National Cotton Week, continued, and things are looking up at last for this year's cotton crop in these parts. In that a gentle, though steady rain is falling, at four P.M. on Thursday afternoon, May 21st, 1959.
So we'll soon be having a stand of cotton, from one end of the row to the other, that is us buckshot-farmers will. (The loom-land folks have been sitting pretty all the while, or so they say) and presumably, everybody will go back to "payin’ the preacher" once more.
(Incidentally, if you've already paid him, yet have a grateful urge to double your donation, we can recommend French Camp Academy while the plate is passed. Undoubtedly this rain is welcome also at the academy, their farming operations lie right with the balance of the curriculum.)
Delayed stands of cotton always call to mind a day in June of '38 at Henderson Baird's, when Morgan Johnson and Old Stuff were exchanging humorous anecdotes with considerable relish, but Eustace Winn Sr. was buying Sonny (the future Dr. Winn) a baseball glove, failed to crack a smile.
"What's the matter, Eustace," we asked. "Didn't, you get the point of that last one Frog was telling us?”
"Yeah," replied Mr. Winn. "I see what you blrds're laughing but I've got no time for foolishness until I get a stand of cotton!"
Greenville used to have Cotton Carnivals, and there were Carnival balls as recently as 1955. Some of the queens were Rose Mary Virden (Hannon). Mary Pelham Finlay (Hunt), and Betty Thomas (Joseph), With Kings Hazlewood Parish, Albert Blum and Dr. D. C. Montgomery Sr.
We also remember a sort of cotton celebration aboard a barge at the municipal terminal, wherein Gen. A. O. Paxton was king and Jane Metcalfe (Weathers) was queen. The spectators occupied benches along the concrete wharf. The above occasion was tied in with a city of Greenville Historical Pageant with Steve Finlay impersonating his Reverend Uncle Stevenson Archer, meanwhile driving a wagon, and wearing Mr. Henry Starling’s top hat? Or perhaps they were separate deals. We also recall Larry Pryor circulating amongst the audience, and selling memberships in the "Bachelor's Club" or it might have been the “Boll Weevil Society,” with proceeds going to Junior Auxiliary’s favorite charities.
Mechanization has taken a heap of guesswork out of cotton farming, and removed a lot of the hazards of the same, but you still must have rain in order to prosper.
The mules and work-horses are all but gone, and such things as five-tooth cultivators, double-shovels and scrapers are long-gone. So is the "Gee-whiz" (a staggered spring-tooth deal), the "Big Willie" and the Uncle Sam. They're museum pieces now, along with "Banner" planters and the moldboard plow. (Who besides Slim Holiman and Old Stuff can describe the aforesaid objects?)
Does our old pal Judge Will Neill (of Leflore Bank Trust) remember the day "Queen" the mule ran away with him and his cultivator, in what could have been the first instance of cross-plowing a cotton-crop ever had, and all unintentional of course. For Will was a slip of a lad, farming that Carroll County hill' side as conventionally as he knew how, in order to turn an honest penny, and many years would pass ere he arrived at the then coveted status of a "Delta Planter.”
Meanwhile let us thank the good Lord for the rain! (Including eighty-three hundredths of an inch in Wilzin Park.)
P.S. If "Throny" (for Mary Elizabeth) Lane is interested, we have a couple of cotton feed sacks, of nearly identical patterns, which her Mother Mary might possibly fashion into an attractive morning frock for her. Act at once!
— BC
