FRUIT

I first became aware of fruit picking as a child. We lived in the Evergreen Trailer Park east on Main Street. There were five or six small cabins which were routinely rented out to fruit tramps. We knew of one family who followed the fruit circuit. They lived in New Mexico and came to Emmett in the summer to pick fruit. The family consisted of father, mother and a teenaged boy. They parked their little trailer in the same park as we. The orchard owners financed and built a labor camp. The building were made of cinderblock. I think they were hot to live in and pretty bare essentials. The Mexican laborers lived in these buildings. The orchards consisted of cherry, apple, prune, peach, apricot, nectarines, strawberries and watermelon. Watermelon was not picked commercially. I picked strawberries for 80 cents a flat which consisted of a dozen baskets. The berries were weedy and you had to fight the Daddy Longlegs for the berries. Fortunately there was a strong teenaged boy to pick up the flats and give you a new one. One summer, I earned about $35 which which I purchased one reversible black and whiteplaid wool skirt. Mom asked me if I was sure I obly wanted to buy one item, yep it was what the popular girls were wearing only about four sizes smaller. One very cool thing about living by orrchards was that Mom was call to ask if they had sprayed yet. If not we went to pick asparagus which grew in the irrigation ditches. It was wonderful My brother, Jim, called in green carrots. A memorable experience I had was picking cherries. I ate almost as many cherries as I picked the first day. By the next day, I was at the top of the ladder picking away and needed to have a bowel movement. I didn't make to the bottom the ladder. I walked home, went into the outhouse to clean up as much as possible and tossed by blue jeans down the shaft. Then I went in the house to get cleaned up and some new clothes. I returned the next day without eating any cherries. We were payed by the pound and the goal was to leave the stems on, do not remove the spur from which they grew. I think they paid from10 to 15 cents per pound. The Mexican teams were very fast, very efficient. Richard and I were picking prunes, we had four trees with a big bin in thd middle. The bins held about five hundred pounds. The Mexicans would pick the four trees clean in about an hour and move to the next. Once a orchard boss came around and said, you are slow but steady. One season, Richard and I were at Grandma Berglunds and we walked to an orchard. She had made lunch for us and of course about nine a.m. we were hungry. The sandwiches turned out to be buttered bread. We felt cheated but ate them anyway. I never got the chance to pick apples becauses the season started after school started. Kids could get an excuse to pick apples but Mom never allowed it. Mostly because she knew we were safely occupied at school. One time Mom and I worked in a nectarine packing shed. We dressed rather nicely, she let me wear a pair of her wool pants. At that time we were miraculously about the same size. After that, however, I grew a bit. She told me that she used to wear Uncle Taters hat band as a belt. She could not pronounce Clayton, it came out Tayton and evolved into Tater. At any rate she was offended that I was not as dainty as she. So she purchased a flat of Metracal. This was a chocolate diet aid. I drank that stuff down and enjoyed every can. Dad reported that a guy he worked with drank so much that he became constipated. The Metracal ceased as it was a tad expensive to waste on a chubby teenager. When I returned to Emmett as a displaced housewife, both Ellen and I worked on the South Slope at an apple packing shed. We met many people. The head guy came around to introduce two men, these are our friends from behind the Iron Curtain. The Mormon housewives shivered in their shoes. The two men were Romanian. One was a cattle rancher and the othebr was a wheat farmer. I got to know them. I askedn​one man what he was taking home for a Christmas gift for his wife. He replied, "Ool." ??? bah, bah...oh WOOL. I asked him to say good evening in Romanian he said Buna Sera. Wow, that sounds like Italian. He then gave me a brief history lesson of invasion by Imperial Rome. Huh. There was also a crew of Japanese men working there. I was driving the loaded truck of apples to the rail head in town, where they would unload the truck and load onto the freight train. I was gently warned to be careful because the men were lonely. Okaaaaaaaay. We used to go pick a tiny black cherry called Tararian. It was used as a pollinator only. We would pick and Mom would make black Tartarian cherry dumplings. Delicious! Which reminds me, have a quantity of pitted black cherries in the fridge and I have some bicquits in a can which I will peel into thin sections and bake for 30 minutes at 350. Maybe next weekend.!!