My dad was a career military man and as such was TDY (temporary duty yonder) away from his family often.  When this happened my mother would receive part of his pay – an allotment – and we were always living with one grandparent or another while he was gone because the family got “kicked off-base” as soon as his tour began.  One year, the gubmint in all its efficiency and brilliant management (still demonstrated today) delayed my mom’s allotment for a few months and we found ourselves “without money”.  While this predicament was nothing new, apparently it was a tad worse than normal.
This particular August we were living in the middle of a cotton field in Arkansas.  It was time to pick the cotton and it was still done by hand (many, many hands) by this particular farmer – he didn’t have the acreage to justify owning any of the large, expensive cotton pickers employed by some of the bigger farms – so Momma decided she and we kids would pick cotton with everyone else in our tiny town.  Pickin’ that particular year paid $3.00 for 100 lbs. of cotton – and lemme tell you, that’s a BUNCH.OF.COTTON – paid in cash at the end of the day.  One hundred pounds of cotton filled a long, heavy canvas bag that hung off one shoulder with a wide canvas strap, and the “professionals” filled, weighed and emptied that bag several times a day.  Anyway, we trouped on over to meet the farmer and sign up and took us slickers on, he did, no doubt sniggering to himself the whole time.  We started right then.
The rows of cotton were only about a thousand miles long (you get your very own row all to yourself, and you got to finish it by yourself, too!), and the temperature that first day was 497* and rising, with the humidity and mosquito density to match as the day wore on.  It was muddy between the rows and bees and hornets and big ol’ bugs and spiders were all over those plants, not to mention having to watch for snakes.  And, if you didn’t grab that boll just exactly right the sharp points of the cotton hull would rip your cuticles or finger pads clean off.  All in all, it was a real picnic. Which is what lunch was, too – eaten right there in the rows with your filthy hands – whatever you brought from home.  After lunch the first day is when I noticed that my youngest brother (who was about 4 at the time) was asleep on the end of my mother’s long bag!  What a rip!! We’re out here sweatin’ and bleedin’ to death and he gets to SLEEP??? Oh, the unfairness of life……  and worse, when the day was done and we all trudged in to get our cotton weighed, I had only about 35 lbs. Momma had managed a little over 100 and even my middle brother beat me out.  A spider the size of a catcher’s mitt in my shirt, to boot, I discovered at bath time.  How I Spent My Summer Vacation.
The one quick relief we’d get at the end of the day before we went home for supper (if there was still plenty of daylight) was a good soak ‘n splashing  in one of the good natured rice farmers fields – huge irrigation pipes and pumps ensured plenty of water to cool us kids down after all that heat and dirt. You only had to watch out for water moccasins and ditch roaches (crawdads.)  Guar-an-teed to bring the body temp down to a tolerable 150* or so, so ya’s could start the next day out right;  red and bug-bit.
This continued for about three days, as I remember, until the day we came home to my dad’s allotment check! Oh.Happy.Day!! That check was the end of our cotton picking enterprise as a family. No, we were not starving – we were living with my grandmother, after all (and who was still working), and had extended family around us, but back then one was supposed to be as self-sufficient as humanly possible. Young adults with small children didn’t just live in Granny’s basement and veg as is so common today.  TDY’s were very often a year or more long and one simply did not sit around doing nothing for that year – my mother always worked and we went to school and tried our best to “behave.” That was always my dad’s last commandment when he’d fly off – “Y’all take care of your Momma and Behave!
“ But it beats pickin’ cotton!!” became the punch-line to any and all
horror stories told in my family for years.
Most of the family members that were around that summer are long gone now and
I really miss hearing it. So remember, kids, no matter how badly you detest
your current job, or how badly it pays or how much you hate school – it beats
the hell out of picking cotton!