Back when I was of an age that was old enough to take on a summer
job (I must have been 12 or 13) opportunity presented itself in the form of “Mrs.
B.” I don’t think I ever met Mrs. B., but she bussed kids out to the fields
where in early summer we would pick Strawberries, and late summer we would pick
beans. We didn’t get paid a lot, but we did get paid! This was the first real
money most of us had ever earned other than an allowance, and my mother didn’t
believe in allowances. She had seen too many kids who expected to get paid for
doing things they should have been doing anyway, and some who wanted to get
paid for doing nothing.
But field work was real work, and you got paid based on how
much you picked. If you laid around and did nothing, you got paid nothing. I
think we got 80 cents a crate for strawberries. I don’t remember how much we
got paid for beans, but it was by weight. I made it through one full season of
strawberry picking, but the next year I only made it a few days before my
allergies exploded to such an extent that even my mom said “you’re done.”
Strawberry season was in June. The worst month for me and my hay fever.
Strawberry picking also has a lot of drawbacks. You are bent over bushes all
day. There is no shade and it can get hot out there. We all packed our own
lunches and I remember one trick my friend taught me was to put my can of soda
in the freezer overnight. It would expand in the freezer, bulging the can out to
a misshapen mass, but it (usually) didn’t burst. Then when lunch time came you
had a nice cold Coke or root beer or whatever. But by the end of the day, we
were all pretty worn out and spent from the heat. The one perk of the
strawberry fields was that you got to eat a lot of strawberries fresh off the
vine. Oregon strawberries that are that fresh, are a spectacular treat. If you
have only had store-bought strawberries, you don’t know what you are missing. But
no matter how good something tastes, if you have a never-ending supply of it,
it can get old.
Bean picking was a more pleasant experience. For one thing
it was later in the summer, after hay fever season was mostly over. The rows of beans were at least six feet
tall: automatic shade. This also allowed for more privacy from pushy or nosey
crew bosses. It allowed us the ability to occasionally (ahem) goof off, i.e. have
bean fights, sit around and talk or sing along with the radio. Most every group
had someone who brought a transistor radio with them to the fields. Music was
always playing. Hearing certain songs still takes me back to the bean fields. Ain’t
no Sunshine When She’s Gone by Bill Withers, Uncle Albert by Paul
McCartney and Wings, Brandy by Looking Glass, Hold Your head Up
by Argent, Mr. Bojangles by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Smiling Faces
by the Undisputed Truth, and many more.
If we occasionally goofed off, it meant that we had freedom.
Freedom to make our own mistakes: like I said, if you didn’t produce, you
didn’t get paid. But getting paid, earning our own money was an empowering
thing. It was our money to do with as we pleased. For the first time in
our lives, we weren’t dependent on someone else giving us money to go out and
buy a record or book or a game. There were good life lessons. The harder you
worked, the more you got paid. For soft kids like us, it was hard work, and I’m
sure there were things that we grumbled about, but mainly I remember good times
with good friends. One day when my friends and I were somewhat shirking, the
song Uncle Albert was playing, and when it got to the part where he says
“We’re so sorry, Uncle Albert . . .” We
all joined in on the next line, “But we haven’t done a bloody thing all day!”
Then we laughed uproariously at our own cleverness.
Good times and life lessons, a powerful combination.
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