Free Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do by Studs Terkel Page A

and have ‘em out there pickin’ the crops at peak harvest time. A child was off that week and when he went back to school, he got a little gold star. They would make it seem like something civic to do.
    We’d pick everything: lettuce, carrots, onions, cucumbers, cauliflower, broccoli, tomatoes—all the salads you could make out of vegetables, we picked ’em. Citrus fruits, watermelons—you name it. We’d be in Salinas about four months. From there we’d go down into the Imperial Valley. From there we’d go to picking citrus. It was like a cycle. We’d follow the seasons.
    After my dad died, my mom would come home and she’d go into her tent and I would go into ours. We’d roughhouse and everything and then we’d go into the tent where Mom was sleeping and I’d see her crying. When I asked her why she was crying she never gave me an answer. All she said was things would get better. She retired a beaten old lady with a lot of dignity. That day she thought would be better never came for her.
     
    “One time, my mom was in bad need of money, so she got a part-time evening job in a restaurant. I’d be helping her. All the growers would come in and they’d be laughing, making nasty remarks, and make passes at her. I used to go out there and kick ‘em and my mom told me to leave ’em alone, she could handle ’em. But they would embarrass her and she would cry.
    “My mom was a very proud woman. She brought us up without any help from nobody. She kept the family strong. They say that a family that prays together stays together. I say that a family that works together stays together—because of the suffering. My mom couldn’t speak English too good. Or much Spanish, for that matter. She wasn’t educated. But she knew some prayers and she used to make us say them. That’s another thing: when I see the many things in this world and this country, I could tear the churches apart. I never saw a priest out in the fields trying to help people. Maybe in these later years they’re doing it. But it’s always the church taking from the people.
    “We were once asked by the church to bring vegetables to make it a successful bazaar. After we got the stuff there, the only people havin’ a good time were the rich people because they were the only ones that were buyin’ the stuff . . .”
     
    I’d go barefoot to school. The bad thing was they used to laugh at us, the Anglo kids. They would laugh because we’d bring tortillas and frijoles to lunch. They would have their nice little compact lunch boxes with cold milk in their thermos and they’d laugh at us because all we had was dried tortillas. Not only would they laugh at us, but the kids would pick fights. My older brother used to do most of the fighting for us and he’d come home with black eyes all the time.
    What really hurt is when we had to go on welfare. Nobody knows the erosion of man’s dignity. They used to have a label of canned goods that said, “U.S. Commodities. Not to be sold or exchanged.” Nobody knows how proud it is to feel when you bought canned goods with your own money.
     
    “I wanted to be accepted. It must have been in sixth grade. It was just before the Fourth of July. They were trying out students for this patriotic play. I wanted to do Abe Lincoln, so I learned the Gettysburg Address inside and out. I’d be out in the fields pickin’ the crops and I’d be memorizin’. I was the only one who didn’t have to read the part, ’cause I learned it. The part was given to a girl who was a grower’s daughter. She had to read it out of a book, but they said she had better diction. I was very disappointed. I quit about eighth grade.
    “Any time anybody’d talk to me about politics, about civil rights, I would ignore it. It’s a very degrading thing because you can’t express yourself. They wanted us to speak English in the school classes. We’d put out a real effort. I would get into a lot of fights because I spoke Spanish and they