Which Tree Did Mr. King Hang Himself?

Cotton Days in Marietta

For the past three Sundays I have been riding my bike for exercise in the West Oak Office Park.  This past Sunday at least a dozen other  bicyclists were doing  the same.     On each ride in the office park I did between 3 and 4 miles. 

The  streets are nice, four lanes, with up and down hills and curves around bends.   There are several streets and a loop by a lake, plus huge empty parking lots - on Sundays.   It all makes riding a bike pleasant.

There are many big trees, which makes a lot of the streets shady.  I was peddling  remembering  my  father-in-law told me this area cotton was raised by Mr. King in the 1920s and 30s.    So, if there were cotton fields, wouldn't  these trees be in the way?  Wait!  Cotton was raised there about 80 years ago.  Trees would  have time to grow big since then, beside, they may have transplanted some.

Then the thought came to me, "I wonder which tree Mr. King hung himself on?"

West Oak Drive runs parallel to the rail road tracks along Canton Highway.   My father-in-law and I were riding down Canton Road and he pointed across the tracks at a plantation style house on West Oak Drive*.

He told me that a Mr. King lived in that house.  During the depression farmers depended on their cotton crop to get them by and hopefully make a profit too.  When cotton days came Mr. King refused to carry his cotton crop to downtown Marietta to be sold until the price per pound increased.    All the people he knew went ahead and sold their cotton at the current market price. 

The buyers bought what they needed and dropped the price.  Mr. King lost all his money on cotton he had to sell for nearly nothing.  He went off in the woods behind his house and hung himself.  

Greed!


*I think the road Mr. King lived on was actually named King Road, but the name was probably changed to conform with the name of the office park.