“Well, son, we have no choice but to accept what the Lord gives,” my mentor and lifelong best friend said, as we sat on his front porch that late fall day, staring forlornly at un-harvested, rain-soaked cotton fields. Mississippi Delta folks could not recall such heavy rainfall when it was more devastating. The old black man and I nurtured that crop from spring planting throughout the growing season, but now those long sunup-to-sundown days of toil seemed all for naught.
When harvest began in September, the yield averaged three bales of lint per acre. My brother managed harvesting, Jaybird and I ginned it, and Dad oversaw the whole operation. With fifty crops behind him, he knew this was destined to be an outstanding year. Then in early October, heavy rain set in and never stopped. Well we knew that if Mother Nature provided a chance to finish gathering, the yield would drop to less than half its original potential, and fiber quality would be so low that just breaking even would be a miracle.
Jaybird’s unflinching optimism
Somehow, the farm stayed in business, but still, bad weather seemed determined to put its people in the unemployment lines, especially when spring planting was piecemeal, under anything but ideal conditions. As always, Jaybird’s unflinching optimism strengthened me: “Son, when a year starts off this bad, the Lord will make it end up good.” He was right: That year’s crop was one of the best ever.
Jaybird … what a dynamo he was. Work was not merely a way of life for him; it was life’s only way. Many a day when I was exhausted after working beside him in the fields, he headed to his garden and worked until the last rays of sunlight sent him indoors, tending vegetables that would become fresh food on his table or stored in the freezer for delicious eating during winter months.
Even then, he found chores to do around the house before lounging in the quiet of evening on the front porch, sipping corn whiskey and enjoying a smoke. At daybreak, except on Sundays and schooldays, he picked me up in his old truck, and uttered that universal farm expression: “Time to go to the field.”
As a boy, abject poverty during the Great Depression annealed him, made him industrious, self-sufficient, and thankful for a means to earn a living. He was a strong, proud, hard-working Christian man, and would not have taken welfare had it been offered to him.
Words from a John Milton poem read, “Who best bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best.” Jaybird knew that. He served his family, he served his Maker, and developed in me, the boy he called his white son, many of the values by which I live today. Long years ago, the Lord unplugged his earthly life support system and replaced it with an eternal life support system. I think of him daily, and of the words he believed gave meaning to earthly existence: Living the Lord’s will.
Jimmy Reed is an Oxford, Mississippi resident, Ole Miss and Delta State University alumnus, Vietnam Era Army Veteran, former Mississippi Delta cotton farmer and ginner, author, and retired college teacher.
This story is a selection from Jimmy Reed’s latest book, entitled The Jaybird Tales.
Copies, including personalized autographs, can be reserved by notifying the author via email (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)).
“Well, son, we have no choice but to accept what the Lord gives,” my mentor and lifelong best friend said, as we sat on his front porch that late fall day, staring forlornly at un-harvested, rain-soaked cotton fields. Mississippi Delta folks could not recall such heavy rainfall when it was more devastating. The old black man and I nurtured that crop from spring planting throughout the growing season, but now those long sunup-to-sundown days of toil seemed all for naught.
When harvest began in September, the yield averaged three bales of lint per acre. My brother managed harvesting, Jaybird and I ginned it, and Dad oversaw the whole operation. With fifty crops behind him, he knew this was destined to be an outstanding year. Then in early October, heavy rain set in and never stopped. Well we knew that if Mother Nature provided a chance to finish gathering, the yield would drop to less than half its original potential, and fiber quality would be so low that just breaking even would be a miracle.
