Working the Fields At Thirteen: A Memoir

By Jack Shields

Jack Shields and his family caught a Greyhound bus and took Route 66 all the way to California in 1944—and they didn’t look back. They arrived at a government-run farm labor camp where their loved ones were staying. At the camp, for as little as five dollars a month, you could rent a clean place to live that had electricity and running water. There were even community bathrooms. Once there, Shields and his older brother went right to work, first landing jobs at an alfalfa field and then moving on to whatever field work they could find. Since they did not have transportation, it was not always easy, but they consistently found a way to put money into their pockets. Shields started the eighth grade in 1944, and by then attitudes toward Okie children had changed, because with World War II, there were plenty of jobs and few workers. Step back in time and get a snapshot of the social history and culture of rural California in the 1940s as Shields looks back at Working the Fields at Thirteen.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Aug 2, 2018
• ISBN: 9781483488011

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SHIELDS

Copyright © 2018 Jack Shields.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-8802-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-8801-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018908047

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 07/17/2018

W e came to California in 1944 after school let out for the summer vacation. I was thirteen. My mother decided that she wanted to go to California to visit her parents who had moved there in 1936. She had not seen them for eight long years. She took us three boys with her.

We caught the Greyhound bus and took Route 66 all the way to California. We had a layover in Albuquerque, New Mexico. They kicked us off the bus to allow some servicemen to take our seats. Servicemen had priority because of World War II. We stopped in Los Angeles for a week to visit with her brother. Uncle Charlie was working as a groundskeeper for Joe E. Brown, the famous comedian and movie star. Uncle Charlie lived in an old house located below the estate on ten acres filled with fruit and avocado trees. This was the first time I had ever eaten an avocado. I didn’t like them.

After that week, we caught the Greyhound bus to Bakersfield. There, we boarded the Orange Belt Stage Line that took us to the farm labor camp where her parents were living. It was called the government camp.

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A makeshift home

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The tent section of the government camp

That was because it was built by the US government for the poor farm laborers who were not making enough money to afford a place to live. Some of them were living on the side of the road in makeshift shelters made up of canvas, cardboard and sheets of tin. Whatever they could find. Some called them ditch bank Okies. At the camp, for as little as five dollars a month, they could rent a clean place to live that had electricity and running water. There were even community bathrooms.

I had turned thirteen in March, and David, my older brother, was fifteen. We arrived at the camp in May. David and I didn’t know anyone there our age, so we were kind of footloose. While standing out in front of the store one day, a man in a large black car stopped and asked us if we wanted a job. We told him sure, but we didn’t have transportation. He said he would take us and bring us back home, so we climbed into the car with him, and he took us out about two miles to an alfalfa field. We bailed hay all night.

They had cut the hay that day and raked it up into rows. That night, we bailed it. There were two guys using pitchforks, tossing the hay into a hopper on the bailer. A large arm then came down and compressed the hay. Next, a piston pushed the compressed hay into a metal frame. We then dropped a block of wood into the middle as it was pushed toward the end.

My job was to feed bailing wires through the wooden blocks. A guy on the other side then fed it back to me on the other end of the bail. I then ran the end of the wires through a loop and twisted it off. When the bail came out at the end, it expanded and was held tight by the two wires. We were at it for twelve hours. The sun was up when we stopped.

We left the hay field and arrived back at the camp after sun up. I was tired but happy. I’d made $8.40 for my twelve hours of work, the most money I’d made in my entire life. Before that, the most I’d ever made had been twenty cents. I’d made that by hauling ice for two of the ladies in the logging camp where we’d lived. I’d had a little red wagon, and the ladies had paid me ten cents each to haul their ice for them.

The logging company had had an icehouse in a small building that had double walls that were filled with sawdust for insulation. You could buy a coupon books that gave you either twenty-five or fifty pounds of ice. I had gotten the books, taken them to the icehouse, and gotten the amount of ice the ladies had asked for. I had been able to haul two pieces of ice for them, so I had made twenty cents each week.

Mother had no idea that David and I had been gone all night. She and our younger brother, Ronald, age four, were staying with her parents in their tin cabin. David and I were staying with an uncle on the other side of the camp. I remember trying to sleep that day. I swore that the temperature was at least 110 degrees. There was no swamp cooler and not even a fan. We were sleeping on top of the bed, and I’m sure the sheets were wet with our perspiration.

When we woke up, we were out of a job again, and I was anxious to find another one. Instead of hating to go to work, I couldn’t wait. I was getting rich. The next day, we started looking for something else to do. Not that we were used to it, but we loved the money and wanted to do it again. We were handicapped because we didn’t have transportation.

David could find work easier than I could because he was fifteen soon to be sixteen. One of our uncles, a man named Roy Osborn who was married to my mother’s youngest sister, Anna Bell, said he was going into Arvin to see if he could get a job at one of the potato-packing sheds and that I could go along to see if I could get a job. They took him and told him to come back in the morning but turned me down, saying I had to be fifteen in order to work in the packing sheds.

On the way back home, we stopped into a cafe to get breakfast. My uncle said he would buy. I don’t believe I’d ever in my life eaten at a cafe before. I didn’t know what to order. He said he’d order a short stack for me. A short stack? What’s that? It turned out to be two pancakes with syrup and butter. I know I’d never had pancakes before. Boy, they were good. I thought if I ever had the opportunity to eat in a cafe again, I’d definitely have a short stack.

The next day, David and I got a ride out to where they were digging potatoes. We thought we could get on, but it turned out that all the spaces were taken. Each person was given a space about seventy to eighty feet long, and they were to pick up all the potatoes in that space. Around their waists, they wore canvass belts that had three hooks on the. One was on the side, where they hung empty burlap bags we called tow sacks. The two hooks in the front were to hook the tow sack on so the front was open. They pushed the sack in between their legs. When the potato digger went by, they began to throw the potato vines