What I Did On My Summer Vacation

​In this particular memory, I think I had just graduated from 8th grade. I was old enough to have “working papers” that allowed me to be part of farm labor with written parental consent. My mother was happy to sign the papers.

     Children picking berries to earn money was a common, even necessary occupation for children in Poland. She often told the story of how she and her siblings picked blueberries growing wild in the forests and sold enough baskets in order to be able to buy shoes for school in the fall.
      I’m not sure why my brothers didn’t join me this particular day as we usually picked together but I got up early, made a jelly and butter sandwich and walked the 3 miles to the Employment Office. There were other people already there not unlike myself – other immigrant kids, just kids wanting to earn some money and adults of Italian and Hispanic heritage.
     At 8 am the pick-up trucks start to pull up in front of the Employment Office. Everybody piles into the back of the nearest truck. Most have been fitted with planks of wood along the long sides to make a bench. The unspoken rule was that this was for the adults. Kids just sat down on the bed of the truck, squeezed in together like so many sardines.  Nobody checks our “papers.” Did we even know the name of our farmer?  Or where we were going? No. This is the early 60’s. A different world from today.
     We ride like this all the way across the county line into open farmlands with acres and acres of strawberry fields. We pile out of the trucks, walk towards a wooden table already set up with a tablet and money box.  There are mountains of square, wooden, one-quart baskets nearby and “flats,” - flat, rectangular boxes that would hold eight one-quart baskets at a time.  Already picking in the fields are migrant workers.  I don’t know what country they were from but they converse to one another in Spanish. The field boss (maybe the owner? who knew? I didn’t) assigns everyone a row. The women, dressed in old house dresses covered with even older aprons, chat together in Italian and choose rows close to one another. I’m assigned my own row.  I’m instructed to pick clean, not to leave ripe berries behind, but to look carefully under all the leaves.  I start filling up a one-quart basket.  The pay is 5 cents for every quart basket picked.  
      Some squat while picking, some bend over the rows. Eventually, you have to change it up because both positions are hard to maintain during the long, hot summer day. Sometimes you kneel alongside, sometimes you sit just in the narrow space between the rows but it’s awkward and hard to move along the row. 
     The strawberries are large. Much better than some farms where it’s second pickings and the strawberries are smaller, and it’s harder to fill a basket quickly. Another perk: we can eat as many strawberries as we want.   I take up flats of eight quarts to the table where someone logs my numbers. The sun rises higher.  Soon I wish I had a bandana across my forehead to catch the sweat like the migrant workers or a kerchief tied at the back of the neck like the Italian women. I’d forgotten my straw hat.  The sun is now beating down.  I have no one to talk to or complain to. Like immigrants have done throughout history, in factories and in farm labor, I put my head down and keep working. There is no other choice. The boss determines when the day is done and there’s no place to hide. There isn’t a tree in sight to catch some shade.
     In the meantime, my head fills with the sound of the Italian women and Spanish migrants talking. I don’t understand a word but there’s humor and laughter. There’s quiet murmuring.   I pick quart after quart and listen. Somewhere in that day I realized I was doing really well with the “pickin” and I told myself I was going to pick 100 quarts. A nice even number. A goal to reach. It motivated me when I was lagging.
     When I got home that day, I was bone tired. The teeth in my sunburnt face were whiter than white from (what I was later to learn) the malic/citric acid in all the berries I ate.  But I proudly handed my mother the five dollar bill I had earned that day. That’s how it was at our house. Rarely did we keep money earned. She took it to the bank and deposited it. She did the same when I brought money home from picking currants (paid by the pound) or grapes (paid by the crate) and later, waitressing (paid by the hour). When I was applying to nursing school, my mother pulled out our joint bank book and showed me my collective earnings which had amounted to something over the years.  There was money to pay for tuition, books and uniforms.

 Photo of me "pickin" ( but only a few quarts ) by Regina Hanchak. 

To this very day, when I hear Spanish being spoken, I’m back in the strawberry field picking 100 quarts to earn five dollars. Each time I buy strawberries at the grocery store I think of immigrant and migrant workers who have picked those berries in the hot sun, for a minimal wage.  I think of all this as I still try to pick my row clean these 60 years later at a U-Pick strawberry farm.  Our childhood experiences stay with us forever, frequently shaping our world view for the rest of our lives.