Month: April 2018

When I was between three and seven years old, my dad was the principal of a school that contained all grades from the first through the twelfth. It was a rural community, but there was little, if any, cotton grown in the neighborhood. Everyone did grow most of their own food, however, and they had to work very hard from the breaking of the land in the spring until the canning or storing of the produce in the fall was completed. School teachers were paid rather meager salaries for nine or ten months of the year, so my parents had to be part-time farmers in order to feed family.

I was so young at this point that I did not work in the fields or garden very much, but I was able to help gather in sweet potatoes with their milk-like juice oozing from the ones that suffered a cut from the plow or hoe. Walking barefoot in the soft plowed earth was a spiritual experience to my young being, and my sticky stained hands didn’t make it any less so. I also helped with drying fruit that we could eat or use in deserts when the season for fresh fruit was gone. We prepared peaches and apples for drying by first removing the inedible parts and then cutting the good juicy fruit into slices. Big cloths or bed sheets were laid out on top of a tin-roofed shed, and on these we spread out the fruit and let the sun do the rest. When the rays from the sun hit the tin roof and heated the fruit from beneath as well as from above, it did not take long to have sweet, dried fruit.

Coming next….. modern lights, radios and washing machines!

……..This is the fifth part in a series written by a grandmother about her life as she grew up in the days when most farmers plowed with horses, cotton was weeded and thinned with garden hoes, and mature cotton was picked by hand. Family members and hired hands worked together side by side… a common cause making all persons equally important.

When one works as hard as we worked in the cotton fields to earn money, it becomes of utmost importance how that money will be spent. I don’t remember as much about how I used money earned from chopping cotton as that which I earned later in the year from picking cotton, but you can be sure it was not spent lightly. Once, I lost a one-dollar bill, and I was devastated. After looking everywhere I could think of, I lost all hope of finding it. A few days later as I was putting on a pair of knee-length socks, I found a clean, washed, one dollar bill in the toe of one of them (A long sock is a good place to tuck paper money if you don’t forget where you put it!)

A field of cotton was chopped, or hoed, at least twice before being left to bloom and mature. The second chopping was primarily to clean out the weeds, but sometimes one or two good stalks were definitely stronger than the others in a group. Where there were weak, sickly plants that would draw nourishment that could be put to better use by the healthier ones, the weak ones were sacrificed to the chop of the hoe.

The green, healthy plants, when left to grow undisturbed, put on beautiful pink and white blossoms that matured and fell off to be replaced by little green “packages” that were called squares. These squares became larger and rounder until they looked like green eggs that were scored lengthwise into 5-6 segments. (I wonder if Dr. Seuss was inspired to write one of his famous books while watching a stray pig run through a field of green cotton!) These “eggs” were hard and full of tightly packed greenish-white, damp fiber that would slowly dry out inside the green boll and eventually would burst the boll open along the scored lines. As the fibers inside the boll dried and fluffed out, the green shell also dried out and slowly turned brown. It eventually became so dry that it was brittle, and it had very sharp points at the end of each separated segment. These points often inflicted pain upon the fingers that worked at extracting the fluffy, white cotton from inside the boll.
While we rest and let the cotton mature, I want to inform you about an interesting consideration for the farmer that affected the whole community.

The school terms had been similar to the current school terms of nine months, extending from the beginning of September through May. Because the early part of the school session conflicted with children helping with cotton picking, the county schools rearranged their schedules to accommodate the farmer. A summer session of six weeks beginning in July and extending into August was followed by a six-week “vacation” during which most of the cotton could be harvested.

My parents were both school teachers, with Dad being the principal in most of his assignments, and Mother teaching in the early elementary grades. All of their schools were in rural areas, and although they were sympathetic with the farmer, they were dismayed at the degree to which some students were absent before the change was made in the schedule. It seemed to be a good solution for both schools and farmers!

Except for church, school was the center of family life for us. Wherever Dad served as principal, we were provided with a home adjoining the school property. During my eleven years in public school, I only attended two years in a separate facility than the one in which my parents taught. My mother was never my teacher, but Dad taught me in both the fifth and sixth grades! I remember his Palmer handwriting drills that were so neat, but I also remember having to rewrite a paper at least twice before he would accept it. I thought writing tiny and backhanded was cute, but he didn’t!

This is the fourth article of this series written by a grandmother born in the thirties. Times were very different than now, but they were good because we worked together as a family to make a modest living. We experienced what it was like to go without, and we learned to be thankful for little things.

We youngsters would be paid by the day, but before I tell you how much, there are some other things you need to know.

Living out in the country was truly a blessing to poor parents who could not afford to have their children longing after the luxuries so readily available in “city” stores. Many communities had their own country store that sold necessities, but it was truly a unique experience to go into town to shop. I remember a “peddling” store making scheduled visits into our neighborhood when I was 5 or 6 years old, and it was from it that we bought many needed items. Mother could buy flour, sugar, salt, etc., and I remember her buying material with which to make dresses. The only nonessential that I recall buying from the peddler was bubble gum. Round, fat pieces of Double Bubble and long cylindrical pieces of “Baloney” (I’m not sure of the spelling) gum cost one penny each. Although we didn’t buy candy bars at that time, I know they were no more than a nickel a piece, and soda pops could also be bought for a nickel.

When I was eleven years old, my dad brought home a brand new beautiful Ford car for which he paid about $800.00. We were extremely proud of that new car, but I was aware of what a hardship it was for Dad to spend that much money, even for a car! So, when I tell you how much money we made for a whole day’s work in the cotton patch, just remember these figures and compare them with the costs of things today.

I seem to recall that I worked for anywhere between $1.50 and $2.75 a day. Farmers had to adjust what they paid their workers based on their predictions for the year and in keeping with the neighboring farmers. When his crops were poor, or some of his other enterprises (chickens, eggs, milk, beef or pork) were not making a good return on his investment, a farmer would not be able to hire help outside the family……he couldn’t afford to pay what his neighbors were paying. Survival for the family depended on everyone pitching in and helping to make it profitable…..

While in the cotton patch, we did much more than just hoe down unneeded cotton stalks and weeds. A lot of socializing went on. The older folks didn’t seem to know that you could keep an interesting conversation going and chop that cotton at the same time! Not a few times they would have to remind us of what they believed it took to do a good job. But, we learned a lot about each other, and I believe we learned to appreciate the differences in people and their various outlooks on life. We learned to disagree with others over religious ideas, moral values, and just plain old every day stuff like what shape that group of white fluffy clouds up there formed!

It was in the cotton patch that I learned not to talk about people! There was a little elderly couple in our neighborhood who was somewhat “odd”. Why the woman (so I was told) even powdered her face with flour, and I found it unbelievable and extremely amusing that anyone would do such a thing. One day in the cotton patch, however, I was discussing this strange behavior with a cousin, who kept acting rather silly. She finally made me understand that I should be quiet. Some of the other workers in the field were related to this poor couple that I had so maligned with my gossip! Needless to say, I have recalled that incident many times over, and the embarrassment and shame that I felt in my young conscience.

Studying our natural surroundings was a constant pastime while we worked. Ours was a beautiful world, and we were out in the open observing so much. There were little critters everywhere, many of them doing their God-given tasks of pollinating the plants, of aerating the soil and increasing the wonder in the children.

This is the third in a series of articles by a grandmother who wants her grandchildren to know who she really is and why she believes in some things that may seem archaic to them. Hers was a rich life with many merits that only those who experienced such can truly understand.