How many times do I have to remind you that you and I went to different schools together in FResno County. Why I planted cotton, I hoed cotton, I irrigated cotton and I picked cotton and then I started all over again. I left about the time of the first single row mechanical picker. My “little” sister lives just across the tracks and up the road a piece from Just Amy...
I admit that I had an upbringing more like the belles in Gone With the Wind BEFORE the unfortunate incident of Northern Agression. Pass the smelling salts, please. I’m beginning to feel a little faint from the insufferable heat!
Actually, my uncle joined with his neighbors to form a co-op in Chowchilla to purchase the first mechanical cotton picker in the SJV because they were so tired of trying to keep a labor force in the fields in the early-mid ‘50s. He said that if you paid them of Friday, you wouldn’t see them again until the following Wed.
And I remember the years before AC. My daddy would bring home a block of ice and put it in a square metal pan and direct an electric fan blowing across it. we’d turn off all the lights, except one, and my mother would read stories to us while I lay on the floor wucking in the breeze from the fan. 105* was a pretty regular experience in the summertime those days.
Hey, tubebender, how is your little sister doing? Are they still farming?
I’m soo happy that we are retired, but we will probably spend the rest of our days on this piece of Fresno County. Hubby always has a great vegetable garden and our few fruit trees are just right for our family. We keep saying we are leaving California, but I doubt that we will.
Like you, I picked cotton and picked grapes. One summer we even picked boysenberries; Now that was a sticky job. :)