DesignInMind: Cotton is Still King

As the Algodon Club of Harlingen celebrates King Cotton this weekend, it’s an applicable time to reflect on how cotton and the agricultural industry as a whole have been a part of shaping this home we call the Rio Grande Valley. As we honor our dads today, I have to give a nod as well to the men of this generation and generations past who have plowed the fields, planted the seeds, prayed for rain, harvested the crop, run the gins, and passed on their unwavering work ethic to their sons and daughters who followed after them.

“King Cotton,” a term coined in the mid-1800s as a show of support in the belief that the booming cotton industry was capable of financially carrying the South, has a history with roots that run deep right here in the Valley. My granddaddy, Joyce Smith, owned the largest gin in the world in early 1948, the Los Coyotes Gin, the only double battery gin at the time, which means it had two gins under one roof. That was right here in our own backyard of Willacy County. And more would come. Because cotton, both then and now, was proving itself to truly be “the fabric of our lives.”

I write about design and the home, with a lot of my life mixed in. As I look around my own home, I see evidence everywhere that cotton really does reign, even from a design perspective. Considered to be one of the most widely used natural fiber cloths in clothing today, cotton, in its various forms that include denim, corduroy, seersucker, and cotton twill, hangs on hanger after hanger in whole or in part, ready to wear out in our sultry summer heat. It’s a soft, breathable textile, perfect for my drapery panels, more throw pillows than I care to own up to, placemats and napkins, area rugs, and cozy bed sheets alike. Cotton terrycloth is perfectly suited for those highly absorbent bath towels that stack up in the cabinets and hang from my numbered bathroom hooks. It’s neat to think we can watch something grow right here out in the fields alongside our FM roads that will be turned into what we wear and what we fill our homes with that reflect our own unique styles.

Cotton fibers are woven not just in my décor, but in my memories of summers spent across the field over at Granddaddy and Mimi’s listening to the hum of the gin across the street, watching the module trucks run up and down the road with little white puffs drifting out of the back. I’m thankful I was raised right here where family values are still being raised out in those fields right along with the crops, and where Cotton is still King.

Happy Father’s Day, and congratulations to the 2014 Algodon Royal Court and the Don and Dona named last night!

DesignInMind column; appeared in the Valley Morning Star June 15th.