Photos

Angie and I are on the road for a couple of days. This morning we are in Kennett, my old home town. This afternoon we'll celebrate my grandmother Zenith's 95th birthday. I'll snap some pictures and post them after we get back to Tennessee. I first wanted to get a few posted from the past couple of days.



The cotton harvest is in full swing and there aren't too many bolls left on the stalk. We pulled off of the road near sunset and caught a great view of a field that will probably be plucked clean by the end of the weekend.



I come from farming ancestry and though I never met my grandfather, I've been told many times that he would have quickly fired anyone who left as much cotton on the stalks as the modern machinery does. My father's family all grew up picking cotton by hand and stuffing it into sacks.



That was long gone by the time I was old enough to work on the farm so yes, I drove a tractor a bit for summer work as a young teen. I have great memories of playing for hours in the big cotton trailers. It was unbelievably hot to tunnel down through the tons of cotton these giant baskets held. It was probably a little bit dangerous too, but we spent hours doing it.

Those cotton trailers are ancient history as modern cotton delivery methods use what can best be described as a giant trash compactor to produce modular bails wrapped in plastic that neither weather nor child can penetrate.


Click on any of the images for a larger version. These are pretty big pictures so it might be painful if you're on a dial-up connection.



The other pictures are a few I took in the yard Thursday morning before our Irish guests, John Carty and Francis Gaffney, hit the road. I'm afraid when we return home most of the leaves may be washed away by wind and rain.

¶ 11:07 AM