Gather close now I want to tell you a story about a stallion named Cotton Picker. Now, Cotton wasn’t the kind of pony you usually hear about in stories. He never slayed a dragon, nor saved a town or had some great destiny calling him onwards. He was a farmer's son, the fourth of five squealing foals and came into the world with no great calamity or fuss. A little bundle of laughter and joy that lit up the homestead. 

He didn’t have a long childhood, not many farmponies do. Every parent tries to keep their kids’ lives innocent as long as they can, but after a few summers little Cotton found himself working alongside with his siblings. Cotton never complained. That’s just the way of it for a small farm. Money was tight, the days were short and there was too much work to fool around. Perhaps this story would have had another end if little Cotton had been born a tradespony, or with storm weathered wings, but nopony gets to chose their birth. 

The seasons never stopped changing around Cotton. Soon that foal toiling in the fields became a young stallion. He worked hard on the farm with his brothers and sister and even got a cutie-mark for pulling plows. His parents were never more proud. ‘Nopony can go wrong in life with a furrow ahead of him,’ his father said. ‘This one’s knows where his future is going.’ 

Perhaps he was right

Cotton didn’t get much schooling after that, he learned his letters but his family never saw the need for any more, given he was a plow pony. Besides the family couldn’t afford letting him go more than a few years. If I’m being fair he never wanted more than that. He was a stallion of his family, even at that young age, and every day at school was a day not pulling his weight. Still, he never regretted the time in the old schoolhouse. That was where he was introduced to Sweat Pea, the love of his life. 

I’m sure there were couples more in love than Cotton and Sweat Pea. Ponies that wrote love letters in the sky or penned epic poems that brought grown stallions to tears. It was their love, though, and that made it special to them. I remember he’d carve flowers into every little piece of wood so that even when she was doing housework she’d never lose sight of her passion. His Ma thought it cute and pushed them to get married as soon as possible. Well of course she did, she was the one who’d matched them in the first place. 

There comes a time in everypony’s life when they have to leave the nest. That’s just the way of it, no farm can support more than a generation without collapsing under the weight of hungry mouths. Cotton didn’t get much help leaving, there wasn’t much to spare. So, he took his meagre savings and went to the bank to get himself a loan on a nice plot of land. Perhaps looking back you could say his eyes were bigger than his stomach, but he had to do something, Sweet Pea was expecting. 

The Picker family farm was a little patch of dirt up in the mountains, old logging territory. It was hard, back-breaking work to build a farm up there but Cotton went at it like he always did. Some days he got up two hours before dawn and didn’t go to bed till long after Celestia set the moon. Some days he didn’t get to sleep at all. Didn’t get to see his little filly. The stallion worked, and worked, and worked until his hooves bleed. All to get that patch of dirt running before the stallion from the bank came for his money. 

It didn’t take. 

Funny, how often ponies think farming is the simplest thing in the world. Not like the weather. Not like magic. It ain’t. Old Cotton’s corn never grew. Something to do with the soil I guess. 

Pretty soon the bank came calling. Cotton went down to the town to beg but they didn’t listen. So Cotton double checked his life insurance, walked over to the railroad tracks and waited. 

Ponies tell me it was the wrong choice. 

But you’ve heard my Pappy’s tale. It was never his choice to end his story on the front of that train. 

At what point did Cotton Picker [i]ever[/i] get to make a choice?