Cotton Pickin' (Houston, Dallas, Abilene: apartment, house, buy)

[TexasReb]

I just had the crazy idea to start a new thread, asking some of my fellow Texans if y'all had ever had any experience with cotton?

The popular image of Texas is the cowboy and cattle icon. However, historically speaking, it is cotton which was/is "king" The truth is, for all the legend and myth and romantism of the cattle drive and Marlboro Man and Lonesome Dove, the movie "Places in the Heart" (with Sally Fields and Danny Glover) is a much more accurate portrayal of the typical life in Texas in era's past.

Anyway, as the old Roy Clark song goes " I Never Picked Cotton"! BUT...I come from a long line of people who DID! In fact, if there was ONE common experience shared by all the older kin at family reunions, it was memories of picking/chopping/ cotton when they were young and it was about the only source of actual money that came into the household.

I gotta say, for all my love and affection for the South and Southern ways, the truth of the matter is that picking cotton sounds like it would have been a mighty rough way of making a living. And my grandmothers and grandpappy's and great aunts and uncles and etc, made that very clear to me!

Y'all got any experiences with it...?

[Willys]

Just a couple of years into the 20th century, my grandparents (mother's side), a couple of their siblings and a couple of kids loaded a wagon and rode from Athens, Tx to Rising Star, Tx (near Abilene). They were tenant farmers, picking cotton, working for a living.

After a couple more kids they loaded up again and rode down to near Kosse, about half way between Dallas and Houston. They had a couple more kids, picked some more cotton and got their kids through school.

Years later, those kids would buy that property where that family slaved to 'eek' out a living, in part during the depression. And through all of this there was no running water, no air conditioning. But they did have Bob Wills who made is start playing fiddle in that area.

My grandmother's cousin lived across the road, down the way. As a kid we'd go to that old farm for Thanksgiving and deer hunting - Leon County, 'the deerest place in Texas'. In about 1960, my dad took a water pump down there to pump water out of my cousin's water well. 1960 and no running water.

[lonestar2007]

I've pulled bolls before. That is where you pull the entire hull (which contains the cotton) off. My parents had picked cotton, which means they had to reach inside the hull and extract the cotton out. This is much more tedious and is a lot harder on your fingers. They were picking cotton in the movie Places in the Heart and you might recall Sally Fields getting her fingers pricked by the cotton hull when she was reaching in the hull to get the cotton out.

Later, they invented the mechanical cotton strippers that would take the place of the many individuals picking/pulling bolls. The cotton gins had been improved to handle this rougher version of the cotton to which it could extract not only the seed, but all the trash (hull, green bolls, etc.) that came in with it.

There were many of cotton fields around when I pulled bolls as a kid. We were the lucky ones, my sister and I, as we just did this in the summer before school started to earn some spending money. Some of the kids down there who were from poorer families were taken out of school in the spring to go to the cotton fields and hoe cotton. Then they missed the start of school in the fall since they had to pull bolls until all the fields were harvested and there was no more work. They did not get to keep their money, it went to their parents to help support the family.

I remember the cotton sacks as being so long. We would tie a knot in ours, so it made it a shorter version and wasn't quite as hard to pull. Even so, as it began to fill, it became harder and harder to pull. It was too far to the cotton wagons to just take your sack over to and get it weighed and emptied when it was only partially full, so you just pulled that heavy load down rhe rows. I remember trying to stand up after being hunched over pulling bolls for so long that it would absolutely hurt to try and straighten out. Sometimes, I would just fall back and lay on the cotton sack and slowly straighten out.

As I said, we were lucky, we got to quit when school started. This was a hot, hard job. You'd start out early in the mornings and it wasn't too bad as you were refreshed and it was cool and you would be talking and joking around as you went down the rows. As the day wore on and it got hotter and hotter and you got so tried, it was hard to utter a word, all you could think about was getting that cotton in the bag and pulling that sack and hoping the day would hurry and end.

One thing good about it, it taught you the lessons of hard work and the value of a dollar.

[lonestar2007]

Originally Posted by Willys

In about 1960, my dad took a water pump down there to pump water out of my cousin's water well. 1960 and no running water.

Yeah, I can remember a lot of places that had no running water and no A/C. Even with indoor plumbing becoming more commonplace, A/C was well out of the means for a lot of folks. I remember how great it was when we finally got our first taste of "refrigerated air". This was in the form of an evaporated water cooler or as more commonly known "swamp cooler". Then we graduated up to the A/C window units, such as the Feddar's or Fredrick. The first time I ever experienced central A/C was when I moved to an apartment in town. I thought I was rich.

[TexasReb]

I gotta give a rep point to both y'all boys if for nothing else that I LOVED reading the stories.

Reminds me of family reunions when my grandparents (all but one deceased now) and great-aunts and uncles would gather 'round, after the supper of fried chicken and okra and cornbread and blackeyed peas and mashed taters and all that good stuff and...? Talk about picking cotton!

I remember my grandfather saying that the "kids" (meaning him and his brothers and sisters) made a quarter a day at it. From dawn to dark with a sack and totin' it along that row...

I just remember, as a kid, listening to those stories about pickin' and choppin'. Then, as I grew up, and STILL heard the same stories as THEY got older? Just marveling and admiring and respecting the heck out of them.

"I Wish I was in the Land of Cotton
Old Times There Are Not Forgotten
Look Away, Look Away, Look Away...
Dixie Land."

[GayleTX]

I grew up near Quanah, TX. I 'chopped cotton' (hoed the weeds from around the small plants) in the summers. Somewhat before 'my time,' they would close school for a month or so in the Fall when it was time to pick cotton because they needed kids for labor. However, in 'my day', we hired mainly cotton pickin' crews that migrated up from Mexico. Also, some local blacks and a few whites picked cotton. My mother picked some, too, but she had lots of other work to do (milking cows, cooking, etc) , so her time was limited. I picked some after school and on weekends but I wasn't as fast as the 'professionals'....just did it to earn a little extra money.

My daddy would always go into town and bring cold "sody-pops" to the field for the pickers middle of the afternoon....a rare treat for most of them. He always treated them good so they'd give him first chance at hiring them the next year.

We got indoor plumbing when I was 8 years old....1952...when my baby brother was born and Mama was sick for a while. We got a refrigerated window unit maybe 4 years later...Daddy loved that thing!! He'd come in from the field at dark and strip off down to his boxers and cool off in front of that cool air and rest in the floor before he'd have the energy to eat supper.

I very seldom even think of the 'old days.' It was a good life and we were happy, but I would not want to live that way now.

[doss1]

Wasn't it cotton that caused the Union army to head down to South Texas and close the ports?

[kt2le]

The yankees blockaded all Southern ports so we couldn't import or export anything. Our economy depended on it and they knew it.

[RGV]

"I Wish I was in the Land of Cotton
Old Times There Are Not Forgotten
Look Away, Look Away, Look Away...
Dixie Land."


I loved the way Elvis sang this.

[BstYet2Be]

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

We took a trip with my Dad back to his birthplace in northern Mississippi years ago and camped out in some land still in the family (next to the cows and a huge cotton field). It was the first time any of us besides my Dad had seen cotton in its' "natural state", so we all tried our hands at picking a few boles... that didn't last long (my, how prickly those are!). I cannot imagine how people survived picking it for a living... the toll it must have taken on them physically! Hardy stock!

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!

Anyway, I wouldn't take anything for that trip back in time and back in history and spending the time really getting to know my father and where he came from (and especially a great experience for my children, even 'though their biggest thrill came from chasing the cows! It's hard for us to fathom these days just how hard a lot of people, especially in the South, had it growing up! But, it also made it crystal clear why, as each one of the six boys in my father's family turned of age (or almost of age, some fibbed!), "they joined the service as soon as they could to get off that farm" as my father explained.

And, as just as a FYI... as my grandmother explained the actual cause of the Civil War, according to her it wasn't about slavery at all... it was the North's jealousy of the South's prosperity (yes, due to cotton as well as all other farming). And, contrary to the history books, the South was actually prosperous at the time, and it was these riches the North was seeking. Interesting stuff from these older folks! (Also as a FYI, I am not stating here that this IS the absolute truth... just that she had a totally different spin on it!)