Cotton Gin

I drove over to Charlie’s Truck Stop this past week to get some gas in my tank and to pick up a few grocery items. I’ve been having an annoying summer cold and I’ve found that a warm serving of chicken soup just before going to bed helps fight a cold off better than just about anything I have ever tried, so while Jake was putting gas in my car’s tank I went on inside the store and grabbed a few cans of soup off the shelf.

When Jake came in I set the soup on the counter along with a box of crackers and a container of detergent. Jake asked if that was going to be all and I told him I’d be back later for more things I need when I felt more like shopping. I just wanted to go home and fix my soup and go to bed. Jake grinned and said he had a cold last week and he tried some new cold medicine that just came in. It was good stuff and his cold was gone the next morning. He pointed it out to me over in the over the counter medicine section. I told Jake I might try it if the soup did not do the trick, but for now I wanted to give the soup a chance. Jake shrugged and began adding up the cost if my items along with the gas for the car. The total came to less than forty dollars.

As I was paying Jake, Mister Johnson came through the back door and walked up to where I was standing with my little bag of groceries. Jake asked if Mister Johnson had found the problem and Mister Johnson grinned and said the old equipment was back to running as good as ever. I asked what Mister Johnson and Jake were talking about and Jake said the old cotton gin across the road had developed a mechanical problem and Ricky Turner, son of old man Bob Turner who owns the gin, had come over to ask Mister Johnson’s advice about getting the problem fixed. Mister Johnson had gone back to the gin with Ricky and looked over the old machine and discovered the cause. It had required him about an hour and a half of work with a wrench and a screw driver to fix a connection that had worn loose and the old gin was running back good as new.

Mister Johnson said he had recommended Ricky order a new piece to replace the connection he had repaired because it was old and worn ant would likely break down again soon if it was not replaced. I was frankly amazed that Ricky had come to ask Mister Johnson about the gin. I do not know Ricky very well, though I am casual friends with his father. Mister Johnson said he worked with Bob Turner running the old gin in season back when he was a young man. Bob was the man in the front office seeing to the business end and settling up with the farmers as they brought their wagons of cotton in from the fields and Mister Johnson was the man who kept the machinery running.

I was fascinated by this story. I thought I knew Mister Johnson pretty well, but here was a whole new part of his past I had no knowledge of. Jake laughed and said Mister Johnson is a man of many talents. I wanted to know how Mister Johnson had come to be involved with the cotton gin. Mister Johnson had picked himself a Baby Ruth candy bar from the display near the cash register and he gave Jake a dollar bill for it. Jake returned change and Mister Johnson started for his place over by the pot belly stove.

“Gonna be having to fire this stove up here pretty soon,” Mister Johnson said as he took his customary chair. “It’s beginning to smell sorta like fall in the air outside.” Mister Johnson made himself comfortable and finished off his candy bar, then he picked up that old piece of pine he is always carving on and got out his pocket knife. “I was making the first money I ever made by helping out picking cotton. That was back when there wasn’t no machines to do the work. Folks had to go down the rows of cotton with a big sack strapped over their shoulder and pick the cotton from the stalk by hand and put it into the sack. After a couple seasons I got so I was pretty good at it. I don’t suppose I was making a lot of money for the times, but I enjoyed the work and I liked what the farmers paid me. I would ride in the wagon to the gin and watch as those big suction tubes pulled the cotton up out of the wagon to be processed. I would go into the gin and watch the machinery work. I always did like mechanical things.

“While I could keep pretty steady work during season, there would be times when I couldn’t find any work picking, so I took to hanging out at the gin to ask the farmers coming in if they needed any help. Old Bob Turner was running the gin at the time and he told me if I was going to hang around and take up space, I might as well be of some use, so I started doing work for him at the gin. The next year Bob came to me and said he could use my help full time at the gin. He would be needing my help to get the equipment running long before the cotton farmers started bringing their cotton in and there would be work to do after the last wagon load of cotton had passed through. It seemed a good idea to me, though I thought I might miss being out in the open fields a bit. The work was steady and I was a quick study with that gin equipment. Me and Bob came to be good friends and I worked for him in some of his other business operations when the gin was closed down.

“When I came back from the war, I bought in with Bob as a partner in the old gin and then I went in with him in opening a farmers’ supply store in Corinth. Later on, I bought Bob out of the supply store, then some years later I sold the store to a man from Tupelo, but I’ve never sold my interest in that old gin. I think maybe I hold on to it because of sentimental reasons. It was the first business I ever had ownership in. Besides, that gin is so old by now, I’m about the only man in these parts that still understands how to keep it running.”

END