Seeing the Oaks go is just one of the painful consequences. We lost Oaks that were huge back in the 50s when I was a kid. Lost none in ‘80 and I thought that was really a bad summer. Lost trees in ‘11 and ‘12 then again in ‘18 up on the hill when we had so much rain and wind, they blew over. Small tornado got some others. Some of those trees had stood probably since before 1900. There has been one of those outstanding climbing trees on the hill at the home place. Almost like a Live Oak but I call it a Water Oak with tiny leaves. Great spreading branches that will hold a porch swing 25 or more feet from the trunk without sagging. It was a great place to hang out, high up in the branches, when I was a troubled and restless teen.
I often wonder what this country was like when people settled and cleared it. How did they get rid of so many stumps let alone cutting and disposing of all the trees? There were no dozers of course. All hand work and teams of mules and horses. I just filled a big hole down front and I have no idea where it came from. Like a sinkhole but we just don’t have that. I wonder if it was a big tree stump hole or hog wallow. 30’ in diameter and about 6’ deep.
There are hillocks out in pastures all over this country. Some said they were mounds from Indian camps. They are just places where brush was pushed up, burned and rotted.
I see in the history column of the paper where the first bales of cotton were brought in this time 100 years ago.
“The first load of cotton from this season’s crop, marketed in the county was brought in Tuesday afternoon by Charlie Knight of Redland, and sold to McDonald and Matthews of this city for eight cents [a pound] in the seed.
The load weighed 1,500 pounds and with an added premium of “$66.75 donated to the grower by the businessmen of the city, brought Knight the sum of $181.75.
J.D. (Daddy) Grimes, of Sadie also in the river bottom, has been one of the first to market for many years but was two days late since his pickers quit him, just before he had completed picking the load oon account of the hot weather.”
Big doings for 1922. Stories just like this from all across the nation in our local histories. That was “only” 100 years ago, 70% of my lifetime, hard to believe. 30 years seems hardly worth the mention now.
I don’t know of any cotton grown anywhere in the county now. Out here where I live there were once two gins in the little town that isn’t either anymore.
So much for my musings, it got too hot outside for me to stack concrete blocks for the Fall raised bed garden. More when the sun arcs a little more to the west.
The sea breeze front is headed our way. Maybe we will get a quarter inch or so. Anytime I see a field around here surrounded by timber I wonder how much effort it took back in the day to create that field. Trees were mostly a nuisance as they wanted land to cultivate. Once the railroads came in, they could haul the lumber off to cities over the horizon. Cotton left here around 1900. Boll weevils, I suspect.