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Cotton
by Ted L Glines
“When them cotton bolls get rotten
you cain't pick very much cotton
in them ole
cotton fields back home.
It was down in Louisiana
just about a mile from Texarkana
in them ole
cotton fields back home.”
Harry Belafonte sang it. The lyric writer needed a lesson in geography (that would have been the longest mile he ever hiked). But this song wrapped up southern Arkansas history in a nut-shell. Small towns. Big hopes. Cotton.
The year is 1952. The town is divided between Baptists and Methodists; the division is a study in friendly competition. The Methodists keep winning their annual baseball game and that sets the Baptists' teeth on edge. Money is the major division and, one way or the other, it is all about cotton.
Let your mind picture endless expanses of white, mostly unpainted farm houses and barns dotted among the fields, dirt roads linking them to the cotton gin in town, and here and there a rickety wooden bridge crossing the many small rivers and streams. That fits the summer picture. Come mid-October, under leaden skies, you might see wide expanses of flood-waters covering most of those cotton fields, and farmers' debt rose with the water.
There were those who were merchants, and those farmers who owned their land outright. They had the best chance of having a break-even year, and a few even made a profit. Most of the cotton-farmers rented their land, thus incurring an annual debt before other major expenses such as buying seed and fertilizer, and keeping their old farm equipment running. Farmers that rented their land only hoped to break even each year (if the creeks did not rise). On the lowest rung were the share-croppers who kept only half of the gross income from their crops; the other half went to the land-owner. These share-croppers had the worst of the bottom-lands (first to be flooded), and they were tolerated as “poor white trash” by the towns-folk.
Seeding, fertilizing, and weeding the growing cotton fields was a family affair, but no family was numerous enough to harvest the cotton when the bolls came ripe. When picking time arrived, two kinds of people came looking for work. First, there were the “hill people” who arrived from the Ozarks, typically large families packed with all their goods into an old truck. Their truck would be bursting at the seams with excess household goods bagged and hanging from the sides of the vehicle. Then, from down south, would come the Mexicans, dozens of them packed like sardines in truck or trailer. Each of the Mexicans would be carrying a small bag of basic survival gear. Usually, one of the Mexicans would be proficient in English. Once hired, these groups of pickers would set up their own camps somewhere too close to the farmer's house. For half of the year, while the crop went through three possible pickings, each farm resembled a chaotic ghetto. The “hill-people” could be counted on to be loud, messy, and rude. The Mexicans, mostly, seemed to be gentle folk who kept to themselves. Both groups, however, were very hard workers because they were paid according to the weight of the cotton they picked each day.
Telephones were not widely available, unless you lived in or very close to town. Electricity waited for lines to be strung out to many of the outlying farms. If you had electricity, you likely had a Motorola radio where evenings saw the whole family gathered to listen to Edward R. Morrow tell you nothing you needed to hear about the Korean War, and the men and boys hung on every play as the Cardinals lost each game. Hardly anyone had their own TV. Indoor plumbing was not common on these farms. Well-water and outhouses were the rule of the day. During picking time, when the farm was over-populated, you planned ahead to get your turn in the outhouse. Sometimes you went in the bushes.
Town. Painted houses owned by merchants. The two churches. The grocery store and a post office. The Co-op which often doubled as a feed & fuel. Maybe a small cinema. And the Gin. Women tended to gather in the grocery store, with more time spent on gossip than on buying the essential flour, salt, sugar, and coffee. Flour-sacks, with their stripes and floral designs, were destined to become new shirts. Farmers grew their own vegetables and butchered their own meat, supplementing this with hunting and fishing when there was time. Gossip was Queen; a marriage, a new baby, latest news about sons of farmers who were away at war. The rare birth of an illigitimate baby would fuel the gossip-mill for months. A crime of any kind would rule the roost and would likely be blamed on the share-croppers or “hill-people.” Men and boys congregated at the Co-op, where they would worry each other to death forecasting rain and floods, or griping about the Cardinal's dumb manager. Bragging had its place, too, as did creative lying. Having satisfied themselves in these regards, the men would purchase needed parts for ailing tractors or trucks. If it was a Saturday, kids would be parked at the Cinema for a movie, a news-reel, and popcorn and a Coca-Cola while their adults took care of business and socializing. Church, of course, ruled Sundays, except for most of the share-croppers. The farmers even brought their “hill-people” and Mexicans to church services. Usually there was someone who would translate the sermon into Spanish, but sometimes the “translation” varied off into widely differing personal favorite topics. Undoubtedly the most important building in town was the Gin. Huge and frightening equipment sucked the cotton out of each laden trailer and converted this mass into burlap-covered bales bound with steel straps. The farmer was paid by the weight of his load. This would pay the pickers and maybe allow a few pennies per pound in “profit.” It was always a struggle toward paying down the outstanding debt owed from the prior year. At $2.50 per gallon, not many farmers could afford to paint their houses.
One might get the idea that The South was all about racial issues. I suppose it mattered where you lived. One of these farmers traveled by bus, stopping at the Greyhound Bus Depot in St. Louis, Missouri, where they saw a family of “Negroes.” They had never before seen such a strange thing. When they arrived back home, this event rated top billing at both the Co-op and the grocery store.
(~Recommended: “A Painted House” by John Grisham)
Crime Wave
by Ted L Glines
Bowie County is about as far east as you can go and still be in Texas. As of the census of 2000, there were 89,306 people, 33,058 households, and 23,438 families residing in the county. Most of these people (some 67,000) live in the City of Texarkana. The population density was 101.00 per square mile.
There were 33,058 households out of which 33.00% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 52.00% were married couples living together, 15.00% had a female householder with no husband present, and 29.10% were non-families. 26.00% of all households were made up of individuals and 11.10% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.50 and the average family size was 3.00.
In the county, the population was spread out with 24.80% under the age of 18, 9.40% from 18 to 24, 29.60% from 25 to 44, 22.40% from 45 to 64, and 13.80% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 36 years. For every 100 females there were 101.80 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 101.00 males.
The median income for a household in the county was $33,001, and the median income for a family was $41,108. Males had a median income of $31,883 versus $21,439 for females (oops!).
The following crime data, provided by the Bowie County Sheriff's Office, was reported in the Bowie County Citizen's Tribune, 18 April 2007. It covers arrest book-ins at the Bi-State Justice Center during the week of 8 April -14 April 2007. Seven days.
Assault with Bodily Injury - 3 arrests.
Bond Forfeiture Forgery - 1 arrest.
Bond Surrender - 3 arrests.
Bond Surrender Forgery - 1 arrest.
Bond Surrender Possession of a Controlled Substance - 1 arrest.
Bond Revocation - 1 arrest.
Burglary of a Habitation - 1 arrest.
Capias warrant - 2 arrests. (*)
Child Support warrant - 1 arrest.
Credit Card Fraud - 2 arrests.
Driving While License Invalid - 1 arrest.
Driving While License Suspended - 1 arrest.
DWI - 3 arrests.
Interference with Railroad Property warrant - 1 arrest.
Miller County (Arkansas) warrant - 1 arrest.
Possession of a Controlled Substance - 1 arrest.
Possession of a Controlled Substance warrant - 1 arrest.
Probation Sanction - 4 arrests.
Probation Violation - 6 arrests.
Probation Violation warrant - 2 arrests.
Theft - 1 arrest.
Theft by Check - 1 arrest.
Theft by Check warrant - 1 arrest.
Traffic warrant - 1 arrest.
(*) A Capias warrant is when the subject has a guilty judgment either through court appearance, plea, or arraignment in jail, then fails to pay the fine within the required time period.
A grand total of 39 arrests recorded for a whole week in Bowie County, Texas. What a crime wave! And only three of those arrests resulted from violent acts (fights). Probation Violations/Sanctions were the crimes of choice, closely followed by Bond Surrender/Revocations. Theft/Fraud only accounted for five arrests during this seven-day period.
In Anaheim, California, we would have had 39 arrests booked in before 7 PM (any day)! And most of them were related to violence and drugs. Grady Morrison can tell you about police life in Baltimore City (if you have not read his book, shame on you). Friends in the LAPD have said that they “lost the war on crime years ago,” and all they are trying to do today is simply complete their assigned shifts (hoping to go home safely).
If you know someone who wants to be a cop, be sure to tell them about Bowie County, Texas. It is so nice to live in an area where cops can be friendly with citizens.
Life is good!
Spade Cooley
by Ted L Glines
Way back in the "Grand Ole Opry" days, Donnell Cooley (AKA Spade Cooley) was a star in the country music circuit, playing his soulful fiddle. He wrote such famous songs as "Orange Blossom Special" and other classics. Spade rode the high road of music popularity. But all was not well in his personal life. In his tight celebrity circle, everyone knew the story. Spade did his best to deny the rumors and cover up what he knew was happening. Spade was known for being easygoing, but he was a man. Spade did make a wrong choice.
Spade was in prison in California. Perhaps, because of his Star status, they decided to house him at the California Medical Facility (CMF) at Vacaville, CA. I know that I was very fortunate to have met this man, and he was a good and gracious friend to me. Spade hand-built my first guitar and taught me to play it. We had many talks and he was always uplifting, except when his daughter had written her hateful letters to him. Those were very bad times for Spade. Having gotten a little bit ahead of the story, here's what happened:
“In 1945, Spade Cooley & His Orchestra's first single, "Shame on You," lasted nine weeks atop Billboard's country charts. The first in an unbroken string of six Top Ten singles (including "Detour" and "You Can't Break My Heart"), "Shame on You" would remain Cooley's theme song for years to come. Also in 1945, he married his second wife, Orchestra backup singer Ella Mae Evans. A heavy drinker, Cooley descended into alcoholism as his career declined, and he suffered a series of minor heart attacks. Furthermore, he was facing financial ruin as a result of problems with a planned water theme park to be located in the Mojave Desert. In 1961, his wife Ella Mae left him; after an argument on April 3, he stomped her to death while the couple's 14-year-old daughter Melody looked on in horror. The resulting trial, a media circus during which Cooley suffered another heart attack, culminated in a sentence of life imprisonment. Throughout his term, he was a model prisoner, and thus was allowed to perform at a sheriff's benefit in Oakland, CA, on November 23, 1969. After playing in front of a crowd of over 3,000, Cooley returned to his dressing room, suffered yet another heart attack, and died.” ~ Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide.
That was from the official news release. Now, here's the “rest of the story.” I was one of the CMF hospital attendants. Spade had an opportunity to go out to do a benefit performance at the Oakland Coliseum. I did the vital signs workup on Spade that day. His skin was pale, his lips were blue, his pulse was light and thready and too fast, and his blood pressure was way too high. Not a good profile. Spade knew this would be his final performance. So did I. But there was a choice -- to die in a prison hospital cell -- or to die doing what he loved to do best -- on stage. I think Jesus would have made the same choice. I wrote up a perfect vital signs profile for Spade, got the Medical Technical Assistant to sign it, and we sent Spade on his way.
At the Oakland Coliseum, that night, Spade Cooley did his first set, playing his famous fiddle to make you cry, and then he went backstage for a few minutes break.
Someone came out onstage and yelled, "Is there a doctor in the house?" The crowd all thought it was part of the stage show. Some of them laughed. Great entertainment.
It is difficult to write this because I am ... (but grown men don't cry ...). Backstage in his dressing room, Spade Cooley had suffered his final heart attack and he had gone to be with The Lord. I really believe that, while in prison, Spade had made his peace with God. Besides, as much as Angels like to sing, they certainly need a good fiddle player.
Apparently, Spade's family knew about me because they later sent me a promo photograph of Spade with his famous grin and that fiddle in his hand. Somewhere, Up There, Spade is playing "Orange Blossom Special" and making the angels cry.