About all I have heard recently is people complaining because nowadays school and football practice start so early in the year--with some of the hottest weather of the summer still to come. ‘What's the cotton-pickin' hurry?" one of receptionists here at St. Barnabas exclaimed, using her favorite expletive. [Wow, I thought--the perfect subject for a timely PCN column!] Certainly the academic year has drastically changed--creeping backward--since my time at PCHS, some say a nation-wide trend toward an eventual twelve-month academic year.

It wasn't the rush to start the school year, however, that captured my attention; it was the use of ‘cotton-pickin'’ as an adjective. When I was young, ‘cotton-pickin'’ was usually used as a noun, referring to the four weeks beginning in late September or early October (whenever the Powers that Were decided the cotton was ready to be picked) when Conasauga, Old Fort, and Ocoee schools were closed so that everyone could help in the cotton harvest. In order to do that, those schools had to start four weeks before all the others--and remember, in those days there were no air-conditioners, except perhaps a hand-held fan! That was a real ‘cotton-pickin' hurry"!

The "old Conasauga boy," Ralph Painter, and I reminisced about ‘cotton-pickin'’ a few days ago. Although I lived in Benton, I was always aware of "cotton-pickin'" for my Aunt Blanche taught until 1948 in the "lower end of the county," thus ending her summer vacation at the end of July. For Ralph, "cotton-pickin'" was, like Christmas and Thanksgiving, an actual part of his year. He remembers the heat of early August when his Conasauga School opened, having to go down the hill with a tin bucket to get water in those pre-plumbing days, and making little cups out of notebook paper so they could cool themselves with a sip of water! He also remembers picking cotton during the Depression and being paid--in those moneyless years--a half bucket of molasses per 100 pounds of picked cotton. Boll weevils. . the fluffy fringe of white along roads. . .cotton gins: everybody knew about those things, but now they are mostly in Polk County's past.

Historically and geographically, Polk County is unique in many ways. A great deal of cotton was and is grown in Middle and West Tennessee, but very little cotton has ever been produced in East Tennessee north of Polk County. We think the last cotton gin on 411 north was the Lowery Gin in Benton, between the creek and Miss May Belle Love's house. It operated until the mid-1940s. Marvin Lowery, Frank's father and Jerry's grandfather, had his major cotton gin in Ocoee, serving both Polk and Bradley Counties. In Conasauga the Davis Brothers had a major cotton gin, drawing much patronage from North Georgia.

I think that 1947 was the last time Polk County observed "cotton-pickin',' that being the last year (1947-48) Aunt Blanche was the principal at Ocoee. Understanding the economic reasons for the premature school starts at the beginning of her teaching career early in the century, by the 1940s she thought that the practice had outlived its value and that the four-week early start and then the disrupted school session were burdens on most of the people involved. Disliking it as she did, she often darkly predicted (as was her practice) that the School Board would do away with it when she retired. Actually she taught on for a decade in Benton after leaving Ocoee, but by then "cotton-pickin'" was transforming from a noun into a colloquial adjective with a disparaging meaning, a colorful substitute for "darned" or something stronger, most often used in a flippant or teasing manner.

Anyone willing to share memories of cotton-pickin' or wishing to tell me I have made a cotton-pickin' factual error, please contact me at nowandthenbhm@msn.com or at St. Barnabas 4-B, 300 West 6th St., Chattanooga, TN 37402