Buckwheat Bear

In New Orleans last week, cotton brokers were stirred by news of the biggest single transaction since Speculator Tom Jordan dumped his huge futures holdings (TIME, Oct. 28). In a spot cash deal, a 73-year-old Arkansas farmer and cotton trader, C. R. McKennon, sold his entire holdings of 6,319 bales for close to $1,000,000.

No one knew how he had accumulated so much cotton, nor would McKennon say. But he took pride in showing the folks back in Dumas, Ark. (pop. 2,315) that he had made good. McKennon never got beyond the fourth grade, where he grew so much bigger than the other boys that his family finally took him out so he "wouldn't be a-disgracing 'em." Before he left, he won a spelling bee, a triumph as sweet then as his cotton deal was last week. Said he proudly: "I sure showed 'em where the bear sat in the buckwheat."

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