From the Managing Editor:
A harvest of memories
Another harvest season has begun in the Delta. It has always been a favorite time of year for me as the mammoth harvest machines lumber out into the fields to reap the rewards of our farmers’ months of hard work. I especially like all the smells associated with this season of the year. The rice being combined, the fields being burned, cotton gins running, and even the nearly forgotten scent of defoliant all bring back memories of the years when I was growing up on a cotton farm in Tallahatchie county. Many of the chemicals and harvest practices have changed, but the memories linger. I can remember going to the hunting club with my dad for the first few weeks of bow season and smelling all those scents in the air in early October. Maybe the weather patterns were different then, or perhaps the rice and cotton varieties have changed, but I know I can remember smelling the nutty aroma of rice being cut one day and then the smell of the stubble burning in the fields the next, and this was definitely in October. On those rare occasions when we had success in the woods and were after dark driving back from the river, I will always remember how impressed I was with the vast fires that could be seen for miles as they burned into the night clearing the fields of excess stubble.
Another thing that I know was more noticeable to me then was the smell of an operating cotton gin. My nostrils and the presence on the highways of 18-wheelers hauling pallets of compressed white gold lead me to believe that ginning has become a specialty operation only conducted at a few special spots. Or perhaps my being stuck in town from dawn to dusk every day has something to do with it. My father tells me that even about the time I was born he can remember when tiny hamlets like Swan Lake had two operating gins and all the larger towns could boast of four or more. I’m sure it’s an acquired pleasure, liking the smell of burning gin trash and diesel fuel, but I guess that it was in my blood since I grew up with it every fall day. My sister and I would beg our dad to take us out to where the cotton trailers were being loaded so we could climb up and help the trompers dance around on the loose fibers after they were dumped. If you’ve never smelled the unique, sweet odor of just-picked cotton, you have really missed a treat.
My family got out of farming about the time that module builders and palletization replaced those rickety old trailers, and the whole process of bringing in the cotton became a mechanized symphony of four and six-row technology. Of course, my father can beat that transformation experience since he can still remember riding on a cotton wagon pulled by mules out to the fields where armies of workers were dragging their cotton sacks down the narrow rows and snatching up all the lint they could grab to fill those little cotton houses which dotted the farm. I just wonder what the next generation will witness as agriculture seems to be evolving faster every year. I’m sure that cotton will still be going strong and the Delta will still claim the title of Cotton Capitol of the World, but will my grandchildren even see a gin or a cotton picker? I really wouldn’t be surprised if fifty years from now the cotton stalks go in one end of a machine and the finished bale of cotton magically comes out the other.
I hope I’m really soaking up rich images of the way life is in this relatively hectic part of my life. Memories seem to mean so much to my parents, and I hope that when I get to be their age, I will have saved enough to be able to tell the next generation about the “good old days.” I have learned that, like passing through a small Delta town, you’d better look fast or you will have missed it. Enjoy the fall. DBJ
Joe Meek
DBJ Managing Editor
