Cotton Fields

They can't dig what they can't use, should just stick to themselves, there'd be much less abuse.- Lynyrd Skynyrd

My music career began when I was 23, on a small stage in the community building in Monroe, AR. I stumped onstage (leg was in a cast you know) and sang "In Them Old Cotton Fields Back Home."

All the recent brouhaha over cotton and images/displays of cotton has caused me to wonder if some of us have too much spare time.

But this is not about that.

Memories.

Whether your daddy farmed or not, if you grew up in the South (and maybe if you didn't) you have memories of cotton fields.

Some of us picked cotton. Some of us played in the cotton trailers, jumping off the sides to sink waist deep in the white fluffy stuff. Maybe you were one of the folks who pulled over next to a field of cotton and had someone snap your picture while you stood out in the middle of it. We actually had one family knock on our door and ask that we take their picture standing in the field. We did.

And the smell. I can't see a picture of a cotton field without remembering the smell.

One more memory. Maybe my fondest.

Somewhere there exists a picture, taken by my mom, of my three oldest girls and their cousins baled off into a cotton trailer full of cotton. And the expression on their faces is priceless.

How could you not smile at that?