And, what's a Squidge?

I need a bumper sticker that warns "I STOP for Museums." My work as an agricultural photographer takes me to lesser traveled roads. Sometimes I think I keep doing this work just so I can poke around places that most people gave up on years ago. Unlike the interstate, there is always something to delight me on the back roads. I have visited museums in towns so tiny that there was a sign with a phone number on the door - "To See Inside, Call This Number." And, amazingly enough, someone shows up, opens the door and grants me entrance into their history.

But, once in a while I do get to a city. In February, I was in Memphis and decided to check out The Cotton Museum. You should go, even if you have never grown cotton, and more especially if you have never grown cotton. I guess somewhere there is a soybean museum, which tells that Henry Ford brought soybeans to the U.S. in the 1920s, but I don't think soybeans could ever take credit for the development of a whole culture and region.

The elderly and very elegant Cotton Exchange building is home to the museum, a perfect setting for re-telling the story of cotton. The museum is totally interactive and once a few buttons are pushed, you can stand back and view the 1939 trading board as you listen to folks like Billy Dunavent talk about his first job as a Squidge. For those of you who don't know, and I certainly didn't, a squidge is an apparentice for a cotton classer. Apprentice, that's a term you don't hear anymore. A 135-foot mural by artist David Mah relates the story of cotton, plus there is an authentic Western Union telegraph office used to relay prices for the trading board.

The Cotton Museum can be found at 65 Union Avenue Avenue, a few blocks from The Peabody. It's worth more than the $6 entry fee. Check it out at http://www.memphiscottonmuseum.org/

--Debra L Ferguson