Turning wheels and cotton fields

By Tony W. Cartledge

BR Editor

When I was a boy, I liked the song about "them old cotton fields back home." There wasn't really much cotton still being grown around my hometown in those days, but I do recall seeing big cotton bales stacked up at the old gin, and I remember when they tore the place down.

I count my blessings that I never had to suffer the trials of picking cotton: my field hand efforts were limited to the grunt work of hauling hay and bagging oats on the back of a combine. Even so, I get sentimental when driving through boll-bursting fields of the South's most memorable crop. Maybe it's in my genes.

That's one of the reasons I always welcome invitations that involve traveling to northeastern North Carolina in the fall. The flat, rich fields there grow everything from grains like wheat, oats, and milo to root crops like peanuts and sweet potatoes. I enjoy looking at all of them, but I'm happiest when riding through a big patch of cotton fields.

These days, cotton bales are the size of tractor-trailer trucks, and farmers line them up in the edges of their fields, with the top half of each bale covered by a tarpaulin that helps to hold its shape and protect it from the rain.

On Oct. 18, I gladly visited the Sandy Run Baptist Church in Roxobel, where the West Chowan Association meeting was being held.

Driving up U.S. 258, on either side of Scotland Neck (home of the state's most unusual downtown parking lot), I passed rows of giant bales covered in bright yellow, orange, red, and blue tarps, lined up like candy-coated marshmallow bars beside the fields.

It was quite a sight. Even more, it was a welcome opportunity to ride in silence, to breathe the country air, and to reflect on what a big and wonderful world God has given us.

I can really cotton up to that.