>From "Our Town This Week..." Today, Wednesday AM, the weather looks a little more like "cotton picking weather," certainly the kind the farmers are looking for. Just hope that the long range forecast will not bring the threatened showers offered for this weekend. Cotton picking, when it does get started, will be a long way from the same task of long ago. Few people are involved in the machine boll pulling process that takes about two hands for three or more bales a day. Though a few farms still pull the bolls by hand, then hope to get "ginned off" after leaving the loaded trailers at the crowded gins for a day or two. Different was the days Mama remembers as a little girl in Collin County almost ninety years ago. They picked in sacks (though earlier baskets were used), then emptied the sacks of seed cotton into sacks to be loaded on the wagon for hauling to the gin. The packed sacks held almost one hundred pounds and it took fifteen or sixteen sacks to make a bale. The reason for the sack method was that the gins had no suction system so that sacks were heaved into the gin by hand, into the stands. The gin sacks were made of brown domestic made by the mother of the house. ("Brown Domestic" for the benefit of young readers! , if any, is yard wide strong cotton material then bleached out for soft sheeting or pillow slip material.) Mama's Ma would bleach the gin sacks after the season was over and make the families' underwear. Now let's not think any more that we have hard times these days. It is doubtful, though, that families at that time thought it was a hard way of life. By the way, "old fashioned brown domestic" as labeled by Mr. Love, is available at the Factory Store, a good buy at four yards for $1.00. Mama's Dad bought the material for five cents a yard--really in comparison considering all the angles, a comparable price. (September 16, 1966, The Celeste Courier)