cotton fields

When my dad finished his tour of duty in Japan and our family landed at Travis AFB, the plane flew way over the countryside circling around and the sight of California farmland from above created a feeling within us that is indescribable.

Here, let me describe it exactly. It's the deep satisfaction of homesickness in reverse. It's the motion picture Wizard of Oz when the house lands in Munchkin Country and the scenery turns from black and white to full glorious color. It's a very real thrill. It's the opening credits to Green Acres. It's the internal satisfaction and supreme pleasure of being American. It can make you cry. And that feeling holds true whenever I come back from anywhere. Denver is home, and Mexico is not. Denver satisfies, and Canada does not. Denver is beautiful and NYC is not.

But then within a few weeks we were traveling again through the West and Western scenery is foreign as Japan is to Pennsylvania residents. Pennsylvania is gone, and now there is this. The whole place is stranger than cowboy movies. Nothing is right. Not enough plants. Everything is too harsh, too dry, no ocean, insufficient advanced civilization. People eat weird food.The whole place rather naked. But nothing was ever so foreign as the immediate sights of Louisiana. Here is where we experienced true culture shock. We were stunned dumb. First the animals. Armadillos killed on the highways. We had imagined those existed only in Africa with anteaters. Pelicans gathering at all bodies of water. Vultures soaring the thermals high above. Vultures! But nothing was so truly shocking as shacks with rusting tin roofs. Old Cadillacs on blocks in the front yards, cars that don't work but are show off,  but no actual lawn. No real driveway. Old sofas on porches with living people sitting on them. We had no way to process the poverty that we didn't know even existed in America. It took a very long time to get accustomed to, but we did, and once we did then we loved the place and we still do. All of us hold an enduring fondness for Louisiana and for its people. We wanted to stay there. It is a good place to live.

I was as fascinated with cotton fields right off as much as I was fascinated with Hawaiian pineapple fields earlier, and I'm pleased to say that I experienced both. But cotton held historic significance. And both of them are total drags. They are not what I expected at all. Pineapple fields are pure messes, bromeliad growing over each other completely randomly, sharp strong foliage that cuts your legs and your arms like knives. They are terrible places to be. Pineapple fields are like Hell. And so are cotton fields. Both those agricultural projects popped my silly stupid imagination bubble. The plants are actually dangerous. They do not give up their pods that bursted open willingly. The cotton is actually hard to tear off the plants at that stage, bare thorny sticks. And when you do tear it off, it's not like a puffy bag of cotton that you buy in a store, it's filthy, there are bugs all around, the cotton is loaded with seeds, and the seeds are nearly impossible to get out. You could take all day picking at the cotton puffs struggling to tear out the seeds and then half stays on the seeds anyway. How a cotton comb was invented is hard to imagine, and why it wasn't invented sooner evern harder to imagine. It is a very strange crop. Cotton fields are not romantic as I had imagined by seeing them in passing from inside a speeding vehicle and yearning to get out there in the field and explore. No. Once you're in the field all you want to do is to get out.

What a bummer. Both my childish visualizations of a romantic life in the fields were dashed by reality and by simply walking through them. Once. Briefly. And experiencing what terrible plants they are in large numbers. Whoever is was who conceived of farming these plants, and having other people do the work, was out of their mind. And not very Christian. The farming of these plants is obscene. And all that I know comes from trespassing through a field.

Yes, I know other stuff relevant to cotton too. We were taught Eli Witney invented the cotton gin. But I was taught a lot of ridiculous ethnocentric nonsense. Cotton gins were used since the 5th century. They just weren't so splendid as Witney's.

And I think those branches with cotton tufts on them make excellent and thoughtful home decoration. They're weirdly beautiful, both scraggly, dangerous, brittle and contrastingly soft and explosively puffed,  and and they hold so much meaning. Not just about American slavery but about all human history. About clothes. About textiles. Weaving. Cotton is an important world commodity. It's my favorite fiber. It's awesome.

Like wheat is. I asked Dean if he would send me a sheath of wheat from his own wheat fields. He complied.  Kindly and very considerately he actually grew a patch of Egyptian wheat just for me. And I loved that wheat. I displayed that wheat proudly. I didn't have it very long because the stuff attracts dust like nobody's business and it's impossible to keep clean but while it was around I loved it.

I should have thought of stealing a few branches cotton but I wasn't into interior design at that age. After they harvest the cotton stays stuck on the branches. They cannot get it all, and it continues to produce, continues to open and explode bits of cotton like popcorn.