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By Lloyd Albritton

Columnist

These days, it takes a lot more money than it used to for a young man to go to town on Saturday night. When I was growing up in the 1950s and early 1960s in the little farm community of Nokomis, it took every penny Daddy could earn just to feed us. If we got any spending money, we generally had to work for it or steal it.
Nokomis was a farm community, and there were opportunities to earn a little spending money here and there if a fellow didn’t mind a little farm work in the hot sun. My brother and I occasionally picked cotton during the summers to earn a few dollars. Picking cotton was hard, hot work and it only paid $3-$4 per 100 pounds. One trick to make the load heavier was to pull the whole boll off the stalk and hide a few in the middle of the sack, but the wagon man usually caught on to that trick pretty quickly when he emptied the cotton sack.
Wet cotton is heavier too. That’s why the farmer made workers stop picking when it rained. If it rained a lot we had to quit picking for a few hours and wait for the cotton to dry. Still, everybody always hurried to pick as much wet cotton as they could before going back to the wagon so as to get just a little heavier weigh-in. The most cotton I ever picked in a single day was about 80 pounds, and it was a very long day. My brother tipped a 100 pounds one time, but he was 2 years older than me and I guess his fingers were nimbler than mine. And besides, he only did it that one time that I remember.
Sometimes we picked cucumbers in 5-gallon buckets for a nickel a bucket. Picking cucumbers was easier than picking cotton and cucumbers made good field snacks, but picking cucumbers paid a lot less than picking cotton. Later, in my teen years I sometimes worked loading hay from the fields and stacking the square bales in the barn. Sometimes I pulled weeds out of the soybean fields. These jobs paid about 75 cents an hour and were even harder and hotter than picking cotton.
Farm work of any kind never paid much, but it was always nice to have a dollar or two to fold into a small square and stow in the watch pocket of my dungarees. Having a little paper money in my pocket for emergencies feels as good today as it felt then. One time my brother and I picked cotton all day for my mother’s Aunt Florence, and she sent each of us home at the end of the day with a gallon of homemade cane syrup. I guess Aunt Florence thought Mama would appreciate the syrup on account of us being such a big family and all. She was right too. Mama was plumb tickled to get that syrup. Hot biscuits and good sopping syrup made a mighty fine breakfast in those days. Me and my brother weren’t too happy about it though. We would rather have had a dollar or two to fold up and put in our watch pockets for emergencies, like maybe a Milky Way or an ice cream bar from Hubbird’s Store out on Highway 31.
During the week, my parents bought groceries at Hubbird’s Store on credit, but on Saturday they went to Atmore to shop at Faircloth’s Supermarket. Faircloth’s had a huge dirt parking lot adjacent to the store. This is where country folks parked for the day while doing their town shopping. The parking lot was bordered by several large oak trees at one end, where shoppers gathered in the shade and exchanged greetings and conversation. Young children waited in the parking lot and napped on quilt pallets or played in the parking lot while their parents shopped. Old people brought straight-backed chairs and sat in the tree shade visiting with one another. Faircloth’s Parking Lot was something of a social center in those days.
In fact, on Saturdays the whole town was abuzz with social intercourse from late morning until mid-afternoon. My father’s old maid first cousin, Katie Albritton, could usually be seen standing in front of Faircloth’s store flipping peanuts into the air and catching them in her mouth. Stammering Archie Bryars came into town early and stood leaning against the wall on one foot at the corner of Main Street and Nashville. Archie stood in the same spot all day long watching people walk by. He smiled and nodded to each one and said, “G-g-good m-m-morning. How’re you d-d-doing?” to everyone who passed by.
Curry’s Feed and Seed Store was always packed on Saturdays with menfolk who stood around smoking, chewing tobacco and talking loud about three-legged hunting dogs and two-headed calves and such. I loved the aroma of freshly ground sweet corn, which filled the air, and the chattering of hundreds of baby chicks for sale from the various cages.
As I reached my early teen years and transferred from elementary to junior high school, I also entered the stage of life where young men are embarrassed for anyone to know they have parents. I didn’t want to hang out in Faircloth’s parking lot with the old folks and little kids anymore. I wanted to dress up in my best attire, grease and slick my hair and go to the movie show. The movie only cost a dime in those days; a bag of popcorn was a dime too; a coke was a dime; a candy bar was a dime; and . . . well, in those days you could buy just about anything for a dime. That’s when a little bit of cotton-picking money really came in handy. It didn’t hurt to have a little extra either, just in case a fella got a chance to sit with a girl and maybe buy her a Coca-Cola. Girls ain’t cheap, you know!

Oops! It looks like I have run out of space again. But, not to fear. Stay tuned next week for the second and final installment of my story, Saturday Night Money, Part II.