Motor Cooking & Other Reflections
I began scouting cotton in 1978 after my dear grandmother saw an ad in the local newspaper soliciting cotton scouts to work for the Phillips County, Ark., Cooperative Extension Service. After working there for three...
Ray began checking cotton in 1949 as a college student. After we married in 1952 and he served in the Navy for two more years, Ray set up a consulting business and started knocking on doors. Franklin Parish was...
As a youngster, I grew up hand picking cotton on a small, family cotton farm in Lawrence County, Ala., during the late 1940s and 1950s. Cotton was our primary crop. It paid the bills and purchased a new...
After many years of being asked by One Grower staff for a My Turn article, I relented and will try to give you readers some things to ponder.
I spent my career as a research entomologist with the University of...
When it comes to working in the cotton industry — and cotton ginning in particular — you either immerse yourself in it, or you just get a little wet and move on. I would be one of those “immersion”...
In the Central Valley of California the name Gallian is synonymous with cotton and the cotton industry. It all started with Quentin “Tennessee” Gallian building one of the first gins in 1950, known as Visalia Co-Op Cotton Gin.
Pa, as...
Although I was not raised on a farm nor from a farming family, I always loved animals, especially cows and horses. I considered myself a cowboy and planned to major in pre-veterinary medicine when I started college at the...
Sixteen years ago, I was a college student at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, two hours away from my family’s cotton and peanut farm on the Texas Rolling Plains, searching for long-term significance – and a part-time job.
As I...
My Favorite MARtian
This essay is a brief description of the contributions to cotton farmers made by my major professor, mentor and friend, Luther S. Bird, Ph.D., professor of genetics and of plant pathology, Texas A&M University, College Station. Dr....
I grew up on a farm in Louisiana and have been involved in agriculture my entire life. Serving as state vice president and president of Future Farmers of America (FFA) while in high school and college set the course...
It surely must be those indelible moments etched in youthful memories that somehow mold or guide us toward what we eventually become. For me, it could have been that family friend I visited often in McComb, Miss., on what...
When I was invited to write this column, I was asked “to tell some stories of things, people and events you may have encountered through your career.” Quite frankly, some of those stories are best told and not written.
I...
The hardest part of writing this story is that even though I can remember it like yesterday, it happened 38 years ago. Well, at least the first part of it did. This recounting will attempt to set straight a...
Sporting a faded, floppy-brimmed fedora, Aunt Blanche would lay on the horn of her bob truck even though my older brother, Mike, and I were waiting for her on our front porch. We grabbed our new 9-foot-long Bemis Blue...
One of my first memories was the arrival of my brother, Tom, in the summer of 1968. I was not quite 2 years old, but somehow it sticks with me. Growing up in Belzoni, Miss., provided a great environment...
