“When you have finished chopping this row, you can come in and have some lunch”
It was grandmother speaking and the row was that of cotton.
Chopping cotton involved moving through the rows with a hoe and chopping down the non-cotton plants that are competing for water, nutrients and sunlight. Experienced workers can chop a row in little time at all, leaving only happy cotton plants in their wake. We children, on the other hand, took a very long time to chop a row.
Removing unwanted plants was not the purpose for having us little ones work in the fields. Working the earth along with the “help” was just something grandmother insisted on, just has her parents insisted of her and their parents insisted of them. The idea was to be reared with an appreciation for work and to learn to lead from the front. Did you ever notice how many of our military heroes hailed from the agrarian element of our society? There may be a good reason for that.
Hearing her words, the little boy looked up the row, the end of which could not be seen from his tiny height. Knowing grandmother to be a woman of her word, he fell into despair, tears mixing with dust and burning his eyes as he thought to himself “this will take all day, I am doomed!”
The hot Texas sun was unrelenting, but the boy pressed on, re-focused on the task, forgetting about lunch, forgetting about the certain starvation that would be his demise. Accepting his fate, he soldiered on. Defending the noble cotton from the enemy plants, he removed one interloper after another. On and on he fought heroically for what seemed to have been the better part of the day.
Then it happened – the end of the row. No more enemy plants, no more row to hoe.
Wiping the sweat from his little forehead, just like the grownups, he took a moment to lean on his hoe and admire his work. Tossing the hoe over his shoulder he marched triumphantly back up the row, between the cotton plants as they waved appreciation to their champion.
Cleaning the hoe and placing it back in the tool shed, he washed up and arrived in the kitchen for lunch.
It was 11:30 am, still morning.