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Published Wednesday, September 21, 2011 in Opinion

'Fair to middlin'

"How you doin'?" a feller said the other day in passing, as I sat with a friend at our favorite waterin' hole.

"Fair to middlin" came the response.

"What does that mean?" someone nearby asked.

Being a farm boy who loathed picking cotton and who dreamed of big-league ball parks, the Georgia Bulldogs, and being able to take a girl to the picture show in a nice sedan, not a pickup truck -- I knew what it meant.

"Fair to middlin" had to do with the grade of cotton, which could seriously affect your livelihood. When I grew up, I thought of being a lot of things in life, but none of those had anything to do with cotton. However, I can assure you I knew it would be better in life to be a cotton grader than a cotton picker.

Even today, when my back acts up after doing any lifting and soreness sets in, I think of those days when I wished for a bad enough back that I would be exempt from reaching for a cotton sack and heading to the fields.

The fields were hot, the cotton boll clusters would prick the skin 'round your fingernails, and the days were long. How could the sun loiter so slowly? How could lunchtime be so brief? You hardly had wolfed down your peas, butterbeans and cornbread and closed your eyes before you got the summons to return to the cotton patch.

Huddie William Ledbetter, popularly known as Leadbelly, was a Southerner who could make fun music. One of his best tunes had to do with picking cotton: "Jump down, turn around, pick a bale of cotton. Jump down, turn around and pick a bale a day."

Leadbelly, who wrote "Good Night Irene," which was to sell in the millions by other artists, died penniless.

When I was dragging that cotton sack through the fields in my teenage years, I often thought that was the way it would turn out for me if I didn't get off the farm. It was years later when I began to appreciate the value of cotton. Farmers, in years past, worked hard to make ends meet by farming cotton. Somebody higher up made all the money. Especially when you consider that one bale of cotton will produce 1,217 men's T-shirts. A single bale will also produce 21,960 women's handkerchiefs or 3,085 diapers or 2,104 boxer shorts.

A bale of cotton produces 765 men's dress shirts, but in the old days it looked like the farmer, the "little" man in the process, was always close to losing his shirt.

A good cotton crop meant that farmers, like my daddy, could pay their debts and buy a few things for the family. Santa Claus seemed to be more generous in good years, when cotton graded out to "fair to middlin" or better. The better the grade, the more money you got for a bale of cotton.

From the Internet, I ran across this excerpt from Johnny Cash:

"Strict High Middlin," like the everyday expression "fair to middlin," was a grade of cotton. When we got our crop to the gin, they'd take a knife and cut into the bales. The expert would pull the fibers out and fool with them a while, then make his decision, write down the grade, and tie it to the bale of cotton. He'd be looking mostly at the length of the fibers, their strength and their color, and the grades he had to work with, if I remember it right, were Strict High Middlin, High Middlin, Fair to Midlin, Middlin, Low Middlin and Strict Low Middlin. Those grades mattered a lot, too; when you got the bales to market, a bale of Strict Low Middlin would go for, say, 28 cents a pound, whereas Strict High Middlin would get you 35 cents."

Fair to middlin was considered average.

If somebody asked how you were doing and you said "Fair to middlin," it meant that you were OK. Not bad, but nothing really special.

Doing this bit of research made me feel a little guilty. Compared to my dad's hard working life, mine has been "Strict High Middlin."

It's too late now, but I wish I could take dad to see the Red Sox play.

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