Originally Posted by Phannie1
I love seeing the cotton fields in Arkansas and southern Missouri. My Mom and her family was cotton pickers when she was a kid. She told many stories around time in the cotton fields. My favorite one is when she was eight, she found some bricks at the end of a row. When you get paid by the pound, she knew if her bag was heavier she would get paid more. Those old men knew how heavy a bag should be and picked up on something amiss. Found the bricks and nicknamed her "the Brick Picker"
My mother had to pick cotton when she was a child. She and her sisters were not allowed to go to school in the fall until all the cotton in the neighborhood had been picked. She swore that her children would not have to pick cotton, and we didn't. When I was 12, my father bought a farm that had a small cotton acreage. He planted it, and Mother and I chopped it. However, when it was time for the cotton to be picked, he hired it done. After I graduated from High school, he let the cotton allotment expire. Neither Dad nor my brothers cared to do the manual labor it took to chop it.