“Many years ago, high school kids used to pick crops to make money so they could buy school clothes. Those days could come again if the illegals don’t show up.”
I am 73 years old, when a kid, school let out in the spring so we could chop cotton ten hours a day for 50 cents an hour. School started back up in July, then in September let out again so we could pick cotton from daylight to dark until November for $3.00 per hundred pounds.
Our single mother didn’t like it, but our family’s very survival depended on getting the meager work and wages. Such was the norm for my five siblings and I, along with the majority of other kids.
On our wedding day, the Wife and I got married at ten o’clock in the morning, at twelve noon we were back in the cotton field and picked until dark. Our wedding dinner was foot long chili dogs bought by father-in-law at the Log Cabin drive in.
We didn’t like it and vowed to get out. I hitch hiked to Chicago with ten bucks in one shoe and 15 in the other. I took the first job could find working for a day labor company, went on to other jobs and the rest as they say, is history.
Some may say BS about the wedding day story. In 2010 we retook our wedding vows on 50th anniversary in Las Vegas at the Elvis wedding chapel. My sister leaked the story to the Elvis Preacher and he made me promise Wife would not have to pick cotton the rest of the day.
Here is video of the event and one can hear Elvis make me promise: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGrDyM5-RJs&feature=player_embedded
I’m about 6 years younger than you but can relate to your cotton field experiences right down to the 50¢ an hour 10 hour days and $3.00 per hundred for picking. We got out of school for picking season too.
Where our stories differ is that after high school, I enlisted. There weren’t a whole lot of options for college back then, no student loans, no Pell grants for poor cotton pickers.Work at something or go hungry.