Posted on 10/15/2013 3:56:12 PM PDT by jazusamo
I picked cotton. One of my earliest memories. I also white. Back then blacks and whites picked cotton together, drank from the same gourd dipper, and dreamed of better times together.
I remember it well. The most I ever picked in a day was 87 pounds. $2.61 was a lot of money for a 9 year old.
We picked each field twice. Then we picked the bolls. As for the puncture wounds, we envied those who could afford gloves.
I'm not sure they did that to Twelve Years a Slave. We'll know more soon.
There is debate about whether the book was tweaked by its co-author, David Wilson, in the 1850s to make it more spectacular and sensational -- more what the audience of his day wanted.
So far as I know, many of the basic facts -- dates and places -- in Northup's narrative have been verified (to the degree that they can be after 160 years).
Another memory in the cotton field was when I was too little to pick. Many times I’d take a nap on the cotton sack while my mother picked. When I finally got old enough to pick I used a burlap sack. We called it a toe sack. Not sure if that’s how it is spelled. We never had to write it down.
My Uncle provided the sacks and I got a good one. It was smaller than most of the others and had a nice wide strap. Of course you dragged it behind you.
When we went to the barn to weigh the sacks after each day, I think Uncle Buck gave us the weight of the sack. I remember Aunt Ruby would always pick over 200 pounds but she didn’t get paid since it was her cotton.
I had a cousin who was a year younger than me and spoiled rotten. She would work in the field with us but hardly pick any cotton at all.
Thanks, all.
Well said!
The Butler and 12 Years a Slave are just the latest salvos of white guilt propaganda by the Institutionalized White Guilt Complex.
Many more examples at this link:
http://blackracismandracehatred.blogspot.com/2013/09/more-notes-and-asides.html
I believe it is spelled “tow”, as in to tow something... but that is almost a generation ahead of me.
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Heh.. reminds me of tossing hay-bales on the ranch... :^)
My mother and her family picked cotton, they were fruit pickers and then share croppers.
Don’t know anything about “Twelve Years a Slave” yet... but I do know that for many years I despised Brad Pitt. It seems recently, Pitt may be maturing... at least that is the impression I am getting. I hope he does, and he turns, and becomes a real Conservative someday soon.
Heh.. reminds me of tossing hay-bales on the ranch... :^)
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In HS we went to assist (work means getting paid..HA) bringing in the hay and will never forget us young lads, athletes all, were going to get that final ‘tan’ and stripped to the waist while the Farmer and his hands all wore wool shirts buttoned at the neck and sleeves.
Some of us ‘idiots’ put the shirts back on but I and a couple other REAL DUMBIES went shirtless....laughing at the fools and ‘hot shirts’...
STILL picking hay burrs(?).....some 60 year later...
Finally figured out while laying asphalt that it was actually ‘cooler’ with a skivvy shirt underneath shirt when sweating (bleeding beer <:) profusely from the combination of 250-300 degree asphalt and sun on muggy 90+ days.
When I was a kid, the main hay was peanut hay. Back then they stacked the peanut vines on poles for them to dry. When they were dry the peanut picker would pick most of the peanuts off and the square bale the hay or more accurately the bails were rectangular.
After the peanut picker had left, I would walk over the field and pick up peanuts which had escaped the picker. They had been setting in the sun for several weeks and had a slightly cooked taste. They were actually delicious.
They no longer stack them, just have a machine dig them up and turn them upside down so the peanuts were turned to the sun.
I had a cigar box which for several months was always full of peanuts.
>> ... the interminable tribal conflicts STILL ravaging that sad continent ...
Congo: 5 million murdered in the last 10 years [crickets chirping]
TYVM!!
TYVM!!
Thanks.
Thanks and so glad your ancestors saw the error of their ways and liberated theirs. :-))
And thanks for being on the right side now.
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