I just got home from visiting my wife’s aunt and uncle. They are in their upper 70s. He told me about his daily requirement for picking cotton on the family farm when he was 6 years old. He asked me to guess. I guessed two pounds. I was very far off. He had to pick 50 pounds per day.
Right, by the time a boy (girls were cut some slack, but not much) was twelve years old, in good cotton, he was expected to be picking 200 pounds a day. The standard pay of $3.00 per hundred never varied over the years.
In 1960 wife and I got married at ten o’clock in the morning, we were back in the field by by noon and picked cotton until dark. That night father-in-law bought us our wedding dinner, a foot long chili dog at the Log Cabin drive-in. We left a month later and have never looked back to where we were born and raised.
Last year we celebrated out 50th wedding anniversary. In the video when retaking vows, one can hear Elvis make me promise I won’t make wife pick cotton for the rest of the day. (sister had told him the story)
http://hstrial-rchambers.homestead.com/Our-50th-wedding-anniversary.html
Video (may take a while to load) : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGrDyM5-RJs&feature=player_embedded