Cotton and Pea Picking in the 30's
By Oreta Goolsby
©2003

Early in the summer our mother bought several yards of heavy duty ducking or cotton sacking. Then she would cut and fashion "Picking" sacks and sew them up on her old foot powered treadle sewing machine. The finished picking sacks were 6 to 8 feet long and from 2 1/2 to 3 feet wide. A strap about 6 inches wide was sewn on the open end of the picking sack on opposite sides of the opening. The straps were adjusted to fit each of us children over our shoulders comfortably.

Then August found us picking the first cotton under the broiling sun. The cotton was planted in rows wide enough for the sacks to be pulled between 2 of them easily and the cotton grew from 2 to 3 1/2 feet tall. The first picking of the season was done by carefully pulling the fluffy cotton from the bole. As the drying boles opened the tips of the bole became very sharp, pricking our fingers as we worked. The cotton work gloves, which we wore for protection against the pricks, slowed our progress to some degree. The gloves also quickly wore out. We soaked our hands at night in Alum water to toughen them against this hard work and pain.

Some of the fields were 1 mile long, but bole or cotton wagons were parked about each 1/4 mile. We started where the wagon was parked, picking on 2 rows while pulling the sack between them and bending over most of the time. Then at the end of the row we shook our cotton down to pack it tighter in our sack and started picking back towards the wagon. When we got even with the wagon we would reach down about midway of the sack, pick it up, and throw it up on our shoulder. We balanced them by putting our hand on our waist and sticking our elbow out, needless to say with this type of exercise we seldom gained any unwanted pounds of fat! This went on from sunup to sundown 6 days a week.

The sack of cotton was hung upon a scale to be weighed, and was then lifted by hand into the high wagon to be emptied. By noon time the sun was directly over head, shining with hot fury. Sweat was pouring from our brows under the ladies split bonnets and the men’s straw hats. Those of us who could, would sit in the shade under the wagon to eat our lunch. We drank water from a gallon glass jug, which had been covered by a burlap bag. The stopper had been fashioned from a corncob and the burlap had been thoroughly soaked in the morning to help keep the water cool. But by noon the water was beginning to get quite warm. After the first cotton had all been carefully picked from the boles in the huge fields, we then started re-picking each row. This time we pulled the whole cotton bole and put it into our sack. We could pick much faster this way but the cotton was (after it had been ginned), not as clean and nice as the first picking was. The farmer received less money for the second picking. Many times in the evening we rode home atop the wagon full of cotton. The farmer had to pass right by our house on the way to the cotton gin.

On a few occasions I was invited to go to the gin to watch the process which the cotton went through to become a bale. There was a suction pipe about 18" across which acted as a vacuum hose which sucked the cotton from the wagon to an overhead place. There was much tearing and pulling by various machines to separate the cotton fiber from the seeds and hulls. The hulls and some of the seeds were turned into cattle feed and some of the seed was turned into various types of human food. Some times while we were picking a summer storm would suddenly come and the air would get very hot. We would hurry to get the cotton onto the wagon and hitch up the horses to pull the wagon from the field before the storm could hit, but one day we didn't make it in time. The rain came down in torrents and the horses pulled and tugged but couldn't move the heavily loaded wagon in the deep mud, which had formed. The team was unhitched from the wagon and Totsie and I got to ride the horses bare back to the farmers house while everyone else had to slosh through the deepening mud and down pouring rain. By the time we got to the farmer’s house we were soaked and cold and the farmers wife provided us with dry clothes. We would wait for the storm to end so we could go home, there would be no more cotton picking for several days.

 There were plenty of chores to do around our house, like filling the lamps with kerosene and cleaning their globes. We trimmed the wicks on the lamps too, for if we didn't the lamps would smoke the globes and we couldn't see to do our homework, read or play 42 dominoes. That game was usually reserved for Saturday night or Sunday after church.

All of us children worked at picking cotton until school started about September 1st. As soon as school was out in the afternoon we would rush home to change clothes and go to the farmers field to work until dusk. We always welcomed a ride on the wagon when the farmer went to the gin as he had to go right by our house. Someone would usually start a song and we would sing as we rode, even though we were being stuck by cotton boles, it beat walking after a hard day's work.

When we got home from the fields, we would walk to the neighbors to draw water for baths and household needs. We ate our evening meal, studied our lessons by kerosene lamps and then went to bed. We worked all day on Saturdays in the fields until after Thanksgiving, when the seasons picking was finished. One of the farmers grew Black-eyed peas in the sandy soil that was located about 1 1/2 miles North of the small town of Hawley where we lived. Oak trees grew in the sandy land and everyone called it the "shinery," I believe it got its name from the chin-oak trees that grew there. Watermelons and peanuts grew very well in the sandy soil too.

On Saturday late in the fall we took our cotton sacks to the Black-eyed pea field, the rows were planted about as far apart as the cotton rows had been. The difference was the peas grew closer to the ground, so it took much more stooping to retrieve the pea pods to put into our sacks. Large tarpaulins had been placed on the ground in the farmer’s yard and as each sack became full of dry pea pods they were emptied onto the tarps. While some folks were picking peas others were walking on the dry pods, cracking them open then separating the hulls from the peas. From that day’s work instead of receiving money, we were paid in Black-eyed peas. We usually had enough to last our family for one year. 

Some folks seem to think that the reason people now eat Black eyed peas on New Years for Good Luck is because during the Depression days of the 1930's people felt very lucky to have them to eat. They were and still are very nutritious.

We were poor but we always got new shoes when school started. When the soles wore out Mama would get some sole leather cut new out new soles and put the shoes on the lasts and nail the new ones on. One of our relatives said they heard we went to school barefooted, we said no but that we did share our shoes with pages from Sears Roebuck. We weren't the only kids who were poor, but we thought that any kid who had a father was rich.

When we were young we sat outside on warm summer evenings. There were few electric lights to compete with the stars in the sky, so we could easily see the Big and Little Dippers and the Milky Way. We were also privileged to see meteor showers as the bits and pieces fell towards Earth. When we sometimes saw a shooting star, we would yell "Money, Money, Money" until we couldn't see it fall any more. For saying the word "Money" while the star was falling was supposed to bring us good fortune. The more times we could say "Money" the larger our fortune was sure to be.

We also chased fireflies around the yard. We were fascinated by the way they turned their tail lights on and off while they flew through the night air. They seemed to rise and dip without a care, always seeming to know where they wanted to go.

Us kids all attended and graduated from Hawley High School, after graduating Bill went to stay with J.Z. and Lillie in Raymondville. Bill came home for awhile and wanted me to go back to Bud's with him, so  I (Totsie) spent three months of my tenth grade there. Life wasn't all work as we participated in sports, (Totsie was even chosen to the basketball ALL STAR team one year. She played baseball, basketball and tennis and won ribbons and school letters in all sports), (Totsie says I was pretty good even if I do say so). Bill played basketball for the high school and was quite good too. We had our school parties that we attended and dances at different homes to go to, but if there was any church doings we went to them first. Mama was a strong church person and we all got our religion.

We used to get together in a group and go down to Abilene where there were several dance halls. We did a lot of dancing and it was at one of these dance halls, "The Blankenship", that Totsie first met Melvin Montgomery, and Bill met Beth Stokes. Oreta met Jesse Schulte at a dance at the American Legion Hall after she had graduated from High School and left home.

Oreta went to the Rio Grande Valley to visit J.Z. and Lillie only once and upon returning found her Mama had gotten a letter saying the homestead in Pasamonte was being auctioned off for back taxes. It seems the renters never bothered to pay the taxes as they promised to do. By the time we could get up there the property was already gone. Oreta says she never had traveled a great deal and couldn't know what her future life would bring.