|
Every year about cotton planting time, I can’t help but remember some of our family experiences in the cotton field. Of all the things I could remember about the farming that we did, the thing I remember most is our last cotton patch.
The “last” of many things is the most special. Sometimes we don’t know that it is the last and don’t know to savor the moment. An example of this is my children. I used to pick them up and carry them when they were small. As they grew, I carried them less and less. With each child, there was a day that I picked them up and carried them for the last time without realizing and savoring that “last time” moment. The same is true of our last cotton patch; as we worked in that field, I didn’t realize that it was our last patch of cotton.
Back in the early 60s, my dad had one of the first mechanical cotton pickers in Lawrence County. It was a one-row picker mounted on a M Farmall tractor. The seat was turned around backwards and the steering wheel modified accordingly. The picker head was mounted on the rear of the tractor so the tractor had to move through the field in what normally would be reverse. Now the only picking that had to be done by hand was the ends of the rows that the picker would mess up in turning around.
As if the mechanical picker didn’t make life easy enough, Treflan herbicide was introduced about this time. It came in quart cans just like the paper oil cans of the time. He sprayed a band over the row and it was unbelievable how clean the cotton was compared to not using
Treflan. It seemed to hardly need hoeing at all except for the places with Johnson grass.
In 1963 my dad took a job working in a plant. He gave up farming except for a small seven to eight acre cotton patch. I guess that was to give my brothers and me something to do. We no longer had enough acres to justify using Treflan and certainly not enough to justify a mechanical picker. Needless to say, it was hard to give up these things and go back to the “old way” of doing things.
My dad continued to plant that small cotton patch until around 1970. That year was an extremely wet year. Without Treflan, it was impossible to keep the cotton clean. The abundant rain gave the cotton extra growth and rankness. The taller cotton opened later and was harder to pick as well. It was late fall before the picking was over. This turned out to be our last cotton patch.
When dad was sick with cancer in 1993, we were sitting around on a Sunday afternoon talking about some past events. The subject of that cotton patch came up and I confessed how I had hated it. He also confessed that he had decided, even at planting, that he would never again plant cotton. It was not until that Sunday afternoon that I realized the significance of the last cotton patch and went home and wrote this poem:
The Last Cotton Patch
As I was growing up
On that Lawrence County farm,
I learned about hard work
But hard work didn’t do no harm.
There are stories I could tell you,
Though much I have forgotten,
But I’ll always remember
That last patch of cotton.
From early morn to nearly dusk
Each day would slowly pass,
As we hoed out that cotton
Trying to keep out the grass.
Times were sometimes trying
When things didn’t go my way,
Like picking that ole cotton
On Thanksgiving Day.
From that worn out hoe
To that dirty old pick sack,
I wouldn’t change a thing
As I often look back.
For when life gets too hectic
I can go back in my mind
To that old terraced hill,
A slower pace in a simpler time.
Darrell Thompson is the manager of Lawrence County Exchange in Moulton. |
