Our economic position in Lynn County, Texas
was at the bottom of the food chain
or very
near it. My brother said that everyone
told
him others had it worse, but he
never met
them. One thing that probably helped
people
in those days was the fact that
no one really
had it made. One thing that was
a plus for
my family was that we never went
hungry.
Mother always had a garden, chickens,
a cow
and some pigs. Additionally mother
would
can crops for the neighbors for
a quarter
of the cans for her labor. I can
never remember
a time when we didn’t have a cellar
full
of canned goods. During the winter
this was
a primary source of our meals. We
usually
had a corn crib which had dried
corn for
the chickens and pigs which mother
would
also to make hominy by soaking them
in lye
water until the hulls came off the
corn.
She would them boil it or make it
into a
grit for cereal or tamales.
My brother came home on leave in
early 1943
prior to going overseas. It was
a gala affair
with everyone listening to his experiences
in the US Navy. He had just washed
out of
flight school because he could not
satisfactorily
take Morse Code, a problem that
I also was
to later experience. He was now
a Third Class
Aviation Mechanic. The high light
of his
leave was when he went to Lubbock
and purchased
the family a battery operated Philco
Radio.
This was the first time that we
ever had
a radio. The draw back was the dry
cell battery
that powered it. As time went on
the battery
would lose its charge and need to
be replaced.
I don’t know the price of a new
battery,
but I do know that when it died
so did the
radio programs. I think Leoline
gave us a
new battery and we were back in
business
for a time. Because of the limited
life of
the battery, the number of programs
were
rationed. I can only remember that
we would
listen to the Grand Ole Opery from
Nashville,
Tennessee every Saturday night.
Dad always
listened to the news.
My parents always made it possible
for Santa
Clause to find me. I really dont
know where
they got the money, but every Christmas
there
were toys under the tree. I mentioned
earlier
the little red bus that I got in
1939. In
1942 I got a train that ran off
batteries
and a Scout Flyer Wagon under the
tree. I
really thought the world of that
wagon. Granted
it also got used by mother to haul
things
around the farm, but usually it
was mine.
Mother's sister Vera King brought
her family
for a visit while we lived on the
Jackson
Place. Someone got the idea that
ice cream
would be good. Dont know where we
got the
ice cream maker, but I do know where
we got
the ice. All of us kids took my
Scout Flyer
and started walking to Wayside to
get ice
and some soda pop. Wayside was a
cotton gin,
grocery store and a couple of houses
at the
intersection of the Wilson and New
Home roads
about 3 miles south of our house.
The group
of pioneers included Johnnie Faye,
Sonny,
Edna Ann, Junior, and me. There
were several
arguments about how hot it was and
why we
shouldnt just sit down and drink
the soda
pop. Good judgement and the fear
of God kept
us from committing this unforgivable
sin.
Cotton was king on the South Plains of Texas starting after the turn of the century and
is still a major cash crop in the
area. Since
this area get about 23 inches of
rain a year
and has severe winters and one hell
of lot
of wind, the cotton crop is not
as lucrative
as in other more humid areas. The
short staple
cotton grown in this area is not
used by
industrial nations that use modern
machinery
to make thread. Most is shipped
to developing
nations that still weave by hand.
The result
is a lower price for cotton grown
in this
area. Nevertherless all parts of
the local
economy depended on cotton revenue.
Everyone
benifitted starting with farm equipment,
laborers, merchants, gins, compresses,
transportation,
and all other support services.
When cotton picking time came, everyone
would
get their knee pads, bonnets, hats,
long
sleeve shirts and cotton sack and
head for
the field. I was fairly fortunate
because
I was too small to pull a large
sack. At
time they took me to the fields
and I would
pull boles and place them in the
row for
mother to collect when she got there.
Granted
it was not much help. Usually, after
school
Frances would take care of me at
the house
so we both beat going to the field.
After
spending a hot dusty day in the
field I recall
how happy I was to walk back to
the house
when Frances returned from school.
I am sure
seeing me was probably the highlight
of my
sisters day. In those days kids
were given
time off from school so they could
help with
the cotton picking. During this
time I could
stay at home with Frances. One thing
that
I am happy about is that I did not
have to
grow up in the country. Roy Clark
has a song
that says “my mother pick cotton,
my father
pick cotton, my brother pick cotton,
my sister
pick cotton, but I never pick cotton”.
I
must admit that I did pick a little
cotton,
but it was not a career. Years after
moving
to town several of us brainy individuals
thought we could make some easy
money by
pulling cotton. We got some cotton
sacks
and piled into my 1940 Chevrolet
and headed
for the cotton fields of Lynn County.
It
didn’t take us long to realize this
idea
did not rank up near the top of
the brilliant
ideas we had conjured up to make
money. There
were definitely easier ways to make
money
in town. When I lived in the country
I had
no concept of living in a town.
I had not
been to town enough to even know
what it
would be like.
Cotton is influenced by many things including
planting dates, rainfall and availability
of irrigation, insects, weeds, hail
and wind
damage, first freeze date, and market
prices.
The climate is just barely suitable
for cotton.
The growing season is from 185 to
225 days
long, which is considered comparatively
short
as growing seasons in some cotton
areas around
the world extend to nine months.
Rainfall
averages about 23 inches per year,
also comparatively
low (cotton is a monsoon crop in
India),
but, fortunately, approximately
75 per cent
falls during the growing season
from early
May to mid-October. Nevertheless,
rainfall
is highly erratic temporally and
spatially
(the latter referring to the intensely
local
nature of storms). Irrigation relieves
some
of the risk of rainfall deficit,
but it is
expensive and the groundwater resource
is
non-renewable and depleting. In
general,
in years when precipitation is ample
and
timely, most producers do fairly
well. When
several years of bad weather occur,
growers
go under and lose their farms. My
father
fell in the latter group. Granted
he never
owned a farm. He was just a victim
of timing.
As a side note my father decided to move
on to the Llano Estacado in 1924
and the
bottom started to fall out of the
cotton
market in 1927 and did not fully
recover
until 1941. This and the other things
that
I mentioned earlier seemed did not
help him
in his last career move.
Unknown to me, storm clouds were forming
that would change my life. Heated
discussions
between my parents were going on
as to whether
we should continue digging in the
dirt or
move to Lubbock. No concensus could
be reached
between my parents. So at the beginning
of
the third grade, mother decided
that living
on a farm was crap and told Dad
to lump it.
A woman that she knew by the name
of Martin
offered mother an apartment in a
tenement
house called the White Cottage in
Lubbock
if she would manage it for her.
This lady
owned several place in Lubbock;
most were
whore houses as I later discovered.
Dad didn’t
think highly of the move so she
packed up
and left him on the farm. Lubbock
was a town
of about 40000 people. The city
limits was
behind the Joy Motel on 34th Street.
|