True Spirit O’ Christmas

It was a cold Christmas Eve morning, and my lifelong friend and mentor, Jaybird, and I huddled around the gin office heater.

True Spirit O’ Christmas

“But, Dad, we ginned cotton straight through Thanksgiving,” I moaned. “Can’t we at least get off a few days for Christmas?”

“Son, we finished picking and ginning the crop early last year, and you hunted all winter. Be thankful for that. Fall weather has not cooperated this season. The gin has got to run — can to can’t. This dry spell won’t last, and we simply cannot afford to have cotton pickers stopped, waiting for empty trailers, when the ground is dry and the sun is shining.”

It was a time when picking two rows of cotton at once was harvesting’s latest technology. It was a time when old-fashioned flat belts and line shafts powered gin machinery.

It was a time when dumping enough seed cotton to make fifteen or more 500-pound bales in modern, hydraulically-powered boxes known as module builders was unheard of.

Downtime for repairs or the threat of bad weather put unrelenting pressure on gin crews. Trailers had to be available, meaning my crew and I had to roll night and day, sleeping in snatches.

When I returned from overseas military duty, Dad hired me as his farm and gin manager, and because he had run the gin for twenty years, he knew full well what we faced.

It was a cold Christmas Eve morning, and my lifelong friend and mentor, Jaybird, and I huddled around the gin office heater.

“Well, Jaybird,” I said, “it’s Christmas Eve … the weather forecast is good and the gin yard is covered with full trailers. We’ve got no choice but to run around the clock. I know the gin crew will dread hearing that.”

“Hit’ll be over ’fore you know it, and we’ll be in de woods, hunting.” His words brought little comfort.

Then the office door creaked open and a white-haired old lady, stooped by years of toil, entered. It was my grandmother. Almost ninety years old, she lived alone in the commissary store across from the gin, which she had managed since I was a little boy.

Grandmother was renowned for her strong work ethic, and outright famous for her “cathead” biscuits. Well before dawn, she had cooked a batch for us.

“Eat,” she ordered.

Inspiration is a beautiful thing, especially when it comes at precisely the right moment. Here we were, complaining about having to work during the holidays, and here was a frail old woman, who had risen hours before we had, to stand before her stove and prepare this Southern delicacy just for us. Sheepishly, Jaybird and I ate and fell to our tasks.

In Christmas morning’s predawn hours, as I brewed a pot of coffee, I saw lights flicker on in Grandmother’s apartment behind the store. Later, as frost glittered in dawn’s first light, I watched as she slowly plodded toward the gin, carrying a large tray of catheads, piping hot.

When she left, Jaybird pointed at her and said, “Son, what dat lady jes’ did, sacrificin’ fuh others, is de true spirit o’ Christmas.”

 Jimmy Reed