How Not to Invest in King Cotton
Copyright Terry Turner
Originally this was part of a letter to my family regarding the financial crisis of 2008-2009 that, for the record, I feel is a moral and ethical and societal crisis masquerading as a financial crisis.
We are now threatened by another depression, mainly due to the loss of our factories and many outsourced jobs culminating in the recent crisis. No matter what you may think, the ability to create something real is the key to wealth whether it is a steel widget or a line of code, the real tangible things are what can be translated to wealth; slicing and dicing financial instruments and setting up indices for gambling purposes may enrich a few folks here and there but for every person enriched someone must lose. Such dealing does not enrich the country or the average citizens of the country in the same way that good nut and bolt manufacturer would.
The Great Depression had receded in some parts of the United States but the depression of the thirties lingered for years in many parts of the southwest United States. It was very much a reality for my family at the time of this story, which it seems to me, was about 1942 or 1943. All of the family members are now deceased, except me, so factual confirmation of the date is beyond my reach.
Cotton was one form of real wealth at the time of these events; but King Cotton was in trouble even though the feared and hoped for mechanical pickers were only about ten years down the road, the synthetic monster was conceived and about to rise up.
Joe Turner, my father, really my grandfather but that is a different story, faced with a series of losses spanning the Great Depression and afterwards was considering investing in a picked cotton field in order to leverage the family out of indentured servitude.
Dad told mom, Annie Turner, that he wanted to sell their remaining furniture, beds, kitchen, and all in order to raise money to purchase the "leavings" of a large cotton field that had already been picked (or pulled).
Dad felt there was enough scrap cotton in that field that, when gathered by the family, would net the family enough cash to get them out of the cotton fields where the Great Depression had landed them. Our particular tribe, at that time, consisted of Mom, Dad, Dot, and Ollie and, of course, me. Our brother, Buddy, the oldest boy, was in far off Egypt fighting Nazis. So with four and a half pickers we could cover a lot of territory quickly. Mom had made me a small cotton sack which I could drag along. My particular job, as the smallest, and certainly the youngest, was to be the “digger” I would gather cotton that had fallen on the ground---every visible particle. I remember it was a huge field. I was standing in the back of a wagon when Dad showed it to me and it ran on forever, stretching to the horizon in all directions, at least so it looked to me.
Annie agreed to risk it. They sold everything except one of Mom’s trusty iron frying pans and one heavy bean pot with a good lid---these two instruments became the sole source of our family treasure for a long, long time. I remember Mom talking about the loss she felt watching the mattresses and kitchen table go out the door and knowing that we would soon be vagabonds camped under a tree and she would be trying to cook on her knees by a smoldering camp fire.
Our entire household goods inventory could not have been much --- remember we are not talking about Emperor Jahan’s Taj Mahal, nor even a small palace. The household goods, if I can recall them, consisted of a very small iron wood burning stove and its hardware, a kerosene fired cook stove on tall legs; two iron bedsteads --- we got to keep our sleeping pallets, a small kitchen table with four or five chairs with rope bottoms, I think I recall Mom’s another chest or table of sorts, and three or four odd chairs---nothing upholstered by any stretch of the imagination. A few pots and pans, and two or three lamps of the kerosene variety that had a sort of pie plate reflecting apparatus attached, and a radio that had a rather large battery. Our “goods” were rounded out by a large iron pot for hog boiling and washing clothes; two or three large washtubs. We had no bathroom, of course. There was a traditional tree stump outside the door with a large enamel wash basin on it and, not far off, the traditional privy of the era. Winter and summer we washed up al fresco and, in the winter that fresco was pretty chilly. There was no icebox, no freezer, no television or anything of an electric nature… all those electric wonders and things like cars, for our family, were still years away from the cotton fields of West Texas. In those fields poverty was king, and the “colors” of his kingdom were not white, black, or brown. The color line was very clear and determined by who pulled boles and who picked the cotton and who did not pull or pick. No black child was any blacker than I at the time.
I could sense that we were hopeful and fearful; hopeful for better times and places but certainly fearful of losing our roof and four walls. To my young mind the idea of moving under a tree seemed worrisome to say the least. And, on deeper level I could sense the fear, apprehension, and unknown concerns that could be felt but that were not expressed by the rest of the family. The furniture sold, in my memory, as a single lot to a fellow with a wagon. We helped him load the wagon and our home, barely filling his wagon, trundled away westward bound, around sunset.
Dad handed over the cash price to the owner and, for a brief time, a month or so, owned all rights to the scrap cotton in that particular field. I think the field belonged to Mr. Rice and I think it was near Goree or Munday, Texas. Wherever located, it was a long way from anywhere. I do recall there was a large boulder near the little shack we lived in. I suppose it was too big to blast away. I used to climb up on it and, stretching to stand as tall as I could to see as far as possible, I saw nothing at all in any direction except the endless cotton fields that flowed away in all directions.
That evening, carrying our few possessions, we moved under a tree on the edge of the cotton field which we were going to glean the next day. Mom made red beans and cornbread over the campfire, and we went to "bed" lying on some of the quilts that she had insisted on keeping. You can guess we were plagued by apprehensive feelings
Not long after our supper, a huge storm suddenly blew in with high winds and driving hail. When dawn came, Mom and Dad peered across the vast field of cotton, the black leafless stalks marching toward the bleak horizon. Gazing across that vast expanse, they saw not one speck of white cotton. The storm, possibly a tornado, though it would have late in the year for tornados, had simply sucked up virtually all of the remaining scrap cotton and whirled it away. The despair was palpable.
Cold, wet, hungry, and totally without assets, you can believe that our little family felt very much like Job. No money, no home, no food, and nothing to hold onto except personal grit and one's belief in God.
Mom and Dad decided they would have to go different ways to hammer their way out of the situation. Dad, borrowed some money, I think a dollar or two, from Mr. Rice to "finance" the trip to Mom’s father, Charlie Whitsitt. After herding our little tribe over a period of several days to the Whitsitt family place in Oakland, near Shannon, Texas where at least there was some shelter and a caring family, Dad would set his sights on Fort Worth and its more hopeful economic atmosphere.
These days one can hardly imagine walking a hundred miles with three kids to feed ----remembering as well there were no convenience stores, no bathrooms, no where to rest, no hotels, no motels in the usual sense. just the bleak distance and miles to go and no visible help for mile after mile. Of course many people have walked much further and under worse circumstances. I remember none of this except what Mom drilled in my head later. As to memory, I am reconstructing this to the best of my ability, but I may be mixing and matching events; I can only assure you that this tale is just a typical tale of the times. I know that it was a long, long walk. I am sure it was more than a hundred miles from Munday to Jacksboro which was still several miles from Charlie Whitsitt’s place in Oakland, near Squaw Mountain.
Dad got us situated at Charlie Whitsitt’s, then walked on to Fort Worth where he somehow became a boxer and took enough beatings to earn some money before rejoining Mom. I do recall Dad telling me that he had quit boxing after seeing Joe Louis hit someone. I do not know if he actually saw Louis not. I can’t be sure if Louis was ever in Fort Worth or Dallas or fought there. I know Louis was with the military about that time and in Europe part of that time. I do recall that Dad was happy to quote Louis’ comment that “We’ll win because we are on God’s side” Louis also was widely quoted for saying "Lots of things wrong with America, but Hitler ain't going to fix them." I do know that something connected with Joe Louis put an end to Dad’s boxing career.
Sometime after Fort Worth, Dad worked in an ice house (they produced ice which, mainly was delivered by wagon to family iceboxes). Dad was able to get cheap strawberries at the ice house. Mom joked, later, that he fed her and the family on strawberries at one time for days on end and, for that reason, she has since always hated strawberries. The strawberries, as I recall, preceded Dad going to work in Wichita Falls for the old Fort Worth and Denver railroad. He became a fireman (stoking the boiler on the engine. He later was killed in a railroad accident during the course of which he saved the lives of some fellow employees by shoving them into the water tank while they and the entire train were engulfed in flames from a Phillips 66 gasoline transport. Dad and the truck driver were killed.
The only point to this story is that we are all survived disaster after disaster. Annie and Joe Turner’s genes and the genes of countless similar survivors are still in motion in you and in me and in all the similar children of such similarly hard pressed folks. We are also tough, we are also survivors. And we will all do what our fathers and mothers did before us. We will just suck it up, shave, and go to work. Get over it, get through it.
I think it worth mentioning something that Charlie Whitsitt, Mom's dad, told me when we were talking about chopping down trees. He was well known for being very handy with axes (there are many kinds and they all have a special purpose). We were talking about cutting down the iron-hard Bois D' Arc which is good post material. I was trying to help him chop trees for a fencing project. I had simply failed to make a dent in the tree assigned to me. Charlie was determined to enable me to use the axe effectively, an essential art of the day. He said, "…There's not much to it. Just keep your iron sharp. Strike that tree like you are going to cut it down with one blow. Then just keep hitting it. Keep hitting the same place. It will sure fall down. No tree is harder than the iron in your hand...”
And it wasn’t; I eventually knocked it and a good many others down.
None of us can escape the trials and misfortunes of our personal times or the generational issues that plague the times in which we live --- whether we are the sharecroppers or the Mr. Rices of the world, we all have our hands to play and the pain of one part may be greater than the pain of another part, but we all have a price to pay. Experience assures me that God equips us for the challenges we face and, as practitioners of our faith, we have nothing to fear.
What is the way out; what is the way through? Stick with your prayers, meditate, and stay as positive as you can --- this crisis will pass and life will normalize in some fashion even if you have to walk to Cow Town.
The real problem, it seems, these days, is that while we can survive and get through, at what will we arrive when we “get through?” Lately, our House of Representatives and our Senate are filled, with few exceptions, by a species of uncrowned kings, air head czars, and panjandrums by default, and self perpetuating elite that feel entitled to steal from the public trough. The American Republic is in shreds, what was called a Democracy has propelled itself into a sort of Socialist-Communist tag team and while an immoral Washington DC parties on, whoring on the body of Freedom and auctioning off our patrimony to the highest bidder.
As we watch chaos spreading and we see the lamp of freedom burning low, these are sad times, indeed, In the time of our fathers, this sort of thing could not have continued as they would have gotten the attention of the Congress with and pitchforks and singletrees (whiffletrees, for my Northern friends). The difference, I suppose, is that the immoral transactions and vile conduct are hidden from easy public view by looking-good television images which, like a magician’s hands, divert our attention. Now it seems that we look to television to tell us what to think instead of judging things on the bare facts.
Copyright Terry Turner
Originally this was part of a letter to my family regarding the financial crisis of 2008-2009 that, for the record, I feel is a moral and ethical and societal crisis masquerading as a financial crisis.
We are now threatened by another depression, mainly due to the loss of our factories and many outsourced jobs culminating in the recent crisis. No matter what you may think, the ability to create something real is the key to wealth whether it is a steel widget or a line of code, the real tangible things are what can be translated to wealth; slicing and dicing financial instruments and setting up indices for gambling purposes may enrich a few folks here and there but for every person enriched someone must lose. Such dealing does not enrich the country or the average citizens of the country in the same way that good nut and bolt manufacturer would.
The Great Depression had receded in some parts of the United States but the depression of the thirties lingered for years in many parts of the southwest United States. It was very much a reality for my family at the time of this story, which it seems to me, was about 1942 or 1943. All of the family members are now deceased, except me, so factual confirmation of the date is beyond my reach.
Cotton was one form of real wealth at the time of these events; but King Cotton was in trouble even though the feared and hoped for mechanical pickers were only about ten years down the road, the synthetic monster was conceived and about to rise up.
Joe Turner, my father, really my grandfather but that is a different story, faced with a series of losses spanning the Great Depression and afterwards was considering investing in a picked cotton field in order to leverage the family out of indentured servitude.
Dad told mom, Annie Turner, that he wanted to sell their remaining furniture, beds, kitchen, and all in order to raise money to purchase the "leavings" of a large cotton field that had already been picked (or pulled).
Dad felt there was enough scrap cotton in that field that, when gathered by the family, would net the family enough cash to get them out of the cotton fields where the Great Depression had landed them. Our particular tribe, at that time, consisted of Mom, Dad, Dot, and Ollie and, of course, me. Our brother, Buddy, the oldest boy, was in far off Egypt fighting Nazis. So with four and a half pickers we could cover a lot of territory quickly. Mom had made me a small cotton sack which I could drag along. My particular job, as the smallest, and certainly the youngest, was to be the “digger” I would gather cotton that had fallen on the ground---every visible particle. I remember it was a huge field. I was standing in the back of a wagon when Dad showed it to me and it ran on forever, stretching to the horizon in all directions, at least so it looked to me.
Annie agreed to risk it. They sold everything except one of Mom’s trusty iron frying pans and one heavy bean pot with a good lid---these two instruments became the sole source of our family treasure for a long, long time. I remember Mom talking about the loss she felt watching the mattresses and kitchen table go out the door and knowing that we would soon be vagabonds camped under a tree and she would be trying to cook on her knees by a smoldering camp fire.
Our entire household goods inventory could not have been much --- remember we are not talking about Emperor Jahan’s Taj Mahal, nor even a small palace. The household goods, if I can recall them, consisted of a very small iron wood burning stove and its hardware, a kerosene fired cook stove on tall legs; two iron bedsteads --- we got to keep our sleeping pallets, a small kitchen table with four or five chairs with rope bottoms, I think I recall Mom’s another chest or table of sorts, and three or four odd chairs---nothing upholstered by any stretch of the imagination. A few pots and pans, and two or three lamps of the kerosene variety that had a sort of pie plate reflecting apparatus attached, and a radio that had a rather large battery. Our “goods” were rounded out by a large iron pot for hog boiling and washing clothes; two or three large washtubs. We had no bathroom, of course. There was a traditional tree stump outside the door with a large enamel wash basin on it and, not far off, the traditional privy of the era. Winter and summer we washed up al fresco and, in the winter that fresco was pretty chilly. There was no icebox, no freezer, no television or anything of an electric nature… all those electric wonders and things like cars, for our family, were still years away from the cotton fields of West Texas. In those fields poverty was king, and the “colors” of his kingdom were not white, black, or brown. The color line was very clear and determined by who pulled boles and who picked the cotton and who did not pull or pick. No black child was any blacker than I at the time.
I could sense that we were hopeful and fearful; hopeful for better times and places but certainly fearful of losing our roof and four walls. To my young mind the idea of moving under a tree seemed worrisome to say the least. And, on deeper level I could sense the fear, apprehension, and unknown concerns that could be felt but that were not expressed by the rest of the family. The furniture sold, in my memory, as a single lot to a fellow with a wagon. We helped him load the wagon and our home, barely filling his wagon, trundled away westward bound, around sunset.
Dad handed over the cash price to the owner and, for a brief time, a month or so, owned all rights to the scrap cotton in that particular field. I think the field belonged to Mr. Rice and I think it was near Goree or Munday, Texas. Wherever located, it was a long way from anywhere. I do recall there was a large boulder near the little shack we lived in. I suppose it was too big to blast away. I used to climb up on it and, stretching to stand as tall as I could to see as far as possible, I saw nothing at all in any direction except the endless cotton fields that flowed away in all directions.
That evening, carrying our few possessions, we moved under a tree on the edge of the cotton field which we were going to glean the next day. Mom made red beans and cornbread over the campfire, and we went to "bed" lying on some of the quilts that she had insisted on keeping. You can guess we were plagued by apprehensive feelings
Not long after our supper, a huge storm suddenly blew in with high winds and driving hail. When dawn came, Mom and Dad peered across the vast field of cotton, the black leafless stalks marching toward the bleak horizon. Gazing across that vast expanse, they saw not one speck of white cotton. The storm, possibly a tornado, though it would have late in the year for tornados, had simply sucked up virtually all of the remaining scrap cotton and whirled it away. The despair was palpable.
Cold, wet, hungry, and totally without assets, you can believe that our little family felt very much like Job. No money, no home, no food, and nothing to hold onto except personal grit and one's belief in God.
Mom and Dad decided they would have to go different ways to hammer their way out of the situation. Dad, borrowed some money, I think a dollar or two, from Mr. Rice to "finance" the trip to Mom’s father, Charlie Whitsitt. After herding our little tribe over a period of several days to the Whitsitt family place in Oakland, near Shannon, Texas where at least there was some shelter and a caring family, Dad would set his sights on Fort Worth and its more hopeful economic atmosphere.
These days one can hardly imagine walking a hundred miles with three kids to feed ----remembering as well there were no convenience stores, no bathrooms, no where to rest, no hotels, no motels in the usual sense. just the bleak distance and miles to go and no visible help for mile after mile. Of course many people have walked much further and under worse circumstances. I remember none of this except what Mom drilled in my head later. As to memory, I am reconstructing this to the best of my ability, but I may be mixing and matching events; I can only assure you that this tale is just a typical tale of the times. I know that it was a long, long walk. I am sure it was more than a hundred miles from Munday to Jacksboro which was still several miles from Charlie Whitsitt’s place in Oakland, near Squaw Mountain.
Dad got us situated at Charlie Whitsitt’s, then walked on to Fort Worth where he somehow became a boxer and took enough beatings to earn some money before rejoining Mom. I do recall Dad telling me that he had quit boxing after seeing Joe Louis hit someone. I do not know if he actually saw Louis not. I can’t be sure if Louis was ever in Fort Worth or Dallas or fought there. I know Louis was with the military about that time and in Europe part of that time. I do recall that Dad was happy to quote Louis’ comment that “We’ll win because we are on God’s side” Louis also was widely quoted for saying "Lots of things wrong with America, but Hitler ain't going to fix them." I do know that something connected with Joe Louis put an end to Dad’s boxing career.
Sometime after Fort Worth, Dad worked in an ice house (they produced ice which, mainly was delivered by wagon to family iceboxes). Dad was able to get cheap strawberries at the ice house. Mom joked, later, that he fed her and the family on strawberries at one time for days on end and, for that reason, she has since always hated strawberries. The strawberries, as I recall, preceded Dad going to work in Wichita Falls for the old Fort Worth and Denver railroad. He became a fireman (stoking the boiler on the engine. He later was killed in a railroad accident during the course of which he saved the lives of some fellow employees by shoving them into the water tank while they and the entire train were engulfed in flames from a Phillips 66 gasoline transport. Dad and the truck driver were killed.
The only point to this story is that we are all survived disaster after disaster. Annie and Joe Turner’s genes and the genes of countless similar survivors are still in motion in you and in me and in all the similar children of such similarly hard pressed folks. We are also tough, we are also survivors. And we will all do what our fathers and mothers did before us. We will just suck it up, shave, and go to work. Get over it, get through it.
I think it worth mentioning something that Charlie Whitsitt, Mom's dad, told me when we were talking about chopping down trees. He was well known for being very handy with axes (there are many kinds and they all have a special purpose). We were talking about cutting down the iron-hard Bois D' Arc which is good post material. I was trying to help him chop trees for a fencing project. I had simply failed to make a dent in the tree assigned to me. Charlie was determined to enable me to use the axe effectively, an essential art of the day. He said, "…There's not much to it. Just keep your iron sharp. Strike that tree like you are going to cut it down with one blow. Then just keep hitting it. Keep hitting the same place. It will sure fall down. No tree is harder than the iron in your hand...”
And it wasn’t; I eventually knocked it and a good many others down.
None of us can escape the trials and misfortunes of our personal times or the generational issues that plague the times in which we live --- whether we are the sharecroppers or the Mr. Rices of the world, we all have our hands to play and the pain of one part may be greater than the pain of another part, but we all have a price to pay. Experience assures me that God equips us for the challenges we face and, as practitioners of our faith, we have nothing to fear.
What is the way out; what is the way through? Stick with your prayers, meditate, and stay as positive as you can --- this crisis will pass and life will normalize in some fashion even if you have to walk to Cow Town.
The real problem, it seems, these days, is that while we can survive and get through, at what will we arrive when we “get through?” Lately, our House of Representatives and our Senate are filled, with few exceptions, by a species of uncrowned kings, air head czars, and panjandrums by default, and self perpetuating elite that feel entitled to steal from the public trough. The American Republic is in shreds, what was called a Democracy has propelled itself into a sort of Socialist-Communist tag team and while an immoral Washington DC parties on, whoring on the body of Freedom and auctioning off our patrimony to the highest bidder.
As we watch chaos spreading and we see the lamp of freedom burning low, these are sad times, indeed, In the time of our fathers, this sort of thing could not have continued as they would have gotten the attention of the Congress with and pitchforks and singletrees (whiffletrees, for my Northern friends). The difference, I suppose, is that the immoral transactions and vile conduct are hidden from easy public view by looking-good television images which, like a magician’s hands, divert our attention. Now it seems that we look to television to tell us what to think instead of judging things on the bare facts.
One can hope that some morning soon people will begin to ask of Washington D.C., “never mind what you said, what did you actually do?” Then, perhaps, we, like Joe Louis, will be on God’s side.
------------------------------------------------------
Emperor Shah Jahan described his Taj Mahal in these words
Should guilty seek asylum here,Like one pardoned, he becomes free from sin.Should a sinner make his way to this mansion,All his past sins are to be washed away.The sight of this mansion creates sorrowing sighs;And the sun and the moon shed tears from their eyes.In this world this edifice has been made;To display thereby the Creator's glory.
------------------------------------------------------
Should guilty seek asylum here,Like one pardoned, he becomes free from sin.Should a sinner make his way to this mansion,All his past sins are to be washed away.The sight of this mansion creates sorrowing sighs;And the sun and the moon shed tears from their eyes.In this world this edifice has been made;To display thereby the Creator's glory.
------------------------------------------------------
P.S. Let the record show that Lewis Jernigan, Himself, roaming the Red River Valley amongst the remaining Wichita and Kickapoo Indians, viewed the industrial activities associated with picking cotton and pulling boles with great reservation, industrial arts that were, no doubt, beneath the purposes of a future Captain.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Your skin can look and feel better, instantly, guaranteed
No comments:
Post a Comment