It’s most likely why there were several tenant houses scattered around the farm. Workers needed a place to live. It was a labor-intensive crop from the time it was planted in the spring until it was picked in the fall. After it was in the ground and coming up, the grass and weeds that sprouted up around it had to be chopped away with hoes to give it room to grow. Those were the days before herbicides and chemicals to prevent the grass from strangling it out. I remember as a boy having a child sized hoe to use in the fields and garden. Everyone pitched in and did their part. As industry moved south, more and more of the labor-force migrated into town to work in the factories. During the last couple of years my father tried to raise cotton, he came up with the idea of using geese to help keep the grass under control. Geese had been incorporated in the delta to eat the grass that grew between the cotton stalks, so he thought he would give it a try, too. I remember the hot and dusty June day he came home with a large horse trailer full of geese he had bought over in the flatlands. We held the gate open as he drove into the cotton field and parked the truck. Every inch of fencing had been inspected prior to their arrival and we hoped it would keep them from escaping. Their wings had been cropped so they couldn’t fly and we’d dug a pond on the east side of the field to provide them with water and relief from the heat. When those trailer doors opened, they hesitated only a moment before they bolted out and hit the dirt running. A large cloud of dust arose behind the flock and followed them as they ran around the field. It took nearly half an hour for them to settle down and go to work on the grass. Those geese did two things very well. They ate grass and they pooped. There was goose poop everywhere. Take a bite of grass, poop. Take another bite of grass and poop some more. When they finally found the pond they were in goose heaven. Swim, eat and poop. The banks of the pond were slick with the slimy green stuff. If there were any fish or frogs in that pond they soon became poop. When it was time to pick the cotton everyone complained that they couldn’t go anywhere without stepping in the mess. That was the first and last year of geese chopping grass out of our cotton. One by one they disappeared. Either fox or some other critters were thinning out the flock. It wouldn’t have surprised me if some of the folks on the farm weren’t having goose for Sunday dinner until they were all gone. No matter what was happening to them we were all glad to see them go. To me, the people that lived on the farm were like extended family members. Children don’t see color like adults do. Playmates were playmates. We worked together and we played together. It was the parents of those children that taught me how to fish and hunt. I was probably a nuisance but they allowed me to tag along. When worms were hard to find, we chased down grasshoppers or robbed wasp nests for their larva. We learned that the manure mound that was created from cleaning barn stalls was a great place to find bait. After a long hard day picking cotton everyone was glad to see my father pulling a wagon into the fields. In the evenings when we weighed what everyone had picked that day, we cheered as each one’s sack was lifted, weighed and recorded in a ledger. After the cotton was weighed and sacks dumped into the wagon Everyone climbed in and we’d lie on our backs while riding to their homes along the way. The smell of freshly picked cotton is a scent unlike any other. I remember lying there and watching the stars appear in the night sky while listening to the older folks talk about what they were going to make for supper when they got home. As we rode along some of the ladies would sing softly to their children and oftentimes I would find myself drifting off to sleep. I know it was a difficult time in history for them. It was a miserable way to make a living. Backs aching, fingers bleeding from being pricked by the dry cotton bolls. But riding home in that cotton wagon as the sun set and the stars came out on a cool, crisp fall evening is among one of my favorite memories. We didn’t have a large farm and couldn’t invest in the new mechanical cotton pickers as time evolved. Ours was a self-subsistent farm. We survived. As workers left and found better jobs in the factories that had moved south, Daddy found a job working in the lime pits forty miles away. We ran more and more cattle on the farm and we only grew what we could harvest ourselves. The times were changing and we had to, too. It wasn’t until I was old enough to go to school that I became aware my friends on the farm and I were not alike. They didn’t ride the same bus as my brothers and I. They went to an all black school while I went to an all white school. Still, I was too young and naive to know what or who Jim Crow was. Little by little it became evident that there was an invisible wall that was going up between us. I suppose it could be said that it had been there all along, but I hadn’t been aware of it. Looking back, I’m pretty sure they had known about it from the time they were toddlers, but I was oblivious.
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