Picking Cotton
Thurman Dwight Lane
 The Author 1950We had a split term school at Hoxie, Arkansas where I spent all my 1st through 12th education. This means we were out of school in the spring for planting and chopping cotton and after a mid-summer term we were out in the fall for picking cotton. With all the misery of chopping cotton and going to school during the hot and humid Arkansas summer then out to break your back picking cotton it should have been called misery-term school. All and all it did give us a chance to add some much needed cash to the household coffers. With 6 growing boys and 2 adults to feed I really don’t know how my parents would have fed us without the extra income.
Some folks could pack 70 or 80 pounds in one of those 9-foot sacks but mine usually had less than that. They also made 12 footers but with my limited skills I had no use for one that big. The last pick sack I saw was at my cousins antique store and it had a metal ring sewn into the bottom corner. Most of us poor folks just put a large green cotton bole in the corner and wrapped a few strands of bailing wire around the outside of the sack to form a ring of sorts. When you weighed the cotton you placed the ring over the hook on the scales and doubled the sack up and wrapped the shoulder strap around the hook. We also found polk salad that had mature red berries and used the them to write our name on the sack.
We were usually in the fields just after sun up so we could get some work done before the hot part of the day. If we were picking a large field they would park the wagon in the middle of the field and we would go to the other end of the row and pick back to the wagon. In the early morning the dew was still on the cotton and we would put our sack in front of us and walk through the thick cotton plants to the other end so we could keep as dry as possible. The cotton in those days was very different than what you see today. Today's cotton has been genetically altered to produce very small stalks but the old cotton would sometimes be shoulder high or in the rich bottom, land over your head. Thus the expression ------- in tall cotton. Speaking of that one of the first things you learned was never pick up a pile of cotton lying in the middle of the row.
When you wore the bottom of your sack out you just cut the strap part off and turned it over and patched the hole. I don't remember what a 9 foot sack cost but we were paid about 3 dollars for picking a hundred lb. of cotton and believe me you knew the value of a dollar. Picking cotton was a very serious thing for most families. A large part of the families cash money for the year was produced in just a just few weeks.
One of my early experiences with picking cotton was the most memorable. I must have been about 6 or 7, I do know it was after we moved into the town of Hoxie. My big brothers, Donald, Bobby and Del and several of our neighbors were picked up by a farmers truck early in the morning and transported to who knows where, at least I didn’t know where we were. I remember later someone talking about Old Walnut Ridge but to me it could have been anywhere, heck I didn’t know much about new Walnut Ridge., only that they sold pop corn on the street and my big brother got to go to the movie there a few times.
I do remember the field and the trip back home quite well. The field was very large there was slight rise to the land and the cotton was tall enough that I couldn’t see too far ahead of me. This was just fine during the day, I could keep a low profile and spend my day checking out bugs and watching for airplanes, we were near the Walnut Ridge military air base. The first time I noticed something might be out of the ordinary was I suddenly noticed that it was getting much cooler and there was no one in sight, I am not sure but I may have gone to sleep, anyway I picked up my cotton sack containing about 4 or 5 lb. of hard work and started for the wagon which was supposed to be just over the rise and in the middle of the field. When I got there I could see the worn places where people had been weighing their hard days work and tire tracks but no wagon, no cotton pickers and no brothers.
I headed for the road and started walking. I would like to say that being a country boy I noted the sun going down in the west and the moss on the trees and deduced that I should head south but the truth is I just started walking and later realized it was the right direction. It seemed like I had been on the road a long time, I still had my sack of cotton when I heard a tractor heading my way. I don’t know who the guy driving the tractor was but he said he was headed to the Rainwater Cotton Gin in Walnut Ridge and being very shy and scared shitless I hitched a ride but I don’t remember talking to him very much. I was perched on top of a very large load of cotton and for some reason I started to feel silly for carrying my little sack of cotton so I donated it to the kind man who gave me a ride. Who knows it may have been just the amount he needed to make out a bale. The ride on the cotton wagon was long and I had plenty of time to worry, I worried about finding my way home but most of all for some reason I thought I would be in big trouble when and if I ever got home.
We were coming into a town but it was nothing I had ever seen or recognized. We finally got to the gin and stopped in a long line of wagons waiting their turn and this was even more scary. The gin was big and the noise almost overwhelming but my tractor driver told me to get down and matter of fact like told me how to get to Hoxie, the town where I lived. It must have been good directions because after walking several blocks I started to see a part of Walnut Ridge that I vaguely recognized. I headed south and about half way between the two towns I saw the old Cotton Compress building, a very big complex of red buildings covering acres and something that was easily recognized. It was about dark, the street lights were on and I saw my Father’s car barreling down the highway looking like he was on a mission. When he saw me he tried to make a u-turn and didn’t quite make it and landed in the ditch in front of me. He jumped out of the car and grabbed me and it was a minute or two before I realized I was not in trouble.
