This is my personal story about picking cotton.
I went on the internet to find out about the history of picking cotton and found so much total bull shit that I decided to write this blog. I was born in Bakersfield, California and I picked cotton in different areas of Kern County. In the fall of 1948, I was picking cotton on a Saturday. We only picked cotton for about 6 hours on Saturday so that we could go to the movies in the afternoon. I often picked cotton after school for as much as two hours to make a little extra money. The cotton fields came right up to the city limits and I had a 24" bicycle that I used to ride to a field where they were picking. I took my cotton sack to school with me and tied it onto my bicycle. According to the internet, the cotton sacks were made of burlap. I can tell you from experience that they were not made from burlap. It was canvas that was easy to pull down the cotton row. The cotton was not in the form of "lint", it contained cotton seeds that were the source of most of the weight. I never pulled a sack with more than about 75# of cotton in it and it was not too difficult to slide along the ground.
I enjoyed cotton picking and looked forward to the season. Picking cotton was "piece work" where they paid you based on the pounds of cotton you picked. Back in 1948 it was 3-1/2 cents a pound, not the 25 cents for a 100 pounds that is in the internet. As a third grader going onto forth grade later in the fall, I was able to pick 200# on a Saturday. For that I got paid $7.00. I took that money and put it into my savings account at Bank of America along with my money from my war bonds. By the time I was 12 years old, I had saved over $2,000,
Think about this. Back in 1948 a gallon of gas cost about 15 cents. That means that I could buy 47 gallons of gas. Look at today with gas at $3.60 per gallon? Now it would take $169 dollars to buy that same amount of gas. Remember we are talking about a 8 or 9 year old kid being table to buy that amount of gas by working just 6 hours!
For the record, I don't want to hear or read about anyone who was discriminated against because they had to pick cotton. I can tell you that it was not a big deal. Even my mother picked cotton along side me as well as my grandmothers. The only reason that I stopped picking cotton was that I moved away and new automatic cotton pickers could pick the cotton cheaper.
