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

couldn’t understand it. I was punished. I was kept after school for not speaking English.”
     
    We used to have our own tents on the truck. Most migrants would live in the tents that were already there in the fields, put up by the company. We got one for ourselves, secondhand, but it was ours. Anglos used to laugh at us. “Here comes the carnival,” they’d say. We couldn’t keep our clothes clean, we couldn’t keep nothing clean, because we’d go by the dirt roads and the dust. We’d stay outside the town.
    I never did want to go to town because it was a very bad thing for me. We used to go to the small stores, even though we got clipped more. If we went to the other stores, they would laugh at us. They would always point at us with a finger. We’d go to town maybe every two weeks to get what we needed. Everybody would walk in a bunch. We were afraid. (Laughs.) We sang to keep our spirits up. We joked about our poverty. This one guy would say, “When I get to be rich, I’m gonna marry an Anglo woman, so I can be accepted into society.” The other guy would say, “When I get rich I’m gonna marry a Mexican woman, so I can go to that Anglo society of yours and see them hang you for marrying an Anglo.” Our world was around the fields.
    I started picking crops when I was eight. I couldn’t do much, but every little bit counts. Every time I would get behind on my chores, I would get a carrot thrown at me by my parents. I would daydream: If I were a millionaire, I would buy all these ranches and give them back to the people. I would picture my mom living in one area all the time and being admired by all the people in the community. All of a sudden I’d be rudely awaken by a broken carrot in my back. That would bust your whole dream apart and you’d work for a while and come back to daydreaming.
    We used to work early, about four o‘clock in the morning. We’d pick the harvest until about six. Then we’d run home and get into our supposedly clean clothes and run all the way to school because we’d be late. By the time we got to school, we’d be all tuckered out. Around maybe eleven o’clock, we’d be dozing off. Our teachers would send notes to the house telling Mom that we were inattentive. The only thing I’d make fairly good grades on was spelling. I couldn’t do anything else. Many times we never did our homework, because we were out in the fields. The teachers couldn’t understand that. I would get whacked there also.
    School would end maybe four o’clock. We’d rush home again, change clothes, go back to work until seven, seven thirty at night. That’s not counting the weekends. On Saturday and Sunday, we’d be there from four thirty in the morning until about seven thirty in the evening. This is where we made the money, those two days. We all worked.
    I would carry boxes for my mom to pack the carrots in. I would pull the carrots out and she would sort them into different sizes. I would get water for her to drink. When you’re picking tomatoes, the boxes are heavy. They weigh about thirty pounds. They’re dropped very hard on the trucks so they have to be sturdy.
    The hardest work would be thinning and hoeing with a short-handled hoe. The fields would be about a half a mile long. You would be bending and stooping all day. Sometimes you would have hard ground and by the time you got home, your hands would be full of calluses. And you’d have a backache. Sometimes I wouldn’t have dinner or anything. I’d just go home and fall asleep and wake up just in time to go out to the fields again.
    I remember when we just got into California from Arizona to pick up the carrot harvest. It was very cold and very windy out in the fields. We just had a little old blanket for the four of us kids in the tent. We were freezin’ our tail off. So I stole two brand-new blankets that belonged to a grower. When we got under those blankets it was nice and comfortable. Somebody saw me. The next morning the