Transcript of “In Tall Cotton”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello, excellent. This is Eric Jacobs calling from Tucson, Arizona.
Hey, Eric.
My question is, my wife says it a lot, and it’s, oh, he’s walking in tall cotton.
What do they mean by that?
So I work out in Marana, Arizona, which is about 25 minutes away from the main suburb of Tucson.
On and I actually drive by the cotton fields every day, watch them harvest it, watch them with big machines. Nobody’s picking cotton anymore. I speculate. It means, you know, somebody who’s not bending over all day, they’re picking cotton so their back’s not soared. They’re probably in a better mood from somebody who’s been bent over all day. That’s just my speculation of where it came from.
Yeah, that’s part of the imagery. But also, if the cotton is high, you’re having a good cotton crop. And so you’re going to make a lot of money this season. So to be in tall cotton, to walk in tall cotton or high cotton, all of these have connotations of things going well.
Okay. I think from the financial perspective, that makes sense.
Yeah. Sometimes it’s not about financial though. It’s about your mood to be in a good mood or to feel comfortable or well taken care of. So there’s just a lot of connotations of something positive going on in your life. There’s a coarser version, which is pooping in high cotton with a different word for poop, which is an even more emphatic way to say that somebody is doing so well that they can do their body’s business in a thriving, happy way.
It’s hard to talk about this stuff on the radio, but I think you get the point.
Yeah. So this is, I mean, most terms, I’m assuming, they were literal in sense and they’ve caught on and now it’s just the same.
Yeah. So there’s a reason that this expression is far more common in the southern part of the United States and Texas.
And I’m surprised. I didn’t even know cotton was grown in Arizona, but there we go.
Yeah, where Arizona has the five C’s, right?
It was a copper, cotton, cattle, climate, and citrus.
Oh, that last one with a different sound.
That’s fun.
Anyway, so there you go.
It’s about successful cotton.
That’s all.
Good crop.
Excellent.
Well, thank you so much for that.
Take care of yourself, Eric.
Thanks for calling.
Yeah, thank you so much.
All right.
Bye-bye.
