y'all know this'n

[Tom]

                                           

[Don P]

 

[Kevin]

That would be your Floridian Pussy Willow.

[L. Wakefield]

   love it. Wish it grew up north. Not that I'd want the weevils.
                           lw

[Tom]

Oh my, I guess y'all need a cotton pickin' clue............
less see, hmmmmmm.......there's a dance called the Cotton-eyed joe that might make you think of this, or, you might look at the label of some "fruit of the looms" for a hint.  I get in the mood for searching for  information on it by listening to Stephen Foster stuff http://pdmusic.org/foster.html but that can get me side tracked because there are many sites on that man. Biographies and such.  They say he may be honored more than most of our Presidents. Michigan even has a Stephen Foster Day, Jan. 13th.  See how I get side-tracked?  

[Don P]

In the south there have been three Kings, this would be one, another sang about hound dawgs, the main one drove right good.

Grandad told us a few stories about this one.

When the weevils came thru so did the snake oil salesmen with various "cures". One was $5 mailorder and guaranteed, so of course a few of the farmers figured it was worth a try. When the package arrived it contained 2 bricks labelled A and B. The instructions read " Place boll weevil on brick A, smash with brick B".

Before gins were common you had to pick your shoe full of seeds at the end of the day.

If a bale catches fire forget putting it out, he saw a bale floating downstream still burning after all landbased ideas on extinguishing it had failed.

The mill town down the road from us has a very high incidence of brown lung from the fibers of this plant.

[CHARLIE]

Sheeesh! This is a tough one. I have no cottonpickin' idea, Tom. What is it? The suspense is killin' me.

[L. Wakefield]

   well, he could give in and tell us, but I don't cotton to that idea, nohow.    lw

[Jeff]

Is it Milkweed? (I must confess Charlie gave me this answer.)

[CHARLIE]

Jeff, it makes me feel good that you are finally taking my advice.   Stick to your answer now and don't let anybody tell you no difference nohow.  You start hanging around with me and you'll get real smart someday  

[Jeff]

Charlie guess what I got in the mail today? Man was I surprised. Tom sent me some of that milkweed, and it looks just like the picture above.  (Honest, he really did)

I guess he must have seen my post about nobody has ever sent me a hat, and felt bad. Cause from what I am told, I can take this stuff, spin yarn and make my own hat. Trouble is I think I have to grow enough to do it from the seeds with it. And if ya all go back to the Paulonia experiment, you will know that I will probably have to settle for an internal ear warmer. (I also heard you can stuff this stuff in your ears)

Why do they call it milkweed?