Remember When: hay, driving, cotton gins, and Daddy

By Guest Columnist Mary Jane Boutwell

Part of what started these thoughts running through my mind were the big round bales of hay with the red, white, and blue warerounds just off Highway 22 on Virlillia Road. When the sun and shade are just right the sight reminds me of the flag. If I were in the military, the urge to salute would be present. 

A little late in the year, but I do remember hauling hay. For my early memories, Daddy had a 4-wheel, flat bed trailer pulled by Bob the horse and Nell the mule. I got to drive them after most of the day. When the trailer was loaded, Daddy drove to the barn, where square beds were unloaded and stacked. 
The hay-leafing barn was on the place when bought. One side had an enclosed holding area, corn crib, and two stalls. On the other side was an add on, and, as it emptied, silage was fed in the trough along one side of the shed. 

Side planks were put on the pickup to haul hay and cotton. Until then, we kids rode up and down the road (including highways) to visit kinfolk sitting on the wheel well in the back. Sometimes we were on the tailgate with our feet hanging off. Daddy’s top speed was 60 miles per hour. 

As my family traveled the U.S. on vacation every August (lay by time on the farm), we would stop when we saw something of interest. In the midwest, we saw hay barns with ramps built on to them to drive the hay trucks into the hay loft to unload. 

The ramp added to our barn was dirt and wood. It took a long time before anyone other than Daddy was allowed to back up the ramp into the barn. So much hay! So many building blocks! As the hay was fed, my brothers and neighbors built trucks, tunnels, dead ends, and other things fun to them but not so fun to anyone that did not know the layout—fall into a pit, run into a square turn, etc. everything was covered with hay. When enough hay had been fed through, the games were over. 

The guys stopped building their hay barn playground when the bales went from square to round—still small enough bales to lift easily. 

One year, we were given some soybean hay. It had to be loaded and hauled to our barn. I would sell all the cows before I did that again. Just the thought makes me itch. 

My earliest memory of baling hay was a stationary square baler powered by a tractor driven belt. The hay was brought to a pile by the baler, usually by a mule with 12 to 16 bales to hand load. 

My folks had a little bit of everything growing up on the farm. I actually picked a little using a fertilize sack with cotton boles in the open end to tie the shoulder strap onto. I did not like scraping, as pulling the boles with cotton scrapping then punched and cut my hand.

The side planks on the pickup had an angled board with a cotton scale at the back for the cotton sacks. As the sack of handpicked cotton was weighed, it was tallied for the individual picker and for the bale total.   

The first cotton picker on the place was one row and attached to the John Deere Tractor. When it was in the field the tractor worked in reverse. As dark set in  the picking came to a stop—to much moisture. Thirty years later, the four row picker had a built in sprayer. Everything can change. 

For years, Ballard Gin, at Highway 22 and Virlillia Road, is where our cotton was ginned. The Ray’s Country store was there with the gin scales at the back of the store. Mr. Ray would come into the back room overlooking the scales, weigh the total weight and send the cotton to the gin. When empty, they would come back to get the tare weight. 

Later, the scales were at the gin. The cotton carrier was pulled on the scale, weighed, sucked off, reweighed, and on to the next one. 

As children, we wandered all over the working gin—no supervision. It was fun to watch cotton being pulled up into the separators and watch it tumble. 
The gin was built so after the bands were placed around the bale in the compactor, the front was opened and the bale tumbled out. There were three levels. The compactor was slightly higher than the middle layer. The middle layer had steps down to the bottom level. The steps had large beams at an angle to slide the bales to the lowest level that was even with the truck bed for ease of loading. 

A family story: my daddy Grady Sowell was a large extra strong man. Men standing around waiting can get into all kinds of things. Down at the gin, someone bet Daddy that he could not pick up a bale of ginned cotton. After picking the bale up in a bear hug and placing it on the truck, he collected his nickel or dime. 

I have told this to a number of people, and several have said their grandfather or father used two cotton hooks to pick up a bale by placing it on their backs. 

Bob and Nell were also used to harvest corn. The wagon had sides. Once again, I drove some. Either the corn was placed in a pile to be loaded into the wagon, or you drove through the corn, and the pullers load the corn into the wagon as it was pulled. All of this was done by hand—no gloves. 
Everything got more modern. The corn puller, one was now bolted to the John Deere Tractor. A trailer followed along to catch the corn. 
At our house, if it was not green, it was not bought. 

I not only learned to drive a tractor hauling hay, but the trucks, also. My daddy was constantly yelling “don’t burn the clutch out.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: Mary Jane Boutwell is a passionate historian and is thrilled to share stories about way back when.