Life lessons learned from pickin' cotton

[underpants]

Last edited Sat Apr 26, 2014, 01:04 PM - Edit history (1)

1. HATE picking cotton. Really need to find a way to get out of this.
2. Having assessed the financial situation that I have subscribed to I doubt I will be able to parlay this into adding chickens and a garden to my portfolio let alone actually achieving #1.
3. Can't imagine how being whipped while doing this could possibly help in any way.
4. Need to explore alternatives to current life coach who is clearly a sundried old coot.

[Rockyj]

1. Singing while picking cotton doesn't mix!

It gives the impression I love my job.

[upaloopa]

3. Remember the Disney movie "Song of the South"

Uncle Remus singing "zipadee do da zipadee day"

[dipsydoodle]

5. Jump down , turn around............

'50s UK skiffle here :

[immoderate]

2. The whipping is there to improve your ATTITUDE!

You need to get with the program.

--imm

[underpants]

6. The beatings will continue until morale improves

[Warpy]

4. Think about picking cotton with no bandaids or antibiotic cream

Hands were first lacerated and then infected. The lash was undoubtedly to make them think of ways to make horribly swollen hands pick more cotton.

Mechanized agriculture was a blessing in many ways, but most especially when it came to picking cotton, bolls separated from their sharp casings at one end and bales rolling out at the other.

It's gotten to be quite chic among fiber artists to grow a few cotton plants in the back yard and in pots on the deck or balcony. 'Scuse me if I've had an acquaintanceship with cotton that discourages me from joining them.

[underpants]

7. Oh boutique cotton pickin'

Can you imagine doing it 10 hours a day every single day?

In "Food Fight" I learned that the sharecropping system is still the way cotton is harvested in this country as well as others.

[Warpy]

8. Well, the picking season isn't that long

which is the only good thing about it.

Cotton's one of the few crops a sharecropper can grow that will pay him enough to bother growing it.

[Lars39]

18. Or pay him enough to pay off the bank loans he took out to live on.

I still have the bank notes and paperwork from when my grandparents picked cotton as sharecroppers.

[Warpy]

22. It was no life for sissies

It was a completely miserable institution that preyed on people who had grown up farming, lost their land to debt incurred during bad years, and wanted to keep farming instead of heading to a city for a factory job.

My own family didn't end up sharecropping because they always gravitated toward skilled trades. The ones with farms lived in upstate NY, where dairy farming can succeed but not much else. They took up sailing and just came home to the farm for R&R. The women oversaw what little farming could be done.

[Cracklin Charlie]

12. Also remember that...

Before they ever got around to actually picking the cotton, they had to prepare the field, sow the seed, tend the young plants, chop the weeds from around the plants all summer long (almost as backbreaking as the picking), and prepare the equipment and logistics needed to bring in the harvest.

It's amazing to really think about the horrible, evil lengths men will go to, to produce a bit of fashionable cloth.

Bundy's disgusting.

[blkmusclmachine]

9. ,

,

[Skittles]

10. "sundried old coot"

[Cracklin Charlie]

13. The media guys, cameramen and such,

Sent by Sean and the bunch, may have been the first black people the sundried old coot has laid eyes on this month.

Bless his dessicated heart.

[Skittles]

20. it is glaringly obvious the man has never really known any black people

for entertainment value, a reporter needs to ask his feelings about homosexuality; he could tell us all about "the gays"

[TxDemChem]

11. Hmmm, work as a chemist (which I love) or pick cotton?

Damn, that's a hard one...

[adirondacker]

15. That's like the choice between Breaking Bad and Breaking Back!

[TxDemChem]

16. I literally Loled on that comment

[adirondacker]

17. My work on DU should be done...

If I can get a Chemist to LOL.

[TxDemChem]

19. What can I say? You went there with breaking bad.

And did it wonderfully! Not the usual chemist/breaking bad old jokes I'm used to hearing. You made my day!

[Skittles]

21. I had to google that

when I think chemist, I think of an English pharmacist, but I see you are in Texas

[ThoughtCriminal]

14. Tried it once

in what turned out to be a VERY educational student field trip.

If hard work was the secret to wealth, Cotton Pickers would be the top .01%.