Ms. Smith has published me twice on this page (2020 and 2022) and now granted a third and final “My Turn” essay. I state final in that my three siblings and I sold our 188 acres of dryland cotton this past September.
My great grandparents (Dad’s mother’s parents) George and Lucinda Nance had seven children. They left the four girls with 380 acres of raw land each in the Rio Grande Valley, South Texas. The three boys got livestock acreage (cows, sheep, goats), also in Texas.
Dad served in WWII in the U.S. Navy, in the Pacific. I say in the Pacific, as he was in the ocean 14.5 hours off Guadalcanal of the Solomon Islands in 1942 when his Mahan-class USS Preston destroyer was blown out of the water by enemy warship guns. Discharged in 1946 without much in the way of education or skills, somebody made the decision that he would farm the 380 acres belonging to him and his two sisters, who inherited from their mother. A deal was made.
At the time, he knew as much about cotton farming as he did on firing a 21” torpedo or Mark 12 5”/38-caliber gun when he enlisted in the Navy eight years back. With a new wife partnership, the first two years had good cotton yields — bumper crops in fact.
Texas’ drought of record ran 1950-1957, when almost all of Texas’ 254 counties were declared disaster areas. Our ambitious father had bought and financed more land. With yields next to nothing and notes due, he went under. He gave up farming for the bottle per his failure as a farmer, crumbling marriage and health issues. He died of liver disease in 1966, and mother hired out the land to a local farmer.
From much discussion since mother’s death eight years ago, my three younger siblings and I decided to sell the land to simplify our lives. Although I never worked on our farm, I worked plenty with cotton for others. I stomped, pitchforked in a stripper trailer, pulled a rood (my respirator was a bandana) and ran the trailer suction pipe at a gin. This was all hard and dirty work — no fond memories there.
But, anyway, after the sale, I felt the farm’s absence. I usually managed to tell people where I was from and that we rented our land for cotton farming. Another factor that affected my mindset was parting with land that was family-owned for four generations — a part of our legacy now no more.
As sort of Rx to treat the hollow spot of no longer owning cotton land, my wife Diane and I went to tiny Burton, Texas, in December. Burton is 85 miles northwest of Houston where we live, pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Founded after the Civil War, Burton grew and thrived like so many Texas towns when the railroad came through. Its population today is 350.
For those who may not know, Burton is the location of the oldest “operating” cotton gin in the country, as a museum today. It began operations in 1914 as a cooperative association of 113 local citizens (mostly cotton farmers) and has been at the same location 110 years. Steam powered the first 10 years, it converted to a diesel engine in 1925.
The 16-ton, 125 horsepower Bessemer engine is the largest of its vintage still spinning today. The gin ceased operations in 1974 and became a museum in the 1990s. New saw blades were installed in 2023 for the five stands. The museum cranks up “Lady B” at least monthly to keep it humming.
The Burton gin averaged 851 bales a season in its 61 years. Texans are a people of superlatives. Besides having the oldest functional gin in Burton, Texas also claims the most productive gin in the United States. The Adobe Walls Gin in the Texas Panhandle can process up to 3,000 bales a day.
The museum grows cotton in a very small patch on the premises. The facility gins and bales cotton once a year, as part of the annual Cotton Gin Festival each April. The museum is open six days a week. A lot of school buses show up during the school year. There are other interesting things to do in Washington County, so make it a two- or three-day weekend.
The state legislature in 2009 designated it as the official cotton gin of Texas. For more gravitas, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the Smithsonian Institution, National Trust for Historic Preservation and National Register of Historic Places all recognize the museum.
The town had its annual holiday season arts and crafts festival the day of our visit. This we browsed as well as toured the museum and gin. This was my first visit to Burton, at age 75. We plan to attend the spring event in April when picked cotton will be deseeded and baled.
The vintage cotton gin visit was effective in giving some closure to selling our land. As to the future, my cotton tie-in will be continuing to favor natural cotton fiber for clothing, sheets, towels, etc. Nothing new there.
— Dean Fisher
Houston, Texas
bdeanfish@gmail.com