We had an old horse-drawn cane grinder set up on a tree stump at the edge of a field. The grinder or press extracted the juice from the cane, and the juice was cooked in a big open vat over a fire.

I remember one year when I was about 4 or 5 years old, my daddy decided to attach the tongue of the grinder to our new Farmall Cub tractor rather than hitch up the horses. He tied the steering wheel with bale hay wire to keep it going around and around and set the throttle to a slow speed. He sat me up on the tractor seat, and I “drove” the tractor while he and my older brothers fed the cane stalks into the grinder.

That was a fun time, especially when Mama served the molasses on her delicious biscuits. Much of my early life was filled with memories of hard work and harsh conditions, but this is a very happy memory.

Ralph Cox, Pilot Mountain, a member of Surry-Yadkin EMC