A lot has changed when it comes to farming in the Delta over the last 60 years.
Lawrence Cooper, who will turn 80 years old come April, has been a part of most of those changes, especially when it comes to technology.
“I started off with a one-row cotton picker,’ Cooper told The Enterprise-Tocsin during a recent interview.
Cooper has worked for the Arrington family, farming in Inverness, for the better part of five decades.
Back during harvest, Cooper had the opportunity to do something he never thought would be possible.
He sat in the driver’s seat of a large modern cotton picker, pulling in hundreds of pounds of cotton in just a few short minutes.
“I had never sat up in one,” Cooper said. “I’m tickled to death.”
Cooper said he began picking cotton when he was in his mid-teens. Back then, he would out-pick most any man or woman in the field.
“I used to pick more than 500 pounds a day,” he said. “Most days, I would get 500.”
Technology would advance over time, with Cooper moving from picking cotton by hand to the smaller picker he drove in his twenties.
“I was so glad to get on a cotton picker,” he said with a smile.
The machinery has gotten bigger, faster and smarter with time.
Preston Arrington, owner of Preston Arrington Farms, set it up so that Cooper could spend some time in the driver’s seat of one of the largest cotton pickers out there today.
Bayer Crop Science currently leases a portion of Arrington’s farmland, where the company grows cotton.
During the final days of harvest, Arrington arranged to have Cooper join the Bayer crew inside the cab.
Cooper piloted the machine for the first time that day, but after a few turns, he looked like a pro.
“It’s got so many techniques,” he said. “I had to get used to it.”
It was a special moment for both Cooper and Arrington.
“This is one little thing I could help give back to him, because he’s been so good to us,” Arrington told The E-T. “He and his wife helped raise me. We’re all family.”
Cooper said the experience made his day.
“I like that thing,” he said. “That machine is out of sight. It really made my day.”
Cooper said that he first went to work for Arrington’s father, Lee Arrington, over 40 years ago.
“That’s the best man I ever worked for,” Cooper said. “I’ve been on his place for forty-something years, so you know he’s got to be good.”
Preston Arrington said that his father began farming that piece of land where Bayer grew its cotton back in the late 1970s. About four years ago, the family had the chance to buy the land and did so.
There’s not a lot of cotton grown in the county these days, but that small plot offered the opportunity of a lifetime for a man who has dedicated his life to farming.
Cooper said he’s come to love farming beans, corn and other crops, but it felt good, for at least a few moments of one day during harvest, to bring in a few hundred pounds of cotton and make a new memory.
“I appreciate what they did for me, letting me drive it,” he said.
