All God's Dangers (32 page)

You take a guano distributor that you walk behind, just like a plow stock only it's got a big box to it, and get on that bed with one mule and put out your guano before you put down your seed. And then that knock-off runnin light right behind it, a light knock-off with your harrow. You mustn't let the teeth of that harrow down into the ground where it'll tear that bed up—don't disturb that bed, just knock it off gently.

If you take a notion to put a addition to the growth of your crop and the amount that you make to the acre, you go back there when you scratch around that cotton and chop it—you loosenin up the dirt then—why, take that distributor and put another application of guano around your crop. Them plants goin to get the benefit of that guano when the feed roots spread out. Now the brace root of a cotton plant, what you call the tap root, it goes down there sometimes four foot, huntin moisture. And them feed roots puts out from that tap root, clean across the middles, all around that cotton.

If the weather's just right, you can plant the first days of the week and by the middle of the next week, you got a pretty stand of cotton all over your field. Cotton and weeds all come up together and when they come up the weeds beats the cotton growin. Just as soon as that cotton will bear your cultivators, when it's just bustin the ground, drop your fenders on your mule plow and work that cotton. That fender bolted to your plow beam—it won't allow the dirt to fall in them drills and stop that cotton comin up.

Just as soon as that cotton gets up to a stand, best time to chop it out provided you feel that the cold won't get what you leave there. But you don't always know about that. If you chop it too early, decidin wrong about what the weather's goin to do, you go out there and thin out your crop, that bad weather come and get the balance of it. Or you might chop it wrong if you don't have the experience of it. You'll be diggin out too deep, guano and all, and you'll bruise the plants. But if you chop it out right and the weather don't change on you, it stays mild and in favor of growin, what you leave there will make a good crop.

Dry weather can cut the growth of that cotton to an extent. Too much rain can cause it to overgrow itself. Cotton's a sun weed, cotton's a sun weed. Too much water and it'll grow too fast, sap
runs too heavy in the stalk and it'll make more stalk than cotton. Cotton is a kind of sunflower; it just takes so much rain. You can make a good cotton crop a heap of times in a dry summer, owin to how much rain you had in the spring. Anyway, you just runnin a risk farmin; you don't know whether you goin to win or lose. You can bet on it ever so much, but sometimes you lose your bet and if you a poor farmer, you in a hole then. It's a heap like gamblin—you don't know what you goin to win, you don't know what you goin to lose. You take a farmin man out there, he dependin on his cotton and his corn. He don't know till he gather it what he goin to get, if he goin to get enough to come up even. I believe a man can put too much trust in his crop; he'll bet too heavy on it and he's subject to lose. He's takin a desperate risk. How can you get out there and plant any kind of a seed—cotton, corn, peas, tomatoes, vegetable seed of any kind, of the least and the most, what's about
you
to make it sprout and come up? What's about you? You got no power. God got the power. But God has got a part for you to do—He aint goin to come down here and plant nary a seed of no sort for you. God aint goin to come down here and run nary a furrow out there in that field, plow that ground up—He aint goin to do it. He give you wisdom and knowledge to do it. But if you set around and don't do nothin, won't work, you burnt up, you hear? God fixes it so, He's so merciful and kind—you can't sprout no seed, but go to work and tear up that land and plant that seed yourself. God requires you to do it and if you don't, He aint goin to come down here and do it. Still and all, think about it: the power's in the Almighty. You can't make your seed grow! It takes sunshine and water to make vegetables come up—sunshine when He sees fit to send it, water when He sees fit to send it. You get out here and do your part, what He put you here to do, because God aint goin to do your labor, He aint goin to do it.

I've made a crop more or less every year, come too much rain or too much sun. I've had my cotton grow so fast as to grow to a weed. I've picked from many a stalk of cotton that growed so high until it was just a stalk, not many bolls I'd get off it. On the other hand, when the seasons just hit right, I've had stalks of cotton weren't no more than three foot high, just layin down with bolls. It don't take the tallest cotton to make a big crop.

In the year 1912, second crop I ever made on Miss Hattie Lu Reeve's place, good God it come a snap—and my cotton should
have been thinned out, by right, but I weren't done choppin it out. And it come a cold day and and it sleeted on my crop. Done that again the next year, sleeted on that cotton in May, 1912, and 1913, too. And that cotton turned yellow as a fox and shedded off every leaf on it, but left the buds. I examined it and it looked terrible—in a day or two when the weather moderated, I examined my little old cotton and seed it was still alive, and them buds, after the sun hit em good, turnin hot after the snap of weather, little old cotton buds just kept livin and commenced a puttin out, flourishin. I just chopped it regular when I seed all that. And when I laid that cotton by, plowed it and put the dirt to it, it still looked weak and yellow. But it wouldn't die, it just kept a comin, kept a comin until it come out and made me that year eight good bales of cotton—1913. That was a high production for a one-horse farm. In them days people didn't make a bale to the acre. I had about eleven or twelve acres under cultivation and it weren't no first class land. But it was smooth land, easy to work.

There's a ought hoe; and then there's a number one and there's a number two—light-bladed hoes. I didn't use these heavy-bladed goose-necked hoes. But I used what it took to chop out a plant with one hoe lick. You got to be a careful hand—cotton is young and tender when you chop it; hit it just a light lick, just a light lick on smooth land. On the average, I'd leave ten inches between the plants, all across my field.

Owin to when it was planted, if it was planted any time after the first days of April on up until the middle of April, that cotton will be bloomin, if you treat it right, the last of May. Dry weather, reasonable dry weather, it takes to make a good crop of cotton. If it sets out to rain a whole lot and that cotton is highly fertilized, it's goin to make more weeds than cotton. But a reasonable good cotton season come along, that cotton will grow on up there and them branches will just roll off with squares. And as them squares grow they'll bloom; keep a growin just a short period of time, it won't be many days after that square comes out that it's bloomin. And when it blooms, it'll bloom today, you see them blooms come out of a mornin, between mornin and dinner your field is just shinin with cotton blooms. Well, they'll go through tomorrow very well. After your cotton blooms out there full bloom, by sometime late tomorrow night, or not over two days, them blooms will fall; and behind em, there's your little boll. When the bloom falls the
boll is right behind, and that little boll aint a bit bigger than the tip of your little finger. That boll goin to grow then; won't be many days until it's a great big boll and it keeps growin till it gets fully matured. Cotton will make what it's goin to do in fifteen days; it'll do it or lose it in fifteen days. A stalk of cotton bout three and a half foot high, if everything suited it, that stalk'll produce a hundred bolls, sometimes more than that. It'd be so heavy with bolls until it couldn't stand up.

We hand-picked that cotton, all of it. Five years old, that's big enough to pick many a little handful, and my daddy had me out in the field pickin cotton before that. And I picked until I picked many a hundred pounds for my boy Vernon, for four years after I quit foolin with it myself. When I quit off pickin for Vernon I was able to pick as much as a hundred pounds a day—that was a little help to him. I been able, pickin regular on my own farm, to pick up to three hundred pounds a day. The Bible says, once a man and twice a child—well, it's that way pickin cotton. I picked at the end of my cotton pickin days how much I picked at the start.

I always picked clean cotton, practically clean of trash, no burrs, no whole bolls in it, or I coulda picked a greater weight than I done. Cotton I picked was worth the full price that cotton would bring. That was my native way of pickin cotton. Get that lint just as clean as I could and leave the boll behind, not grab leafs and every other kind of trash.

Gathered that cotton from when it first opened up, around the latter part of August or the first week in September, and right through till it was all gathered. White man get out there and raise a big crop of cotton—when I was a boy and after I was grown, every little Negro chap in the whole country around, as far as he had time to go get em, go get em and put em in his field pickin cotton. And his little crowd, maybe, if he had any chaps, they'd be pickin some on off-hours of school. Come home and go to pickin cotton. But mainly it was nigger children gathered the white man's crop when I come along. And if a chap had in mind that he didn't want to pick this man's cotton—chaps knowed whose cotton it was—mama and papa was sufficient to make him pick it. Carry that child out, some of em, in a white man's field, they'd work his little butt off with a switch if he didn't gather that cotton. You'd find some industrious white people that would work like colored; they was poor people, they'd get out there and pick. But ones that didn't
care so much about stoopin down and pickin cotton, their cotton got ready—the little nigger chaps wasn't goin to school; scoop em up like flies and put em in the field.

Picked cotton in a sack—that's how we done it in this country, and other cotton countries I've heard spoke of. Put a sack on, long sack, sometimes the sack would be draggin behind you far enough that a little chap could walk up on the end of it. You'd have a strap to that sack, cross your chest and over your shoulder, resemblin to a harness, and the mouth of that sack right under your arm; you'd pick cotton and just drop it in there. That sack'd hold a full hundred pounds.

Take that sack and empty it in a big basket, cotton basket. White man would set it in his field, or a Negro, if it was his field and he had baskets. I used my own baskets, I made cotton baskets. Didn't pick my crops no other way but empty the cotton out of the sack and into the basket, and that relieved my sack, the weight of it on me, that would take it off, any amount of cotton I had picked in my sack.

I'd take my wagon to the field after me and my children done picked several baskets of cotton, stand it there and go to emptyin that cotton in the wagon. Set them baskets out there to keep a gatherin. I could nicely weigh my cotton in a basket then throw it on the wagon. Weighed my cotton right there, as I loaded it. My wife had good book learnin, she'd take the figures to the house—I could make figures but I didn't know enough to add em up; give her the book with the cotton figures on it, she'd add it up and tell me when I got a bale. That wagon had to move out of the field then.

On to the barn and empty the cotton in my cotton house, on the floor—it'd stay dry in there. That cotton house would be sealed superior to a dwellin house. Come time to make a bale, I'd drive my wagon up to the door of that house and load it all out, take it to the gin. Anywhere from, averagely, twelve to fourteen hundred pounds at a load: loose cotton, seed cotton, ready to go to the gin. Make a five-hundred-pound bale after ginnin. The rest of the weight went for seed and trash.

From my first startin off farmin after I married, even workin on halves, I had to carry my cotton to the gin. And when I got to where I rented, I'd gin at any gin I wanted to. I had mules able to do it; hitch them mules to my wagon, take em to the field; take
em from the field to the barn; pull out from the barn to the gin. Drive up under a suction pipe; that suction would pull that lint cotton off the wagon and into them gins and the gins would gin it out—separate the lint from the seed and the seed would fall in a box. Another pipe carried the seed overhead from that box to a seed house out yonder. Didn't have nothin to do but go out there and open up that seed-house box and catch all my seed. Cotton went from the gin machines to a press—all them seeds and whatever trash was picked with that cotton done been ginned out. And a man at the press would work a lever and the press would press the cotton down into a box the shape of a bale so he could bale it off. He'd already have a underbaggin under it and he'd pull the top baggin down and wrap that cotton up, fasten them hooks, and bale it.

It was their job to roll out the bale and load it on your wagon. When the bale was wrapped and the ties was pulled and the press was lifted off the bale, workmen there would get behind it and push it out. If the gin was runnin proper, I might be in and out of that gin operation in less than thirty minutes. I have gone to the gin of a mornin, looked at the situation: the yard would be covered with wagons with loads of cotton, trucks sometime. Before I quit raisin cotton, they'd haul that cotton there on trucks and them trucks might have anywhere from two to three bales—a ton, ton and a half of seed cotton. Well, I'd go in and talk with the ginner; he'd tell me about when my time would come. Take out my mules from my wagon and go home, leave my wagon standin there with my cotton, come back late that evenin or the next day. And I'd better be back on time; if I didn't, several bales would be runned in ahead of me. They observed your turn strictly, for white and colored. It was mighty seldom that anybody would go ahead of your wagon. And while we was waitin our turns, white and colored, we'd talk about our crops and how much more we had at home and how much we done ginned and what the cotton was bringin that year.