Take A Break…

I haven’t written in this blog for a while and, since each prior post has been about work, I think it’s time for a break. Here’s the chorus of a song I wrote some time ago. I insert it as a poem on it’s own and hope you enjoy it.

“When the Roses Bloom”

When the Roses bloom,
and the dew is on the Lilacs,
And the wild azaleas cluster in the shadows of my mind,

I will take your hand and hold you,

and we’ll walk among the flowers,
When Autumn Brings the Apple blossom time…

and forever.

 

When the Roses Bloom…

 

Later…

The Worst of ’em…

I guess the worst of the fruit to pick was Boysenberries. I won’t go much into how they’re grown, only how they’re picked, at least my experience of picking them.(which was only once)

First, let me explain a little about Boysenberries and what they are. They are a cross between red raspberries, logan berries and blackberries. They were developed by a man named Rudolph Boysen (who abandoned the fruit after developing it) and first commercially cultivated and marketed by a man named Walter Knott of Buena Park, California.

Mr. Boysen developed the berry in Napa Valley but, as I said, abandoned the fruit and the vine. Mr. Knott, a southern California berry farmer and George Darrow, a USDA employee, heard of the juicy berry and tracked down the abandoned berry vine and Mr. Knott took it to Buena Park where he grew the large, juicy berries and his wife made preserves from the berries and sold them to the public. They were so well received that they (and the farm where they were grown, Knotts Berry Farm) became world famous.

Anyhow, us kids were always looking for a way to make a buck since, in Little Okie, Modesto, there weren’t many bucks to be had by kids. There was a man who had acres and acres of Boysen Berries and needed for them to be picked. It was hard for him to find people to pick his berries because he couldn’t pay much and no one wanted to get their hands all scratched up by the berry vine thorns. What he did was pass around leaflets through our and other neighborhoods saying he wanted to hire kids to pick his berries for so much money a small basket. The baskets were the size of the now popular strawberry baskets.

On the leaflet, he told where he would be on a certain day (the corner of Oregon Drive and Empire Avenue) and anyone who wanted to pick berries should be there to be picked up and taken to the berry patch. He would pay for the number of baskets picked by each person at the end of the day (which was about six hours). I don’t remember how much a basket paid but it wasn’t enough for me to go a second day. We were instructed to bring gloves and many of us did. We started at the end of a vine and picked the berries, one at a time, carefully so’s not to mash them, and put them into the little basket.

The problem was, no matter how thick your gloves were, (most of us had cotton gloves) they wouldn’t stop the thorns from piercing right to the skin and nailing your arms! I stayed the first day and picked all I could, mostly because it was too far to walk home. Some of the kids tried to put leaves in their baskets so they would appear full but the guy checking them quickly put a stop to that.

As I recall, I earned about a dollar and a half that day, not nearly enough for me to want to go back for another day! Actually, no amount of money would have been enough, considering the thorn holes on my hands and the scratches on my arms!

I told this story to a friend many years later and his response was, “Gee, I didn’t think Boysenberries had thorns!”

Well, ‘duh’! Then what was that I had picked? Well,.. what was it? I guess some do and some don’t. If finding out for sure takes another round of picking them, I’ll never know! (or care)

I guess the thing about picking berries, even Blackberries, is to not get in too much of a hurry. I remember several times when my Mother’s brothers and sisters came from Texas to Modesto to visit us. They would set up their tents on the end of our lot, a couple had small trailers that were big enough to sleep in, and we cooked and ate on a couple of big tables under the apricot trees.

This is a picture of Grandpa (walking away) and Grandma (facing us) and Aunt Cannie Rayburn with her back to us, Grandma’s sister, Aunt Sylvia standing facing us in the background and some others sitting around a table, getting ready to eat. (or just visiting)  This was about 1946 or so.

Mom and most of the women would go to Dry Creek and wade out into the creek with buckets and pick the ripe, juicy blackberries to take home and eat and no one much complained about the scratches they got picking the berries! They usually picked enough so that Mother could can up a bunch of the berries while the folks were there visiting us. Then the relatives would each have at least one jar of Blackberry jam to take home when they left.

Those days were wonderful. Everyone would sit around the table or on peach boxes and talk about their times at home or about things that had happened to them since the last time they saw each other; or just visit and enjoy each other’s company. Once in a while, Pop and Uncle Mack and a couple more of the men would sneak off down to Legion Park and take a snort of Three Feathers or Four Roses or some other kind of whiskey (there was no drinking allowed at home) and have their ‘man talk’ then come back and try not to let the women know they had been drinking. Of course everyone knew but as long as there was no trouble, no one acknowledged it. No one ever got drunk but it sure loosened them up!

Us boys would usually ‘put on the gloves’ and see who was the best fighter. The men made a big thing of it but always made sure the boxing gloves were 16 ounce gloves so no one would get hurt much during the boxing match. The winner was usually the kid who lasted the longest without getting tired. It was great fun!

Sometimes the women and the girls would get the quilting frame out and take scraps of cloth Mom had or the other women brought with them from Texas and have a quilting bee and swap gossip. They loved to talk about their men and things that had happened since the last visit. It was a wonderful way of life and everyone always seemed very happy. Who knows, this visit could be the last time some of us ever saw the rest, at least in this life.
It seems that kind of visiting doesn’t happen much anymore. Mother is gone to her reward and so are all of her brothers and sisters. I guess those days are gone forever.

And besides, most people are too busy nowadays to do much visiting. And who would sleep in a tent anymore and wade into the creek to pick a bunch of thorny blackberries! Too bad…sad.
Later…

Cotton-Boll Twist…

I guess I never mentioned why I named this site “Cottonboll Twist.” Well, cotton-boll twist is a kind of tobacco that is cured and hand twisted to be used for chewing or pipe smoking, whichever is preferred. The first and only time I ever saw it, heard of it or in any way, came in contact with it is when I saw my friend, Utah’s, Grandpa Hampton whittle off a piece and either smoke it in his pipe or chew it. I think he did both; I can’t be sure now.

The main thing I remember is it smelled so strong, I wondered how he could use it. Now, mind you, I was only about eleven years old when I first met him.

Utah moved to my home town when I was about eleven or twelve. That was in 1947 or maybe 1948. Anyhow, the first time I saw Utah was when he walked in front of my house on his way home. He had just moved there from Oklahoma. I went out and stopped him and asked who he was and what he was doing here. He told me his name and I decided to check him out so I gave him a shove and told him to beat it and don’t come around here anymore.

Later on that same day, I had on a pair of roller skates, the kind that screwed onto the soles of my shoes and had a strap across the top of my foot, and I was skating around on the road in front of our house when I saw a big girl coming down the street toward me. I didn’t know who she was so I didn’t pay much attention to her. When she got even with me, she asked me if I was the guy who was pushing her little brother around and I think I said yes. The next thing I knew, she had me around the neck and was punching on my head. Being on roller skates, I couldn’t do anything except keep getting hit. Her name was Mary Lee.
She finally let me go and told me I’d better not pick on her little brother anymore. And I never did. In my self defense, Utah and I became friends.

To make a long story shorter and get back to the subject, Utah and his sister were raised by their Grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Hampton. We called him, “Pop Hampton.”

They bought the first television in the neighborhood and Pop Hampton loved the wrestling matches. He thought Lou Thez (Aloysius Martin Thesz) and Sandor Szabo (Peter Sandor) were the greatest. All of us kids were allowed to watch a television show, the wrestling, about once a week, and in those days, wrestling really looked real!

That’s Sandor on the left and Lou on the right.

It was a lot of fun going to Utah’s house and watching tv on their 17 inch set. Pop Hampton would take out the twist of tobacco and carve on it with his pocket knife and pack it into his pipe and smoke it. It stunk so bad I never could figure how he could stand it. I don’t guess it hurt him much, though. I saw Utah again about ten years ago (or 12) and he told me Pop Hampton had died the year before at age 94.

So there you have it. I’m honoring Pop Hampton and thinking of getting a twist for myself. I’ve only got 21 years to go! (If the Good Lord’s willing and the creek don’t rise!

PS   Also, I have worked at picking all of the products about which I wrote; Cotton, Peaches and Grapes-and a bunch more! And, did I enjoy it!— NO WAY!!!

Later…

Grow’em_Cut’em_Juice‘em_or Dry’em! Grapes, that is…

Or just eat ’em! Yummy! It’s Grape Cuttin’ Time..

.Growing grapes isn’t too different than growing cotton or peaches. First you have to condition a plot of ground with nitrates (not too much) and other soil conditioners. Then you plow the ground into elevated rows so water can run between them. Or just flood the area.

Then you drive stakes into long rows and stretch wire (either single or double) along the entire length of your row to which the grape vines can climb. The number of plants you intend to plant will determine how many stakes and how much wire is needed. Plants should be about eight to ten feet apart to allow for growth.

Grapes are usually grown from young plant clippings bought from a nursery. You need to decide what kind of grape you want. There are wine grapes, such as Cabernet Sauvignon, (some of which aren’t too tasty to eat) and there are seedless Thompsons or Ladyfingers, just two of many excellent table grapes. Concord and Tokay are two excellent choices for wines or for eating.

You need an area that gets lots of sun, the more the better. Grape vines flourish in hot weather as long as they are adequately watered. As the grapes grow, they must be helped to wind their vine runners around the wire lines to spread. When grapes appear the first year, they should be picked off and discarded, usually just dropped on the ground. The second year they should be ready to eat. There’s a lot more to it but you can find out by Googling about it. Now for the fun part.

We get up just after daylight and have breakfast. Our family used to always have breakfast together at a table (sometimes made out of peach crates turned upside down and placed on each other and using peach crates for chairs) in the old days. It’s the way we ate; together.

Then we drive to a pre-selected grape vineyard. We could start as early as we wished, depending on what time the contractor got there. Most people take only a single row of grape vines and pick (actually, ‘cut’) the grapes to the end. Usually each person has their own separate row.

Some people wear knee pads because they prefer to move along on their knees rather than bending over to cut the grapes. Although the term for harvesting grapes is called ‘picking ‘or ‘cutting’, the grapes themselves aren’t cut. The stem holding each bunch of grapes is cut using a grape knife.

The grape knife is a specialty knife, usually about 6 to nine inches long, about half of it is the blade which is a wide blade that is hooked on the end. This is so the blade can be ‘hooked’ around the stem which grows from the vine and cut with a pulling action. The handle is usually slightly bigger around than one might expect so it fits into the hand easily and is easy and comfortable to hold and use. At the end of the day, a persons’ cutting hand (the right if they are right handed and the left if left handed) can be very tired from using the knife in the same manner all day; i.e., a pulling motion.

Depending on how the grapes will be consumed, they are cut into a box that is either pulled along on the ground behind the picker or lifted and set farther ahead as one progresses along the row and, when filled, is left along the row to be picked up by workers and loaded onto a truck or trailer in much the same fashion as the peaches were, or dumped into a huge vat or tank that holds a certain number of boxes (not the boxes; just the grapes). We got paid for the number of boxes we filled.

Some grapes that are grown to be raisins are spread onto a large piece of heavy paper and left to dry in the sun. The most common practice nowadays, however, is to dump the grapes from the box into the very large vat or tank which, when full, is loaded onto a truck and taken to the winery where the grapes are pressed by a huge wine press to extract the juice from the grape for wine making.

Most of the grape tanks are fastened onto the bed of the truck or trailer and held there with cables tightened by winches that are bolted along the sides of the truck bed or trailer. They are hinged on one side so the vat can be tipped sideways and the grapes dumped into a wine press.

Cutting grapes is a very tiring and hot, dusty job. The pay is by the hour or by the number of boxes cut or by the number of vats filled. Compared with harvesting other types of fruit, (except berries) cutting grapes is probably the least profitable for the worker.

For me, cutting grapes was preferred only over picking berries, particularly boysenberries or black berries because those berries have thorns on the vines that make it very hard on the hands.

The things that had to be watched out for the most when cutting grapes were goat heads and sand burrs, two kinds of stickers that grab hold and don’t want to let go, and wasps and bees for obvious reasons.

Most of grape harvesting is done by Mexican Braceros, or workers, some legal but some illegal.

As with any kind of fruit harvesting, we were always glad to finish a hot, tiring day and head for the house and a hosing down and a hot meal!

I’ll stop here for now and go into the winemaking part of grape production at a later time.

Later…

Pick Them_Put ’em in a Bucket/Box…

 OK, you axed for it! This time it’s peaches! Here’s a photo of Grandma sorting peaches in the boxes.

First, we get out of bed at 6:00 o’clock AM. Then we get dressed, making sure we wear a shirt with long sleeves and tight cuffs. (even though it will be 90 degrees outside today-I’ll explain later) When we leave, we usually wear headgear of some kind; the men, hats and the women, scarves. We eat a good breakfast, usually biscuits and gravy with bacon or sausage, or hotcakes and sugar syrup with a cup of  boiled coffee.

 

 Then we drive to the orchard and get a bucket and ladder. The bucket is about a four gallon and has a wire handle with a hook in the middle and the ladder is a 12 or 14 footer. We are, of course, picking peaches.<p>Much of the typical peach picking crews are made up of entire families. We take a set of trees, usually a square of four, then all pick a tree at a time and move around the tree and pick the bottoms then use the ladder to get the fruit from the top and inside the branches. In later years, trees have been “topped” as they are pruned.

 

But, I’m getting ahead of myself. First we have to plant and grow the trees. Peach trees are set out into orchard plats, usually at least fifteen (?) feet apart to allow for growth. They are flooded to water and after they begin to grow, they have to be hoed to keep weeds out.

I’m a bit vague on this part of raising peaches because I was never involved in the “growing” part of peaches.

 

The peach trees blossom in the early spring and farmers have to watch them carefully and sometimes use smudge pots placed around and through the orchard to prevent frost from ruining the blossoms. After the buds turn to fruit, (usually in the third or so year, the fruit should be thinned by removing some of it so the rest can get more nutrition and grow larger.

 

After the trees begin to produce fruit, in the winter they should be pruned; i.e., some limbs and ‘runners’ cut off to insure sunlight gets into the bottom part of the tree and the other limbs get adequate nutrition.  And sometimes, if the fruit is very heavy on the limbs, that limb is propped up with a long, narrow board. ‘whew’        There’s more to growing but I know more about the “fun” part, that is, the picking.

 

 OK, I got dressed, washed my hands and face in a wash pan of water that had been heated on the stove, ate breakfast and now we head to the peach orchard.

 The roads aren’t very wide at most orchards so people usually drive in from one direction and out the other way. We find the boss and park under trees that have been picked already. (or just out of the way)

 

We get our trees, sometimes a row or part of a row, pick up a bucket each and a couple of ladders for the family and the kids start on the bottom of the tree and the grownups climb the ladders and get the tops and middles

We have to be careful to not pick fruit that is still green. The bosses will check the fruit to be sure it is all ripe enough. Our while family has been educated as to how ripe and how big the fruit is to be harvested. We have a metal ring that we use to measure the fruit for size. If a peach goes through the ring, it’s too small to pick. That’s called, “ringing” it. ‘duh’

 

We pick the fruit into the bucket that has a metal handle with a hook on it so it can be hung on a limb. When the bucket is full, it is dumped into a peach box, called a ‘lug’. The weight of the lug of peaches is 45 pounds. The box is called a 45 pound lug. We prefer to pick clingstone peaches rather than freestones because we don’t need to be as careful with them since they’re mostly going to the cannery to be canned. ‘yummy!’

As a lug is filled, the boxes are stacked in rows, usually four or five high, along the road between each odd row. A man drives a truck along the road and checks each lug as he hands it up to another man who loads it onto a flatbed truck. Each box must be loaded right up to the top, checked for too green fruit and ringed for size, to be accepted. If he finds one not up all the way, he takes peaches out of another box to finish it and leaves that box to be re-filled. (That short box is usually quickly filled so all lugs can be taken. It’s a fast operation) We have a punch card the driver punches out to record how many boxes we have. (At the end of the day or job, we go to the boss and he counts the punches in the card and pays us for them.)

 

 We usually pick until noon or so and try to stop for lunch about the same time as everyone else in that orchard. Everyone tries to finish his trees at the same time because we will then move on to another orchard together.

 

OK, we’ve picked, eaten lunch and picked some more. As anyone who has picked peaches well knows, peaches are covered with very fine stiff hairs called, “Peach Fuzz.” It is a hot day and at the end of the hot, sweaty day, we are covered with dirt and peach fuzz and itching like blazes. (Now you can see why we wear long sleeve shirts with tight cuffs and a collar that can be buttoned tightly; to keep out the peach fuzz!)

 

 Now for the fun part.

 If we’re lucky, there is an irrigation canal nearby. If not, we find one that is running with water. When we do, all the kids and most of the grownups jump into the canal of ice cold water, clothes and all! Some folks even bring their soap bars with them. This is how we wash our clothes, bathe and get rid of the peach fuzz, all at the same time! It’s the best part of the day and our wet clothes will be dry by the time we get home.

 Then, tomorrow’s another day! Them was, indeed, the good old days and I sure miss them; but not too much! ‘Chuckle’

 

See ya…

 

Here’s How You Do It…

Pick cotton, of course!

First the farmer plants it in straight @6″ high hill rows, about a foot apart. Then you water it. Then you chop it. (hoe the weeds out) Then you spray it to kill the boll weevils.
Then, after the bolls pop open, you spray it to kill the leaves, then you pick it, a row or two at a time, putting it into a 10-12-or 14 foot sack hanging on a strap around your shoulder, carry it to the wagon, weigh it on a scale, put the money for each bag into your pocket when it’s weighed, climb a ladder and dump it into a wagon.
Later some (most) contractors hired a man or two to climb the ladder and dump the sack before you got paid. That stopped some people from adding green bolls and leaves, even dirt, to the sack to increase the weight. Later, after the field has been picked and re-picked, you strip the stalks of all the missed cotton and green bolls.

You have to wait until the sun gets hot enough to melt the dew on the cotton before you can begin picking, usually around nine to ten AM. Then you pick through the day until it gets too hot, around 2:30 or three. Some people just keep picking. A good picker can pick 500 pounds plus a day. The average is 350 pounds. Mine was 365. My brother-in-law, with someone carrying and dumping for him, used two sacks and picked 900 pounds one day. That was in the 40s when picking cotton was a good way to make money. The best rate of pay was $3.00 a hundred. On my best day I earned $10.95 which was good wages for a thirteen year old.

Then the fields are plowed under and we start all over. Now machines do all the picking. Goody and bummer. That’s good for me but bad for kids growing up who don’t know what it’s like to really work for a buck. Maybe next time I’ll tell you how to pick peaches. See ya…