Spring time is one of my favorite times of the year. Love to ‘cruise’ areas that I once visited on an a daily, some times hourly basis as a youngster. Yesterday afternoon was one of those times.
I grew up in the Zion Hill Church area north of Bladenboro. We moved often, but never far from the church.
As the son of a sharecropper, there are numerous houses we lived in, many no longer exist, some are in various stages of disrepair, but all bring back mostly good memories.
After the Sunday afternoon drive, I thought about how many times I followed a mule (Lou) or our one horse with a one horse/mule turn plow, another trip to distribute the fertilizer, then over the same area with a one row planter, followed by numerous trips plowing the fields while the plants were growing to stop the growth of weeds. We seldom used chemicals, except to stop worms (horn worms and bud worms) in our tobacco patch. It was a never ending process.
Today, one trip across the field with a tractor and necessary equipment does it all. Farmers today can cover more area in an hour than we could do in several weeks.
Times have changed, but those days are forever etched in my memory bank, in the pleasant memories file. It was not an easy time, but most of those around us lived much the same lifestyle, less the moving. Sharecropping was apparently a better option for a large family, most of the time, than a job at the cotton mill or in the logging business. It was a family affair, a supportive mom, dad and six children.
Sorry, just another short trip down memory lane.
We were sharecroppers – we were a little bit of everything. We farmed and tried to make something. Buck Owens
You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view—until you climb into his skin and walk around in it. Harper Lee
An investment in knowledge pays the best interest. Benjamin Franklin
robert g hester
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