Cotton Picking Story

When I was 15 years old I moved to Texas from Indiana. I wanted to make some spending money so I decided those stories of people picking cotton sounded easy enough. NOT!!!!!

I talked my cousin Joyce into trying it too so we went to her aunt and uncles house for a job. They hired us on. We hoed Johnson Grass from the cotton field. There were machines that now did the cotton picking. I had visions of wearing a pair of short shorts and a halter top so I could grab some rays while working. My cousin's uncle came in and said put on jeans, socks, shoes, a long white shirt and wear a straw hat or a bonnet. I couldn't believe my ears.

We got up before sun up and I was bound and determined to prove I was no city slicker and could keep up with the best of them. I started out fast and went to slow, then begged for rain on the 3rd day. I had blisters on my hands as big as my fingers and wasn't getting the tan I wanted either. At night we had a big old farm hand meal on the table and uncle Randell and Aunt Ruby were some of the best and most honest people I had ever met. The meals were to die for - - food picked from the garden.

They made us go to church revival every night at Friendship Baptist Church. There I sat with very little religion on my mind. We flirted with the boys there at the church and dug the skin off the blisters on our hands. On the 3rd night though, God did answer my prayers and the rains came. Hurrah!!! No more Johnson grass hoeing for us. That was the hardest work I have ever been introduced to, and some of the best memories of a little farm house near McKinney and the good people I met during that time. Aunt Ruby and Uncle Randell are now in their mansions in heaven. Uncle Randell loved those dominos and I can still hear his laughter.