walking through

Carpe Diem Special #137, Santoka Taneda's 3rd "walking through "

inspiration:

walking through

the bush clover, the pampas grass,

walking on through them

© Santoka Taneda (Tr. R.H. Blyth)

My response:

Oh, dear Lord!  She could embarrass the heck out of her daughters.  Thinking she was saying something informative or cute she would share a story of her life.  She was convinced she was not racist because one of her best friends was black.  Both of these personality traits could be endearing in a 95 year old great grandma kind of way.  Not so endearing when put together in a restaurant.

She was sitting in her walker celebrating her 'baby' sister's 89th birthday at a local eatery.  Surrounded by her daughters and their husbands the waiter comes to take the drink orders.  'Water, no ice,' she says with a twinkle in her eye.  Drink orders taken, the waiter hurries off to the kitchen.  Dinners are decided with the usual degree of difficulty dealing with these almost deaf, quite elderly southern sisters.

The waiter returned with the drinks and begins to take the food orders.  In the chit chat with a husband it comes up that the young, efficient waiter is on a study visa.  He is from Zambia.  He gets to her for the food order and it happens.  The twinkling eyed, 95 year old says, 'Bet I've picked more cotton than you.'  The waiter looks puzzled, turns to her nearest, horror struck daughter and asks, 'What is this picking cotton?'

source:  pac.web.edu   Migrant cotton pickers

picking down the rows
bent against the sun and heat
picking down the rows

©  Janice Adcock

source

My family were cotton farmers in north Texas from the early 1900's through the 1950's. Mom from the time she could pull a sack would pick elbow to elbow with the hired hands to bring in the crop.  The bane of cotton farming, the boll weevil even had its own song.

Thanks to Chèvrefeuille for daily prompts on 

CARPE DIEM HAIKU KAI