I've long thought fall is my favorite season, as this was busiest for my dad and family in my growing up years. As the daughter of a man who was a second-generation cotton-gin operator and -buyer, there was constant activity from early August until late November. My dad spent months in preparation for this time of year, working up in the blistering heat up under the 'fry an egg' hot tin roof of the gin house. Hoping he had done all he needed to do to have smoothly running equipment when the first trailer load of bright white, freshly picked cotton came down the dusty dirt road to the Quitman Gin Company.
Living in a rural area, in a family that was completely dependent on the whims of nature and seasons, my early years were very much oriented around farmers in south GA and north FL producing an abundant crop of cotton. His/our livelihood depended on. There were times he would operate the gin equipment around the clock seven days a week. Sneaking off for a few hours of sleep in the wee hours on top of bales of cotton stacked in a warehouse. Making an appearance at home just long enough to take a shower, eat a meal, and return to work... for days and days. Hot, sweaty, dirty, exhausting work.
Looking back, to a different time, I realize it was even then, the basic law of supply and demand. He had to be there, ready to work and provide the service, when the men with the product came with their demands/need to have the cotton fibers separated from the seeds, and baled for sale. After the cotton was compressed into bale, wrapped and secured, ready for market, he would store it in his warehouse. Then serve as the middleman to get each bale evaluated, the best price offer, and arrange for shipment to markets for mills to transform into thread, yard, string, rope, The Fabric of Our Lives.
I asked him once, in the year or so before his death in 2000: if you could do it all over again, what would you do differently? He said he loved the work of being a cotton gin owner. It was such hard, physical work, I was so surprised. I would have expected him to say he enjoyed other things: being the director of the local housing authority, sitting in a cool office, making decisions, solving problems, handling government business. Maybe his years in the Army, serving his country during the War to End All Wars. Or his time as commander of the local National Guard unit. Possibly even his retirement years when he had the time to do whatever he wanted, travel, puttering in his backyard workshop, tend a vegetable garden, sit, relax in the shade drinking a beer, thinking with no schedule, no urgent business. My mom used to say 'he is happiest when something is broke and needs fixin'. An inveterate fixer of things: the kind of guy who would spend twice as much time into organizing the process, planning the steps in his head as he would actually take to facilitate the actual repair. In another era, he would have qualified to be a Professional Tinkerer.
But I was wrong. He surprised me with his answer. I had no idea he so enjoyed the hard physical effort required to operate a hugely complicated machine, in a loud, dusty, dirty, hot tin roofed building in the sultry humid August weather. He did it well, knew the equipment inside-out, and could take it apart and repair, make replacement parts from scratch and put it all back together again. Something he obviously was very capable at doing, and took a lot of pride in doing well.
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