Cotton Boll - A Childhood Story

I should save this for tomorrow for Way Back Wednesday but I may not be on tomorrow - have errands which includes a library trip so may have nose in new, juicy book tomorrow night :)

I come from a very long line of farmers - I can trace my ancestry back to farmers as long ago as the late 1600s. My Dad's generation was the first where not everyone farmed (although my dad has made a living in the agricultural equipment business). I still have cousins who farm or manage farm land. Anyway, as a young child I grew up in the agricultural south (Arkansas) surrounded by crops. No mountain, beaches, or dense forrests - just flat, plowed farmland, rivers, and woods. The sight of a browning cotton boll says autumn to me.

I find the cotton plant magical. It's seed pod, commonly known as a boll, holds the fiber we know as cotton, and there is a time of year when the bolls are open, the stalks and leaves are browning, and to me it looks like winter snow. Cotton was king when I was little and the income from this crop supported not only farmers but really the entire town just as fishing supports the economy of Kodiak although everyone is not directly related to commercial fishing.

Anyway, there are old movies of me when I am about 3 or 4 and my parents took me to the river near our town (the Mississippi ,that is) and the cotton was harvested yet there were always stalks left with a little cotton on them. My parents picked one of these leftovers for me as though it were a flower and I loved it. I wouldn't give it up and there is proof on film of this wierd childhood behavior. The story goes that the stalk broke and they had to keep taping it together or I would be upset. I guess I cried when the cotton fell out so they glued it back in. I'm sure I had plenty of toys but for a while I chose a left-behind stalk of cotton, broken and falling apart, as something very special.