That Wasn’t Cotton in Our Sacks

The year was 1952.

My dad had land on both sides of Williams Creek. He planted cotton and corn on the east side where the homestead was. On the west side, he grazed half of the land and planted sudan grass on the other half. He would cut the sudan grass for hay.

This particular year, it had turned very dry. Although his grass crop came up, for lack of rain, grew only a few inches tall. It was too short to cut for hay so he decided to turn the cows onto the patch to graze. After a week or two of cattle grazing on that plot there were a lot of cow patties or cow poop on that bare ground. This upset my dad because he knew that once the grass grew taller for mowing, the dry cow piles would stick onto the pointed guards of his mower board and drag along without the cutter being able to cut the hay.

So, my dad summoned my two sisters and me to pick up every one of those dry cow piles, putting them into our cotton-picking sacks. When full or too heavy to pull along the ground, we had to drag them to the nearby creek and empty them.

You can imagine the embarrassment I felt when the traffic along the gravel road nearby saw us putting cow poop into a cotton sack! We never questioned it and did what we were told until the job was done.

Sometimes I think my dad issued these “odd” jobs for us to do just to keep us busy and keep us from getting into trouble. That is why we never fought or squabbled amongst each other for the simple fact we knew dad would find something for us to do instead of fighting.