GLORIA'S BIRTHDAY

Image from the Internet

My childhood friend Gloria lived in a creaky-board old house, around-a-block-and-down-the-block from Mammaw’s house---in exactly the same place on that block. But it could have been in another town or another country, compared to Mammaw’s neat yard full of flowers and brick edgings and that huge, bountiful garden out back which supplied three families’ freezers.

Gloria’s house was a ratty old thing, much bigger than Mammaw’s---good thing, for Mammaw’s three-room shotgun did well to house the four of them (and I STILL don’t know where they all slept). And Gloria had five brothers, to whom could have been laid the broken windows, the hangy-down screendoors, the screens like rump-sprung skirts, flappy-cornered on the big three-sides porch, and the absolutely naked yard all around---foot-stomped and body-slammed every day of the week.

In the Summer, the boys all slept on pallets on that porch, under those huge old trees for the cool of the night, and I don’t know how they lived through it---the screens were dark-rust blankety things, so stretched and so clogged with grime that they sucked in and out like old curtains whenever the wind blew. They were certainly not attached to the rims in enough places to foil the hordes of mosquitoes which inhabited that yard from dusk til dawn.

They lived just down the street from the “flowin’ well” and we loved to go down there and let the coldcold water run over our bare feet after we’d sorta rinsed our hands enough to cup them full of that wonderful water and get a good long drink. The “well” was an artesian flow, from a big curved red pipe, gushing out onto an area of flat pavers laid so you could walk up and fill a jug or a bucket. And in my childhood, quite a few people still did “go get water” every morning and night, up to and including for dishwashing and their baths.

The flat stones were slick and mossy in places, with the onslaught of the water making the little growth of green wave and sway like the face-fur of a dog in a car window. I’d sit on the low brick wall, watching the hypnotic dance of the green stuff, thinking how it looked like the seaweed in movies we’d seen, trancing myself into being underwater, swimming down deep.

We’d dare each other to walk the bricks, clinging tight with our toes to the slick surfaces, trying to make it past the slippery outskirts, treacherous with moss, to take one quick leap without our feet sliding out from under us, and to land in the drier grass past the ledge.

One year Gloria had a party on her birthday. I was nine, and the day is marked for me, for I never knew her to have one before, and I was the only guest. I was at Mammaw’s for the weekend, having arrived on Friday after school, and she came over and invited me on Saturday morning. Like a kid, I thought nothing of the short notice, and Mammaw got out her pocketbook and gave me a little money out of her old black snap-top change-purse.. My heart lifted when she pulled several dollars out of that tiny stronghold, but she fished around down in there and handed me four quarters, one by one.

I went to Aunt Lou’s store and pondered my choices; socks were a possibility, as were underwear in those days---we thought nothing of wrapping up a pretty pair of panties for a girlfriend’s present, and since the boxes almost always looked the same as handkerchief boxes, a discreet word to the honoree, and she’d hold up the box, say who it was from with a smile, and to the laughter of all boys present, and then slide the unopened box under her chair.

A little glass bottle, much like those in the big grocery spice-racks today, with a foil-wrapped stick of Zia cologne inside was a popular gift---I can still smell the acrid-sweet of those, as well as hear the little muffled cloomp as you shook the bottle in your hand. There was also the choice of a nylon “neck-scarf”—a foot-square scrap of nylon, mostly solid, but sometimes in checks; we all had several colors, and wore them tied off to the side of our necks, kinda like cowboys, but WAY chic.

I finally settled on a little year-diary with a tiny lock and a poodle-charm on the keychain. I appeared at the appointed time, expecting to see a table with the crinkly white paper tablecloth with HAPPY BIRTHDAY around the edges, and a balloon or two flanking the cake-with-pink-roses, which was all I had ever seen for a girl’s birthday. (Except, of course, for the cakes made and decorated at home with a set of grocery-store letters in those hanging packages, those squeezed-out-tiny-points of rock-hard icing, spelling out Happy Birthday, with a few matching candle-holders which didn’t fit any candle known to man). Those were mostly for boys, in awful color combinations like yellow and brown, and featuring rocket ships or lassos.

The cake sat on the same old bird-spattered, faded-to-gray wood picnic table we sat at most afternoons (well-scrubbed and hosed down earlier, with the dirt still damp beneath our feet). It was a “bought cake” all right, but it was an odd little thing.

Aunt Lou’s shelves always held a half-dozen or so of those---white cake, which you could plainly see through the cellophane, for they were like you’d made a LONG loaf cake,with frosting between the two layers and all around top and sides, and cut it into six-inch sections, with two cut sides naked.

There were no games or contests, unless you counted her brothers’ whooping dashes around the yard, or their swinging all up into the trees, or wrestling each other in that damp dirt.We just talked for a while at the table, sitting on those splintery planks attached to the X of the table-legs. There were no candles, but we sang, and then she took the cellophane off the cake, cut it lengthwise in half, and those each into four slices. She deftly placed the slices on eight plates, DARED her brothers to touch them, and opened the two little square cartons of “ice milk” with their dark green cardboard sides. It was fifteen cents a carton, I remember, for Mammaw might send me around the block for one now and then, to divide amongst us three for an after-supper treat.

She cut the cartons open, then sliced each little block into four. When she’d placed the first block on a plate, she directed one of the boys to “take that to Mama,” and he disappeared into the house with it. We all then ate our cake and ice cream and talked a bit around the table before the boys dived back into yelling fists-and-elbows action, I suppose showing off for the party guest.

I remember every moment of that party, as if it’s a movie I’ve watched so many times I can repeat the dialogue. My most vivid memory of it, though, is when Gloria’s Mama finally came outside; she’d stood holding the screendoor open for a moment, just framed there in her faded loose dress, then came gingerly down the steps toward us.

She collapsed into the big faded-red lawn chair, and said she hoped I’d enjoyed Gloria’s party. I said I really had, and was glad I was there that weekend. She sat, feet outstretched, regarding her immensely-swollen feet and ankles, and said, “She just told me about it this mornin’ and I wish she’d have give me more notice. I coulda cooked up some chicken-backs or somethin’.”

The simple resignation and acceptance and open-handed generosity in those words have haunted me for decades.

CARLISLE AND HER MAMA

Carlisle Emerson wrote for the paper. It defined her. She walked with a different walk than she would have if she’d just been Jimmy Frank’s wife, or Breedlove’s mother.

She was presumed to know more than she did, to have inside info on things that had happened or things that were gonna happen. She was thought of in a special way, somehow, for her inside track on social doin’s, on who just got out of the hospital or who had walked quietly out of jail on the hushhush on account of their friendship with Sheriff Cope Samuels.

And she was given a lot of credit for talents and knowledge she didn’t possess---her being able to put verb to subject and name twelve kinds of wedding-dress lace and nine ways to describe the same old church altar with the same old brass “accoutrements”---well, those just gave her a bit too much credit in other areas, such as life. But still, somehow, people looked up to her, just for her tiny bit of local fame---she got calls all the time, requesting a recipe, help with wording a letter, asking etiquette and even travel questions, because, you know, "She writes for the PAPER."

She was a quite attractive woman, with a short, shiny Hamillbob, WAY after Hamill had retired hers. Carlisle’s wonderful laugh, the not-obnoxious way she chewed her Doublemint, the way her two eyeteeth sat just a LITTLE way sidewise to her cuspids, giving her smile just enough of that charming little oddity which renders certain people almost magnetic---these all added to the charm of her presence.

She had a way of pausing in mid-snap, grinning in the levity of the moment, gleaming at you with an open-faced acceptance and eager look, giving you her full attention.

She wore pastels---pretty pantsuits from Goldsmith’s with pale, matching shells and her gold chain of 10 mm. gold balls, which Jimmy Frank always remembered to add to on special holidays and anniversaries, and her scent was always of mint, good shampoo, and just the teensiest hint of Royal Secret. She could be seen often in her garden, crisp-ironed shirt tucked into even crisper-creased shorts, hoeing and tending her roses just as she looked after the butterbeans and cucumber vines. She had calluses on her palms from gardenwork, and the beginnings of tiny fingerpad ones from typing on the same old Olivetti which she had lugged off to Ole Miss the day she left home for Freshman Rush.

Her Mama was in Golden Years, on the second floor---the one with keys for the elevator and windows with little grates on them; old Mrs. Breedlove thought she was nine again, and regularly tried to scoot out her window at night, to head for the long-demolished treehouse where she and her friends used to sneak off to polish their nails, tell long, complicated love stories featuring themselves and whichever movie star caught their fancy of the moment, and pretend to smoke, finger-waving Leo sticks and blowing airily skyward as their Mamas did. Once in a while one of the girls would sneak a cig from her Mama’s flip-up case, and they’d pass it around unlit, sucking in the acrid dry brown taste of a Kent or the cool throat-tingle of a Salem.

Mrs. B. had loved nicotine, any kind, any form, from the first drag on the first ratty old Camel she’d had the nerve to filch from her Grandpa’s couch-stash. She smoked, she put a little dip of Garrett between cheek and gum, and in her Grandpa's last days, long after she'd married and had Carlisle and her two sisters, she'd join Grandpa in a chaw of Red-Man now and then, after his emphysema got so bad he had to quit the Camels. She DID draw the line at spitting into the coffeecan, though---she wouldn't even touch it. She’d get up from talking to him, go into the bathroom, spit, flush, wash her hands, and return.

And her attempts on the window of her room had nothing to do with real escape or even her Alzheimer’s. When she was nine, she’d SMOKED, and she STILL wanted one, Dammit. And the wanting did not wane; her greedy-need sent her to that window in her gown every night, knowing that her friends were out there in the tree already, but there was no escape from either the craving or the Home.

She'd forgotten a lot of things: her preacher, her neighbors, quite a few relatives, her address. But she NEVER forgot Nicotine---she had gobbled it in every form for a great percentage of her life---great hungry drags on Camels, Kents, Marlboros; the trusty-dust of that capillary hit from the snuff in her cheek, the urge to swallow the addictive, copious juice of the hunk of RedMan in her mouth. She'd had the dubious reputation in high school of being the only girl who could inhale the smoke from a cigar, and if she could have made a pot of tea out of tobacco, she'd have drunk it right down.

ALL THE KING'S HORSES . . .

Photos from the Internet

There's just something about this time of year that says "Eggs." Not just EGG-eggs, but fancy, gussied-up ones, with scenes and little woodland creatures and bunnies with MORE eggs featured prominently upon them. And Debra Lee Flowers used to make these eggs.
A bowl of sugar, a little food color in a bit of water, dribbled in and stirred vigorously just to dampen and tint the sugar all through, then the stuff was packed firmly into the halves of the plastic egg molds.
Wilton did a thriving business in all sizes of plastic ovals, and on several occasions, the beautiful little tableaux had humble beginnings in leftover L'eggs packages. A flat planing of the top to make the finished product fit together perfectly, a quick ploooomp out onto a cookie sheet, with half an hour in a low-low oven, and the rock-hard pieces could be cooled and put together with Royal Icing.
(Also purchased in powdered form from the ever-estimable Wilton Company, purveyor of such niceties as baking pans of every imaginable shape, paste color of uncountable rainbows, impossibly-cantilevered stands for soaring creations, and tiny staircases for marching wee bridesmaids up the sides of a wedding cake).

PHOTO FROM INTERNET

She made quite a few of the fancy eggs, and if she took them out when they were just SO from the oven, just at that perfect moment when the shells were hardened, and the centers still a bit damp, she could scrape out the middles and make the most enchanting little vignettes inside, like if Willy Wonka and Faberge' got drunk together one night on chocolate vodka.

And Humpty Dumpty---he was an experiment one year, for her own Easter centerpiece, and he turned out quite well, she thought. He was an ostrich-sized egg, a bright yellow, his bottom cut very flat, and had cute little ruffly arms and legs piped of frosting, just like the clowns on page 89 of the Spring book.

And the wall---oh, the wall. She had SO much patience then, and so many ideas---she later harbored the wish that she'd not squandered so much of it on geegaws like little villages and baseball diamonds, all made of sugar. If only she'd saved half of each for her later years, when patience wears thin and clever is hard to come by.

The wall, she thought, would be best constructed of cardboard---the bottom of a CornFlakes box seemed about right for forming the first one. She cut it about five inches from the bottom with an x-acto knife, flipping it upside down and making a perfect little perch for His Eggness. Then came the bricking.

A lot of frosting-smearing and smoothing later, she had successfully frosted the outside of the cardboard. A quick sprinkling all over with a good coating of red-tinted sugar, and the fun began: do you have any idea how crosseyed you can get, and how sticky, and how much you begin to HATE sugar, on a midnight when you've stood there making little skewer-tracks through frosting and RED sugar, marking off brick-shapes, even and squared and stacked as they should be?

But was at last done, and the setting-on of Humpty and the piping of his little arms and legs and facial features the last part---he wore a tiny Pilgrimish hat, of black construction paper, and a big smile, apparently not knowing of the crash to come.

And people saw it, and wanted one like it---she must have made about a dozen that year, and put the pictures into her album for future customers.

One year, the request changed a little---he was to be caught in actual FALL on a birthday cake. She worked out a way of tipping him backward and putting his little legs askew in the air, for the Birthday Boy, age four, had specified that he wanted him tumped over. And he wanted to supply the horses himself---with no mention at all of King's Men.

Debra Lee dutifully delivered the cake, only to watch the kid bring out about a dozen small green plastic cowboys-on-horses, a rearing stallion or two, several of his Weeblish farm-scene steeds, now missing legs or ears, and two of his sister's Little Ponies, one pink, one purple, and shorn bald of their girly manes and tails.

He went wild on that cake, on the smooth green icing with the neat "stone" path up to the wall, digging in those tiny hooves, those small chubby babyhood horses, those dainty little pony-feet. He scattered equine shapes with abandon and joy, making the little lawn into a hoof-scarred morass like Saturday afternoon at Churchill Downs.

The chaos on that cake would have put Wilton slap out of business, she thought as she drove away---a whole barnyard of mismatched horses plowing up great holes in the green turf, a Humpty-Dumpty with his butt in the air, and two embarrassed, naked Little Ponies sorta huddling shamefully in a corner, listing a bit to starboard.

There was way more decor than actual cake, but the Birthday Boy seemed smugly satisfied with the wreckage, though Debra Lee heard later at BTU that he'd gotten a day-after spanking for climbing up to the What-Not shelf where his Mama had preserved Humpty and the wall, and gnawing all the Royal Icing off the entire piece.

And Debra Lee swore off eggs forever, giving all the molds to her daughters for their sandbox.

And the little boy now works at PIXAR.

PAXTON PEOPLE V---HARLISS

Harliss MacIntyre had a bad reputation. She’d been known to steal boyfriends, flirt with other girls’ dates, and in later years, it was rumored that she’d met a husband or two at that little motel way up 61, being sure to get a room in the back section where their cars wouldn't be seen from the road. The old ladies gave her those up-and-down lorgnette looks, even at church, for the very air around her seemed tainted, somehow, as if she’d rubbed Sin on her skin instead of Jergens.

Harliss hit her forties with hairstyle wider than her skinny hips; she toddled through life in three-inch heels below her tiny Chic jeans, leaving Shalimar and whispers in her wake. And one of the wonders of a small town is that she just went where she pleased, and hardly anyone really ostracized her ---life went on for Harliss despite her inglorious reputation. She played bridge, she attended Sunday School and Training Union, she was On The Board of Homeroom Mothers at the Private School. A few eschewed her company, and those were either wives wronged by her or another like her, or their Mamas, whose grudges would outlast Time itself.

She’d grown up with the same crowd all of her years---most of her high school classes consisted of people she’d started Kindergarten with, and if she’d been in the backseat with almost every senior boy---well, that’s just how she WAS. There was no need to make a big public THING of it, unless you considered the boy YOURS. And, it emerged, there were more of those than met the eye for a long time.

When she herself married, she made eleven trips to Memphis and Jackson and two to New Orleans, to find just the perfect wedding dress. It was taste and not tact which caused her to choose an ivory gown rather than white---it fit her like a glove---indeed like a SURGEON’S glove, clinging to her small frame and accenting her already-enhanced bosoms like a Barbie dress. Harliss had had work.
Perhaps that’s where the idea started. Perhaps there was never an idea at all. But when some of her longtime friends invited her to a “Nostalgia Tea” and a lot of the décor was from their childhoods, a joke---human or cosmic---came into being and resounded for counties around.

Nobody ever claimed the incident, though it was whispered far and wide; nobody admitted to choosing the party favors or setting the tables. Nobody took credit for the concept or the crime; it just WAS, and as appropriate a gesture of contempt as it was occasion of immediate titters and then parking-lot and ladies’ room guffaws, with eye-wipings and nose-blowings and other unseemly doings which accompany a good hearty hang-onto-each-other laugh.

Why, Alida Jameson and Charlotte Ann Armstrong both squeezed into one stall in the ladies' room, whooping and hollering, and Alida's Mama's Lilly Dache' hat from her honeymoon fell right into the toilet---it being lidless and all. Those hundred silk flowers (just like one worn by Miss Jennifer Jones in a movie, and from Goldsmith's) emerged dripping and draggled, and it took DAYS for it to dry so she could give it back.

This was a “wear gloves and hats” occasion, with a group of perhaps thirty ladies gathering for a lovely tea at the country club. Pastels were the order of the day, with flowers on each table-for-eight, and a silk-rose-twined lattice behind the speakers’ podium, as well as a pink ostrich plume on the registry pen.

Pastel boas draped each chair, every placecard was done in the most beautiful calligraphy, pink tablecloths abounded, and every rose-covered teapot that could be borrowed was in evidence.

But the pieces de resistance were the beautifully-dressed Barbie dolls, fondly remembered by one and all. They sat saucily on each plate, atop the folded napkin, and, as is the nature of the Mattel line, they sat flatly, with their feet outstretched in front of them for balance. They wore costumes from all decades---capris and ball gowns and swimsuits and cocktail dresses, and much OHHH and AHHH was heard throughout the room.

At Harliss’ table, the one nearest the entrance, with her place and her place-card prominent to view as each guest entered to find her own place---at that particular place setting, Barbie wore a cute, flippy mini-dress---quite stylish and attractive.

EXCEPT, somehow of them all, Harliss’ Barbie had lost her balance, and had toppled backward---so that when the ladies arrived, there sprawled Harliss’ Barbie on her back with her legs in the air like a goalpost in pumps. And she was wearing a thong---an item, I am sure, which has not appeared in any fancybox doll wardrobe meant for children.

How one would go about making a thong out of embroidery floss, as I later heard that it was, is beyond me. But somebody had, and that's the only thing which seems to take the occurrence from accident to planned.

But someone, or something greater than them all, had played the perfect joke on Harliss, who laughed as loud as anybody.

FROGGY WENT A-COURTIN'

I’ve been humming “Froggy Went A-Courtin’” this morning, since I sang a few lines to our Baby Girl as we were playing earlier. Later when she was being entertained by the good offices and characters of Sesame Street, I did a bit of folksong research and found that the original thought is credited to a song in Scotland in the 1540’s. “The frog rode up to the myl dur.” I have no idea what business a frog would have at a mill, unless perhaps he had a taste for some nice weevil stew, but a myl dur certainly would open to reveal lots of Mousies, both ladies and gents, as they lived and nibbled and gnawed at all the wonderful grain in the mill.

The song was embellished to tell the tale of the unlikely courtship in 1611 English balladry, and it made its way to America with the pilgrims, spreading to the far corners of the country by settlers, pioneers, miners and explorers. It took hold as mainly a Southern song, and is still sung around Scout campfires and in silly church-party skits and at all sorts of children’s gatherings.

We’ve sung it on long road trips and at weenie roasts, and one night, with voices bellowing the words, the energetic gestures of several little boys threatened to fling the blazing marshmallows right off their sticks. Cub Scouts especially love belting it out (for the umpteenth time) whilst sardined into a station-wagon with a harried driver.

My favorite memory of the song is from a Delta wedding I attended many years ago. The groom was a talented musician and a member of a popular quartet at college, and the four guys secretly did a wonderful arrangement of the song as a surprise for the bride at the reception.

They sang one beautiful number as the bride sat and blushed and smiled, and after the applause, they began the Froggy song a capella, and sang about twelve verses, some of which I’d never even heard. The story took on the charm of Cinderella’s being dressed by little birds, as a happy moth tended the tablecloth and a ladybug served whiskey in a water jug, and went on from there, including the Wedding Supper of “Three green flies and a blackeyed pea.”

The four splendid voices modulated to a new key between several of the verses, swinging WAY up in runs and scales, and everyone was just captivated by the charming concert. I’ll always think of my friend’s lovely wedding surprise whenever I hear that wonderful old “Southern” song.

BON ANNEE, Y'ALL

On this day before the last day of 2009, I thank you, each and every one, for dropping in on the sparse communication here---next year will have more substance, more attention, as we start to populate Paxton, Mississippi, with some people we've all known---the schoolmates who grew up to be exactly who they were in fourth grade; the ones who blossomed and surprised us all, the old friends and neighbors who made us who we are and revel in our successes, weep for our pain.


Sis and I know these people, from our hearts, as we've lived with them and by them and down the road from them, and had dealings of all sorts with them in everyday things, in celebrations, in sorrows, in outrage and hilarity and comfort and travail. I think of them every day, those folks who are still alive in my heart and in my mind---old ladies of sweet, gentle Spirit like Miss Dovie, and the ones of sharp words and sour grimace; gentlemen of the hat-lifting sort, and those who sit heedless down to eat with John Deere caps shading their plates.

There's Mrs. P.T., who undressed in the beauty shop, and Mrs. Martindale, whose prize-winning dahlias were her reason to live. Miss Hazel of the drugstore, who married in her sixtieth year of maidenhood, and Mr. Pellum of the round-bellied, courtly Dickens sort, whose guinea hens and gold-crested chickens were coveted and prized around the county. There's Mr. Keene, whose talents at the Singer were the envy of seamstresses far and wide, and whose open-windowed Bach at the Hammond caused rough-dressed huntin' fishin' neighbors to pull up chairs on their lawns to drink in the music. There are the four Jenkins girls, whose glorious voices made your heart leap and your own voice exponentially better just by proximity.

Biddy, the long-feathered little rooster, who was raised indoors on hardwood floors and who invaded the neighbors' chicken yard to their distress, and cats and dawgs and a pet crane and a turtle bigger than a dinnerplate who lived in the kitchen of a quite nice family and went for walks down the block.

There are people and there are folks who live in Paxton---and I hope next year will start to bring the town to life and give them substance and voice. And if you're interested---we hope to see you in the New Year.

I hope you warm and well and happy as we turn this corner, this leaf, this calendar page to new and wonderful things.


rachel

DYED IN THE COTTON

Amazing pictures of cotton by Janie at Southern Lagniappe.

This is double-posted from LAWN TEA, but of all the subjects I've covered about the South, this one seems to belong HERE, as well.

One year ago today, I hesitatingly sent out my first post, into the ether of the Internet, with no expectations that I can think of. Each day’s little remembrances or anecdotes or recipes or family tales were just put OUT THERE, with no idea of how far-reaching this medium is. And each day, people have looked in---the names of cities have scrolled across the counter, with the familiarity of old friends and the exotic ping of new, exciting places. And several real friendships have come of this---I count my readers and followers and commenters and e-mail friends as a great blessing.And today is also Post Number Three Hundred.

So I pondered for a subject to befit my heritage and my raising and the home I lived in for so many years. And there’s no doubt, it has to be Cotton. And Janie's post this week on Southern Lagniappe, her wonderful photographs of the fields of home, so familiar and so far away, was the deciding factor---a sign, so to speak, when she offered any and all, to illustrate this story.

In the Delta where I’m from, you can turn in a complete circle, your eyes on the horizon, and you see trees. No matter what distance, from close, see-the-bark, count-the-leaves, to a dwindly wisp of greenish mist at ground level far, far in the distance---you see the woods. There’s something so comforting about that---even the placid hills and the far-reaching prairies, the majesty of mountains and waves bursting on rocky shorelines cannot match the secure feeling of being surrounded by a forest, somewhere. It’s like our own secret garden wall, immense and constant, and it is embedded in our history and our beings. And always, on the landscape---the cotton fields.

I loved looking out my front door in Mississippi---I love the process of it, from the primal scent of first turning, to the flying dust as the planters roll like growling beasts over the land, to the vista of the tiny "turtles" as the sun-seeking leaves peek out, glimpsing the sky for the first time. They have an odd way of coming up through that dense Mississippi gumbo, aiming for the sky, and the little periscope lifts up a half-dollar-sized solid flat lid of dirt; for a few days, each long row does, indeed, seem to have a horizon-reaching line of baby turtles, marching their way to the woods.Then there's the greening, as the fields take on a tinge, then definite delineations of those long, symmetrical rows, growing higher and higher, until the blooms unfurl purple---I think of them as "hollyhocks with jobs" in their purpose and their definite usefulness. And the dainty-fringed little bishop's-hat bolls, which grow, ripen, and then burst with their fluffy hatchlings. The long vistas of green change to brown, crisping stalks and thorny hawk-talon barbs, guarding their treasure like Sleeping Beauty's hedge.

The days of drag-a-sack for $4 a hunnerd are no more---the people have gone from the old silver-glazed cypress tenant houses which dot the land, and the battered old houses stand witness to another time, but certainly not a gentler one. Cotton was higher then, in stature, if not in value---head-high-to-a-hand was a common measure, as the crop sometimes topped six feet, and as the drying came, the brambly rows were all but impenetrable. But the workers persevered, making their way through the thorny forest day after day for scarcely the price of their grits and lard. They barely made a livin’ and it sure wasn’t living. And machines tend the crops now, from first turning to harvest.

The great beasts are unleashed once again, to blunder over the fields, trampling the scratchy stalks and sucking up the clouds of white into that immense cage, into huge round bundles like convoys of blue-tarped gypsy wagons encamped in the fields. Thence to the gins, which seed and comb and bale, and on goes the crop to whenever and wherever---for the most comfortable clothing there is.

The process of growing and harvesting and ginning and selling and brokering and spinning and weaving and dyeing and sewing---I've been in on quite a lot of the procedure; cotton kept our lights on, kept our fridge and freezers full, and pretty much tended to our welfare, as we tended the fields. Even the aftermaths---counting up those green tickets, with the almost-illegible scribing, adding the pounds and the amounts, calculating the wages and all the other usual paperwork---that old yellow formica kitchen table was often laden with the grimy, gin-grease tokens of the growing and the labor and the gain.

Oh, the prayers and the wishes for rain, or for the incessant rain to stop; for the mud to dry enough to get wheels in the field; for enough hours in the day to plant or tend or defoliate or pick---many a midnight "lunch" I've delivered to the sweaty, grime-covered or damp or shivering workers in the fields, out there with picker-beams lighting up the hazy, dust-billowed landscape like some great gathering scene in E T.

Driving up to a "stoppin' place" with the old woody wagon's tailgate laden with all the hot stew and biscuits or bean soup and cornbread and big urns of coffee, or an afternoon's heat modified by the arrival of a trunkful of chilly watermelons, ready for plunging thirsty mouths and hot faces into, or a big dishpanful of "strawberry shortcake"---several angelfood cakes or just-cooled cake layers, torn into bits, tossed with fresh-cut, sugared strawberries, and a couple of pints of cream whipped into a gallon of snowy fluff, all folded together into a luscious redpinkwhite-striped confection---occasionally the guys would pass right by the stack of bowls and stand around the pan with their spoons, their mugs of strong black coffee one-fingered ready in the spare hand. They came to the meal, exhausted from their since-daylight labor, looking like a troop of just-emerged coal miners, their faces etched with grime and cotton-dust and wisps of stem and leaf---the only clean spots the goggle-covered area around their eyes and that telltale white circle of "farmer's halo" where their caps preserve the pale skin from the hot Delta sun.

Cotton has been a mainstay of my family since I can't remember when. It's a magical, none-like-it plant---the green stems growing their tight green-fringed fists, known as "squares," which turn into flowers; the flowers drop, for the bolls to emerge, and then Summer's heat and rain call forth the growth and the splitting and the burst of down-soft fiber, older than memory and more comfortable to wear than the finest silk. The miracle of seed and growth are one of the great wonders of the world, and I'm especially thankful for those fat furry seeds which go into the dirt like dead stones, rise up with blooms sweet as roses, then butterfly-burst into the miracle that is Cotton.

Dyed-in-the-Cotton Delta girl, that's me.