Cotton Country

Cotton Country

Picking cotton by hand is a slow process, and very hard on your body.
It's almost like being a human yoyo. First you're on your knees when
it's planted in the sand because it's so short, you'd fall on your head
if you leaned over that far. Then it's growing so tall that you can't
reach the top of it.

On your back is a seven foot canvas cotton sack, that you wear by
putting your head and one shoulder through it. You're picking cotton
with both hands and transfering it to the right hand in order to put it
into the sack. That sack gets real hard to drag with fifty or sixty
pounds of cotton in it.

That white fluffy stuff that you use is a little heavier before it's
ginned and still has cotton seeds in it. When the sack gets that hard
to drag you take it up to the wagon to be weighed, emptied, and then
you start over again. Since you can't drag it all the way to the wagon,
you have to pull it as close to you as possible, lean over and pick it
up, and throw it up on your shoulder balancing it so part hangs over
your front and the other part over your back.

The wagon has weigh scales attached to it. The boss hangs the sack on
the scales, and writes down how many pounds you had in a little book,
while you climb into the wagon to empty your sack. Trying to get all
the cotton out of your sack is like wrestling a big alligator.

If you needed a drink of water there was always a can of water tied on
the shady side of the wagon, with a community dipper hanging on a
string beside it. I would not drink from that dipper unless I had to,
it always tasted like snuff and sweat.

A good cotton picker would pick between 150-175 pounds a day, for a
woman. Well I can tell you now I wasn't a good cotton picker. I did try
really hard I wanted to please my Dad, but all my Sisters could out
pick me.

It takes 1500 pounds of cotton to make a bale and when you're picking
your own cotton you don't get paid until it's weighed, ginned,and
baled. If you're picking for another farmer you get paid at the end of
the day, so much per hundred pounds. The price varied

A real good day in the field was when you ran across a watermelon
growing right in front of you. Or cherry tomatoes. We called these
tommytoes. Then we would all take a break, sitting down on our cotton
sacks We would break that melon open eat it with our hands and wipe our
mouths on our sleeves. I asked Mama once who planted stuff like that in
the field, She said it was most likley a bird. I thought she was making
a joke until I figured out what she ment, Yuck!

I liked the Spring much better than Fall on the farm. I'm much better
with a hoe for chopping weeds, and a file to keep it sharp in my back
pocket. Singing as loud as I could and swinging that hoe. I was good at
that.

All that stuff is done by machines now. When I travel back to my home
state and see the empty fields, I can close my eyes and still see my
family out there all of us working and singing together. Those were the
good old days. I didn't know it then, but I do now