Cotton Choppin’ Dude

A few years after my father turned me over to Jaybird, the straw boss on his Mississippi Delta cotton farm, and instructed him to teach me the value of hard work, I began developing an attitude the old black man simply would not tolerate: stubbornness.

“Boy, yo’ stubborn nature gwine git you in a heap o’ trouble when you reach manhood, but not iffen I kin do sumpin’ ’bout hit,” Jaybird said, as we headed out early one morning for another long day’s work. “Shoot —you’re just confusing stubbornness with persistence,” I snapped sassily. Mulling over my comment for a moment, the man who became my boyhood best friend and mentor said, “Puhsistince? Why, you don’t eben know what dat word means. Remember what I said de other day when we wuz choppin’ cotton? I said, ‘Boy, you jes a dude choppin’ cotton; I’m a cotton choppin’ dude, because I got what you ain’t got: puhsistince.’ Tell you what — startin’ tomorrow, I’m gonna give you a chance to show off all dat puhsistince you claim to have.”

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At 5:30 the next morning, I crawled in his pickup. He brought along three items for me: a hoe, a file with a corncob for a handle, and a water cooler. 

We drove in silence to a field that Dad had re-planted. When we rolled to a stop, my clothes were already sticking to me in the rising heat and humidity. 

 “This is yo’ field,” Jaybird said. “Dem cotton seedlins’ is way too thick. Hit’s yo’ job to thin out evuh row.” With that, he drove off. Shading my eyes, I looked across the 40-acre field. Jaybird’s thinning instructions were precise: Save the seedlings that look to be the healthiest; leave no less than one and no more than three plants to the hill; space the hills about eight inches apart — roughly the width of the hoe blade. By my country-boy calculations, 440 rows had to be chopped, all of them about a quarter of a mile long. If they were put end-to-end, I’d chop the equivalent of 110 miles — in blistering sun, with nobody to talk to all day! It was an occasion for some serious soul-searching. Should I run away … or should I prove I am persistent, not stubborn? I gritted my teeth, clutched the hated ignorant stick, and bent to my task. 

 I cannot recall how many hot days passed before I finished that field, but finally I did, and I’ve never forgotten the immense sense of accomplishment that flooded over me when I sharpened my hoe and began working my way down the final row. Once again, that beloved old black man had taught me a lesson that has served me well ever since: 
The habit of persistence is the habit of succeeding. Jaybird pulled up as I was chopping out the last few cotton seedlings. Looking at me proudly, he said, “Well, boy, you not jes’ a dude choppin’ cotton — you is a cotton-choppin’ dude.”