Growing Up Southern: Pride

They used to hit our grocery store as a crowd, twice a day in season. First it was cotton choppers, later cotton pickers.

These were pre-mechanization days. Both operations were done by hand, by workers hired by the day. It would be hard for us to understand the level of the day-to-day existence led by these folks. I got a sense of it an early age, though.

There were men who owned flat-bed trucks outfitted with sideboards and tarpaulin covers and benches, much like a homemade version of a military deuce-and-a-half. They would pick up hands and transport them to a farmer’s field for some agreed-upon price. Those they picked up ranged in age from early teenagers to the ambulatory elderly.

On the way, they would stop at our store, shortly after daylight to purchase something for “dinner” and, shortly after dark, something for supper and breakfast, if they could afford both. When the crowd hit, the whole family turned out. Daddy would be behind the meat counter slicing bologna or whatever. Mother was the cashier. My sister had a spot in canned goods and produce. I had a Hershey’s chocolate box containing change to accommodate the sale of candy.

My mother always bragged that I could count change before I could read.

I didn’t get much business in the morning. If it had been a good day chopping or picking, though, I sometimes did a brisk business in the afternoon.

The thing I remember though, and I’ll never forget it for some reason, was an item I sold that wasn’t candy at all, and I only sold it on Saturdays.

It was tiny bottle of a cheap liquid labelled “Ben Hur Perfume.”

I valued my job, although it cut into sleep or play time. I felt that, even in dealing with the poorest of the poor—those the Galilean called “the least of those among us”— I was able, on occasion, to bring some small amount of joy in the form of a sweet reward for hard work, or a brief moment of pride and dignity to an otherwise unrelenting life.

A customer?