THANK YOU! Back in my day we picked strawberries and ‘pickles’. We were happy to earn our own money. NOW, I hear about illegals who don’t mind doing the jobs I used to do.
Well, another generation and the kids of those illegals won’t do it. The work ethic is an endangered species. Thanks for picking strawberries and cukes. While my work was labor-intensive, it was at least nice and cool. Harvest back then didn’t start until at least one good frost had killed the vines. Then it was breakneck speed to harvest before a killer frost got down to the potatoes themselves. I understand things have changed since then, with potatoes being harvested earlier in order to cut down the bruising that increases with the cold. I know it increased our bruises.
I remember (boy am I getting nostalgic) one year in high school when I returned to school after three weeks on a combine. I became close with an adult woman on my crew and one evening I was doing a Candy Striper shift at our hospital when I saw her in the emergency room. She was lying on a gurney, holding a wad of cloth on her hand. She smiled when she saw me and then whipped off the bandage to show me her index finger now an inch shorter than that morning. Combines were dangerous to fingers. More than once a glove would be ripped off or torn, just missing fingers. She said she got careless.
Life was tough back then but the people were even tougher.