Day 9 – Gin and Steak

Modern Cotton Gin

Cotton used to be king in the Mississippi Delta and even if its importance is somewhat reduced today, it is still very important to the region. Mid-October is very late in the crop cycle,  but we did see a few cotton fields on our trip through Mississippi; most fields had already been picked and were being tilled and prepped for planting of next years crop in the spring. While the majority of the cotton crop had been picked, a lot of it still hadn’t been processed and Claude arranged for Steve and me to tour the local cotton gin. A gin these days is a pretty sophisticated operation with a lot specialized machinery. In the photo you can see the actual gin. It feeds raw cotton in from the top and the cotton seeds are separated out and retained in the bottom part of the machine. After the seeds are separated, the cotton is then automatically passed on to other equipment which cleans it, compresses it and ultimately bales and wraps it in plastic for shipment.

Two Cotton Bales

The economics of the cotton gin process are also interesting. All the cotton farmer has to do is grow the cotton, pick it - all done mechanically - and wrap it into a “module.” Modules can be cylindrical shaped or larger tractor trailer sized units. The gin picks up the modules and processes the cotton, all at no cost to the farmer. It seems crazy that they do it for free, but it works because the gin makes its money from selling the cotton seed, which is used in products such as Crisco and also other by-products of the process. This particular gin produces a cotton bale about every two minutes. Each bale weighs between 460 and 500 pounds.

Doe's Eat Place

By the way, in case you were wondering, the boll weevil which caused so much damage to the U.S. cotton crop in the 1920s and 30s has been completely eradicated in every state except for the southern part of Texas, but really only during the last 20 or 30 years.

Now for the steak part of the story. We had dinner at Doe’s Eat Place, a legendary local place in Greenville which serves the best steaks you can imagine. It is not in the best part of town and in fact has its own guard to keep and eye on parked cars and the patrons, but it was well worth a visit. Easily among the top steaks I have ever had. Of course their 2 to 3 pound Porterhouse is more than any one person should be eating, so we shared 2 among the seven of us and still had leftover steak. Amazing!