Friday, June 20, 2008
Beating the Odds
During my growing-up years on the farm, cotton was pulled by hand, one boll at a time, thrown into a long ducking sack attached to the body by a strap at the shoulder, dragged down the dusty row until it weighed from 70 to 100 pounds, lifted onto the scale for weighing, then hoisted into the trailer and emptied. If I really worked at it, I could pull 400 pounds per day, but that seldom happened.
When I married into a family that owned a mechanical boll pulling machine, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. The stripper was attached to the front of the tractor just outside the front wheels that ran between two rows of cotton stalks. Long tines something like a pitchfork pulled the cotton bolls and dead leaves off the stalk, which were rolled backward by augers and then blown into the trailer through a tall spout. Heavy green bolls fell into a box at the bottom of the spout.
Husband Harry drove the tractor, of course, and my job was to arrange and tromp the cotton as the trailer filled. Trying to avoid the blown cotton, trash and dust kept me moving occasionally from one side of the half filled trailer to the other, using the pitchfork to steady myself, and I was thankful my inexperienced kids didn't have such a dangerous job. Suddenly the tractor stopped at a small ditch just as I raised the fork. Out the front I flew like a witch with her broom. I could have hit the sharp spout, the metal boll box, the trailer hitch, the tractor wheel, the deadly tines of the pitchfork, the tough cotton stalks, or perhaps on my head, breaking my neck. Instead I landed on all-fours in the soft dirt. Not a scratch.
Just luck? Who knows? But with odds like that, maybe Vegas would pay better than farming!
Cora Gail Trent
www.cgtrent.com
cgtrent@att.net
When I married into a family that owned a mechanical boll pulling machine, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. The stripper was attached to the front of the tractor just outside the front wheels that ran between two rows of cotton stalks. Long tines something like a pitchfork pulled the cotton bolls and dead leaves off the stalk, which were rolled backward by augers and then blown into the trailer through a tall spout. Heavy green bolls fell into a box at the bottom of the spout.
Husband Harry drove the tractor, of course, and my job was to arrange and tromp the cotton as the trailer filled. Trying to avoid the blown cotton, trash and dust kept me moving occasionally from one side of the half filled trailer to the other, using the pitchfork to steady myself, and I was thankful my inexperienced kids didn't have such a dangerous job. Suddenly the tractor stopped at a small ditch just as I raised the fork. Out the front I flew like a witch with her broom. I could have hit the sharp spout, the metal boll box, the trailer hitch, the tractor wheel, the deadly tines of the pitchfork, the tough cotton stalks, or perhaps on my head, breaking my neck. Instead I landed on all-fours in the soft dirt. Not a scratch.
Just luck? Who knows? But with odds like that, maybe Vegas would pay better than farming!
Cora Gail Trent
www.cgtrent.com
cgtrent@att.net
