I grew up in rural Alabama in the fifties and early sixties when cotton was still king. We had heard rumors of a New South, but we remained skeptical. What we knew was isolation and poverty, and for too many, King Cotton was a tyrant.

I can still recall riding through the countryside in August and being blinded by the reflection of oceans of white stretching to the horizon. Within days, armies of hired hands would descend on the fields and pick them clean. The hours were long -- sunup to sundown -- and the pay paltry. Depending on the price of cotton, pickers could make 3 to 4 cents a pound. 

At twelve, I was happy to do it because the extra spending money came in handy. My siblings and I called it our cotton money and I always tried to save as much as I could since it had to last until the pecans began to fall. 

We lived on the edge of a small town like hundreds of others scattered across the rural south. We measured our relative size by the number of traffic signals. We had two and you couldn't get much smaller than that. One of those signals, at the intersection of U.S. Highway 84 and County Road 33, defined the center of town. From there, the village stretched unevenly in every direction. 

Highway 84 followed the path of the railroad as it inched west (and east) and was our primary link with the outside world. As kids, we used to hike over to the highway and watch the traffic stream past and daydream of going somewhere. Anywhere. An out-of-state license plate was sure to be greeted with excited shouts and lively speculation.  "Bet they're headed for Florida," was an easy guess.

The railroad (and the federal highway) was a natural demarcation line. You were either from north of the tracks or south of the tracks. My siblings and I were pretty much free to roam the streets north of the railroad. But, to cross the tracks and the busy federal highway, we needed permission from our parents. 

Every town had a cotton gin, and some had several. During the harvest, they ran around the clock. We had two gins -- equaling our two traffic lights -- both adjacent to the railroad but on opposite ends of town. 

Toward sunset on a late summer day, the country roads quickly filled with farmers hauling their white cargo to town. The gin removed the seeds from the cotton and compressed the fiber into a compact bale. The bales were loaded onto the next train for their trip to the textile mills that dotted the region. For several weeks around harvest time, I fell asleep to the faint, steady hum of the gins that never stopped.    

I picked cotton for several farmers over the years, but my favorite was Mr. Mills who farmed 120 acres just north of town. Farming can be a tough way to make a living, but I never heard Mr. Mills complain. Never. About anything. 

He couldn’t afford to hire any help, except at harvest time when it was absolutely necessary. He always called us because he knew that we were dependable and hard-working. My mother preached that all work, no matter how menial, was honorable and that any job worth doing was worth doing right, and I believed it. Still do. 

There was just the five of us: Mr. Mills and his teenage daughter, me, and my two sisters.  We made a motley crew to be sure, but we got the job done. It was hard work: sunup to sundown with a couple hours off during the heat of the day. Inching along on your knees tugging in your wake a cotton sack that eventually weighed forty or fifty pounds. I thought that I was a lucky boy.

In high school, I worked at a local supermarket and retired from picking cotton for good.  After graduation, I went off to college and discovered the New South. It wasn't a myth after all. 

A couple of years later, while home for the summer, I asked Mr. Mills' daughter, who had grown into a local beauty queen since our days picking cotton, out on a date. On my way to pick her up, I was vaguely aware that something was different. Then, it dawned on me:  Mr. Mills' cotton was missing. In its place, peanut vines snaked across the red earth.  

The New South had finally arrived here too. King Cotton was dead. This, I guess, is my eulogy.