Scott Whitby, 2023
Me and Daddy hoed cotton every summer, all summer. He took eight rows, I took two. He stayed ahead of me and I was always losing ground but he'd wait at the end. He would get the weeds I missed on the way back. He would point that out but never seemed mad unless I cut down a cotton plant.
He'd take ice water. He always took the first drink then would make me drink. I didn't like drinking after him because he chewed tobacco and I could smell it on the spout. The water was so cold it hurt to swallow. I don't ever remember being thirsty but I don’t ever remember having to sit out either.
It was so hot. Cotton doesn’t grow near shade. But the hot was not as bad as the humidity. I didn't know what humidity was then but I knew when the air was wet that your sweat wouldn't dry and you were more miserable. I also knew wet air wasn't satisfying to breathe.
The hoe itself still makes me mad, fifty years later. Daddy would sharpen the hoes when we first got to the field and again at lunch. I hoed barefoot and it would cut my toes. The handle put blisters on my hands. Sweat and dirt would grind into the sores. He said it would make me tough and I felt better about that.
Hoeing cotton was painful. The blisters hurt but at least they'd make me tough. The dirt burned my bare feet until the cotton got big enough to make shade. The worst pain, though, was my neck where it curved to meet my back, right where the biggest bone sticks out. I know now it was from looking down so long but you have to look down to hoe.
We hardly talked. I'd ask questions and he'd answer but would not elaborate. I remember asking how the weeds could make when we hoed them out every year. He said cockleburr seeds could sit in the dirt for seven years before sprouting. I pointed out that he'd been hoeing cotton for sixty years and how could that be? He said you never get done.
As bad as hoeing cotton was hoeing the garden. Daddy "let" me do that at the end of every day after we quit hoeing cotton. When I once declared that I hoed it yesterday, he said to just pull a little dirt up around the plants. I knew there was no use in making any sense of it because you never get done.
Today, cotton farmers don't hoe cotton. They don't have hoes and don't have any weeds. It's not because people like me and Daddy finally got the last one. They don’t even hoe their gardens. They have chemicals. If we'd had chemicals then, I'd be a farmer today...one with no hoes.
I think Daddy genuinely enjoyed hoeing cotton. I never heard him complain about it and he never seemed necessarily happy at the end of the day or the summer. I think he liked that painfully cold water and sharpening hoes. I think he was paying the price to make me a man and he knew I couldn't get in bad trouble in a cotton field.
I wish I could hoe cotton with him again. I think I would enjoy it.
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