Cotton Pickin' (Dallas, San Antonio, Abilene: chapel, school, university)

[carolmcb]

I remember the cotton fields when I was growing up in Brownsville. They were all around. Migrant workers came in to pick the cotton. As we drove up the Valley to Mercedes to see my uncle and aunt, the fields would be loaded with people picking cotton. The sun would be blazing and I couldn't understand why people would want to pick cotton. You can be really stupid when you are young.

There was a cotton gin close to where my uncle and aunt lived in Mercedes and my cousins and I would go over there and take a peek at the machinery.

Of course, the migrant workers were replaced by the mechanical cotton harvesters.

Once and only once, I picked some cotton myself. Several of us had gone to the home of a church friend. Her family owned a farm and one of the things that they grew was cotton. We actually went out at noon and picked cotton. I cut my fingers pulling the cotton fiber out of the bowl. Needless to say, our time in the fields didn't last long. But I did get a very brief look at how some people had to make a living. I've never forgotten how the sun felt burning the top of my head and how the bowl ripped the skin of my fingers.

Obviously, I was raised in town and had no experience with farm life.

[yosoyway]

I remember seeing the cotton fields in Brownsville and Matamoros, Mexico. I remember the summers when growing up in Matamoros you could hear the cottong gins running all day processing the cotton and there were long lines of trucks waiting to unload. Several summers while working in the sorghum fields with uncle had, we would go to some cotton fields and grab some of it.

My grandmother would always tell us stories about when she was growing up and working in the cotton fields.

She would also tell us stories of how her father worked for the railroad and how they followed it to South Texas from Colorado where she was born.

I've always asked how she ended up in a small ranch in Matamoros after being born in Colorado.

[lonestar2007]

I enjoyed your story, thanks for sharing. It brought back memories of the little country stores. I remember one store in town where the 'coke boxes' were out in the front. You just reached in the icy water and and picked out what you wanted, coke, RC, etc. It was just a small wooden building with an overhang that came out in the front and there were two gas pumps, one for regular and one for ethel.

Funny how ethel cost more because it had more 'lead' in it, therefore 'more power,or bang for the buck, if you will', then the government comes along and says, remove the lead, it causes more pollution, and bingo, you ended up with the same two pumps, but now it was one for 'unleaded' and one for 'regular'. Now you are paying more money for less lead in the gas because they are charging more the unleaded than the regular. Crazy, huh? Then, alas, regular gas with it's smaller amount of lead disappeared.

I'm sorry, I got away from the point I was going to make about the old stores. They really were neat places. The one I'm talking about had a screen door on the front, wooden floor, jars with all kinds of candy to choose from. There would be bushel baskets filled with potatoes and apples, etc. There was the old potbellied stove with a small table and chairs around it. I remember going in during the cold wintertime and there would always be some old men around the stove playing dominos or checkers. In the summer, the same old men would sit chairs outside under the awning and whittle and tell each other stories, all the while chewing and spitting that tobacco.

I had forgotten about the cisterns. We had one on our back porch with a bucket to drop down into it and pull the water back up with. I remember it would sometimes get what we called wiggletails in it, ugh!, and they'd get some stuff to put in it that got rid of them. No, I certainly don't miss that! But I do miss the old country stores!

And yes, "chills" when Elvis would sing that song!



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Originally Posted by new2sa

Great stories everyone! And, you're right RGV, no one could do it better... chills everytime he sang it!

Went to the house where my Dad grew up... still standing and still occupied...four rooms with eight kids... still with a huge water cistern on the back porch! Also went by the local country store with the pot-bellied stove and rocking chairs flanking it right in the middle. Found out how his grandmother and grandfather met... his grandfather was THE Baptist preacher in the area and his grandmother was THE teacher, so why, of course, they married!

[RGV]

Great thread topic. With some history of my hometown. Thx.

[BstYet2Be]

Originally Posted by lonestar2007

I'm sorry, I got away from the point I was going to make about the old stores. They really were neat places. The one I'm talking about had a screen door on the front, wooden floor, jars with all kinds of candy to choose from. There would be bushel baskets filled with potatoes and apples, etc. There was the old potbellied stove with a small table and chairs around it. I remember going in during the cold wintertime and there would always be some old men around the stove playing dominos or checkers. In the summer, the same old men would sit chairs outside under the awning and whittle and tell each other stories, all the while chewing and spitting that tobacco.

Ahhh, memories! This was the exact kind of store "down the road" from my grandparents house! I was always the one designated to ask my grandfather for a quarter for us to go to the store. When that didn't work one time, we went anyway and got our drinks and bubble-gum (of course from the big jar) and I told them to "charge it to my PawPaw". They, of course, knew who I belonged to (everybody knew everybody back in those days) and wrote out a ticket! (Remember those?) But, boy, did my status as the favorite grandchild change for a while, lol! The LAST thing he ever wanted was to have anything bought on credit!

[blueskies49]

What interesting stories! My husband picked cotton in Forney which is east of Dallas. When we went to the fair last month we went into the agricultural building and he showed me at the cotton display how he pulled the bolls. I don't know if he had to for the family or for the extra money, I'll have to ask him.

I always say that I envy those born and raised in one place. I envy his experiences and he envies mine! I was born in Texas but lived on military bases in Europe where we had anything we ever needed. We did live for one year with my German grandmother in town when I was 8 while my dad was in Vietnam. I wouldn't trade that experience of being immersed in German culture for anything. But when I grew up I was left with the feeling of not belonging anywhere. Now I do because I'm in the place of my birth! By the grace of God!

[doss1]

I remember everytime during cotton season, I would ask myself why people would throw trash in the farm fields--that's what it looked like when you had picked cotton flying all over the place and in the fields. After a closer look, you could tell it was cotton.

Can't believe someone could pick cotton for a living...what a way of life. Bless those souls.

[Cheasare]

My mother and her siblings picked cotton in Cameron which is located southeast of Temple and northwest of Bryan/College Station. She laments the hear of course but she loved country living and missed it when she moved to Houston. She was born in 54 so this would have been in the early to mid sixties.

C.

[ArizonaTexan]

Wow...I never knew so many people on this forum had experiences with cotton picking. My mother and father used to pick cotton as children up until their teens (my father is emphatically certain my mother had it worse than he and his family). Every season my father and his family would travel up to Oklahoma to pick cotton and my mother and her family used to travel all the way up to Michigan. My mom used to tell me stories about how abused and bloody their hands would be at the end of the day. Both of my parents are from rather large families and they both agree by saying, "Back then, the more kids you had the more workers you had...meaning the more money a family could make."

[TexasReb]

Originally Posted by ArizonaTexan

Wow...I never knew so many people on this forum had experiences with cotton picking. My mother and father used to pick cotton as children up until their teens (my father is emphatically certain my mother had it worse than he and his family). Every season my father and his family would travel up to Oklahoma to pick cotton and my mother and her family used to travel all the way up to Michigan.

Great post...but I must be mis-reading something, as it sounds like your momma and her family went north to pick cotton up in MICHIGAN?
Surely not...as it is like "okra"...it won't grow too far north (even Kansas didn't have any cotton growing in it, and has very little today, up until very recently).

My mom used to tell me stories about how abused and bloody their hands would be at the end of the day. Both of my parents are from rather large families and they both agree by saying, "Back then, the more kids you had the more workers you had...meaning the more money a family could make."

LOL. Yeah, that is what I used to hear from my older kin at family gatherings when the talk would turn to their younger days and picking/pulling/chopping cotton. And yep...that, when each kid could get a quarter a day, that MUST have been at least ONE of the reasons why "momma and papa" had so many of us!

On a related tangent, noting your present Arizona residence, I understand that New Mexico, Arizona and California are now "cotton states" and even very productive ones, nowdays. That sorta surprised me, when I first read it. The old "Cotton Belt" was a stretch running from roughly, North Carolina west into a large part of Texas, with extensions up along the Mississippi delta. THAT was the region where, well into at least the 1940's, that some connection with cotton was a big part of life for many people, and "tenant farming" and "sharecropping" very common (as has been mentioned on this thread).

Later on, with irrigation and technology expanding, cotton expanded into New Mexico and points west...and even north a bit into Kansas. But those states were never a part of the true "Southern" cotton experience.