Back in the Day

I was born on the tail end of the depression--1939---when I was in grammer school starting in 1946, people were still coming to California from other states and particularly from the dust bowl states. I went to school with a lot of their kids and they were poorly dressed and some even still lived in their overloaded cars. They mostly worked as fruit tramps ( a dollar or two a day)and started following the various crops as they ripened in different areas of California, Oregon and Washington and some even went to Texas and Arizona following crops , but some always returned to my hometown and eventually got steady jobs and their families are still represented there, in Coalinga and most other areas / towns of the San Joaquin Valley. John Steinbeck wrote about the migrants in stories such as the Grapes of Wrath and it's very true that the migrants were often cheated out of money and beaten by the goons of unscrupulous farmers. Especially when talk of unionizing became known. ( the more things change--the more they remain the same)

It was truly an interesting time to be alive.

 

scratcho's got nine years on me. tried some of that. harvested philberts, set onions, didn't stick more then a couple of days at each.
spent a whole season with strawberries, but only because i got to work in the packing house, where it was cool.
(this was in the early 80s before i got a long term kitchen job, which was after harry and davids and before house sitting,
same years i was going to science fiction conventions, 77 to 87 was my decade in oregon)
time i was old enough to start school it was the early 50s. my parents were born in the 20s, so the depression was their teen years.

 

GPS Back in the Day

 

Those dashboards were beautiful back then!

 

STEINBECK'S GRAPES OF WRATH.