Plowing with horses and mules

My father never owned a tractor but he did owned horses and mules. As a boy I had learned how to catch the horses, harnessed them, and hook them to the plow. One plow I had to work with a lot was called a double shovel. This plow had two metal prongs that went down into the ground. One prong was in front and one prong was in back. The prong in back was set over about 8 inches. Attached to these prongs were the plow blades. These plow blades were triangular in form and had a bolt that fasten them to the prongs. The sharp end of the triangle blade went down into the dirt and the two sides of the triangle push the dirt to the side. 

You could burst your ribs plowing with a double shovel in new ground. New ground is ground that has trees cut off of it and has been cleared for planning crops. It is easy enough to cut trees down. But the roots of the tree go everywhere across the ground. Some of the roots are deep enough that you don't have to deal with them. It is roots close to the surface that give you the problems. When you walk behind a double shovel you walk in between the handles. These handle strike you about the middle of your waist or just about where your ribs are. The horse is a powerful animal and when he is moving along at a good clip and one of your plow blades hits a big root causes the plow to go sideways the axis being the blade of the plow and the handle pops into your site at a terrific force. I've had this happened to me several times. Sometimes I would have to stop for a while to regroup.

Living in tin houses

Some of the labor camps that we lived in during those years that we worked in the fruit were metal houses. One such labor camp was close to Weedpatch California. The town of Weedpatch was about 40 miles from Bakersfield California. The afternoon temperature in July around Bakersfield California and be up the hundred and 120°. Can imagine trying to live in a metal house with the outside temperature 120°? It was like living in an oven. It had these advantages, you could clean it by hosing it down, it was durable, it was cheap and after all you only had fruit tramps living in it. We did not stay indoors during the heat of the day and the temperature in the desert drops drastically after dark.

Picking peaches

One of the jobs we used to do when we worked in California was to go to Marysville, Yuba City area and pick peaches. The peach trees were laid out in the field in straight rows and the trees were the same distance from one tree to the next tree. You could pick peaches on the lower branches standing on the ground. But for the peaches on the higher limbs you had to use a ladder. The ladder use was a high three pronged ladder. The first three or four steps of the ladder was wide then they narrowed down and you went toward the top. The third leg of the ladder was attached at the top by a hinge. When you pick the ladder up the hinge on the third leg of the ladder came back into the ladder. You position the ladder facing the tree in the place he wanted to be and then pushed out the third leg of the ladder into the tree thus making a tripod. You ascend the ladder to the higher limbs the tree and pick peaches there.

The temperature in this part of California at peach picking time was over hundred degrees. But when you were picking peaches in among the branches the temperature could get up to as high as 120°. You would get hot and sweaty and peach fuzz would filter down around the neck of your shirt and itch would drive you crazy. You put the peaches you picked into a canvas bag. This bag had a built-in hoop at the top with straps around your neck. The bottom of the canvas bag was open and had to straps attached to both sides. You would take over straps and bring them up to the top of the loop and attached them there. By doing this you double the bag in such a way that the peaches could not follow the bottom. When the bag was full of peaches you came down the ladder went over to a wood box undid the straps and that peaches fallout the bottom into this wood box. We were paid $.07-$.08 a box the amount of money you made dependent on how hard you could work. I could pick somewhere between 150 and 200 boxes a day. In the 1950s that was good money for a teenager.

Stripping sorghum cane leaves and making sorghum

One job we worked at when we were children was on my daddy's farm. We grew sorghum cane, the juice was used to make sorghum syrup. Sorghum cane looks a lot like cornstalks. Not quite as large around as cornstalks are but they have the overall general appearance of cornstalks. After the sorghum cane has reached its maturity stage, my dad would take a sharp knife and cut the heads off. The head grew on the top of the stalk and was covered with hundreds of seeds. The seeds could be used as chicken feed or two plant next year's crop of sorghum cane. It was the stalks that we wanted to use for making sorghum syrup. The sorghum cane stalks were filled with a juice which was used in making sorghum syrup.

From a small plank my dad would make what looked like a hand sword made out of wood with one side sharp and the handle on the other end. With this wood sword we children would attack the stalks in the field and cut the leaves from the stalk. These lease we would bundle up for feed, to feed the cows. This left the stock standing bear in the field. With a team of horses pulling a wagon we would go through the fields cutting the stalks off at the ground and loading them onto the wagon. When the wagon was full of sorghum stalks we would haul the stalks over to a mill that my mother's uncle had.

I called it a mill but it was more like a press. There were three large rollers standing vertically on the end attached to the top was a long pole. This press was attached to large timbers and the press itself weighed probably close to 500 pounds. This long pole was about 20 feet long and was attached to the mill with about 5 feet sticking out on one end and 15 feet on the other end. To the 15 foot into the pole we hooked a single tree pulled by a mule or a horse. The animal would walk in a circle pulling the pole thus turning the rollers of the mill. A man would set next to the press feeding the stalks into the press thus abstracting the juice from the stalks. This juice ran out into a number two wash tub. This juice would be carried to the cooking vat. 

The cooking vat was about 3 feet wide and 10 feet long. It was placed upon a brick fireplace. A wood fire was built under the cooking vat. The vat itself was about 8 inches deep and divided by many metal walls with doors that could be closed or open. Starting on one end of the vat these metal doors alternated sides going to the end of vat. You would start cooking the sorghum juice pouring in on one side of the vat and as it cooked you would move it through the doors to the other end of the vat. You put the raw juice on one end and took the sorghum syrup out the other end. As the sorghum cooked a foam would be on top of the juice. This was a sticky foam and us kids would take a sorghum stick and collect the foam and eat it. We would collect the sticky foam on a stick much like the man at the county fair does when he collects cotton candy on a stick. We were walking in high cotton when we ate this stuff.

The following paragraph I took from Google where someone explains the process I was talking about above.

The evaporator was partitioned at regular intervals throughout its length with gates or openings on every partition, alternated to control the flow of juice as it meandered through the channels to the finishing compartment, where it was completed and drawn off into containers ready for

market or home consumption.  The cooking vats were placed over a furnace and

fired by wood.

Knocking almonds One year my brother and I contracted to knock almonds for a man. The almond trees were in neat rows. They're about the size peach trees. The branches were low-down and easy to climb up into. Each morning when we arrived at the man's farm, we would put a harness on the horse, attach it to long sled and head out into the field. The sled was about 16 feet long and about 3 feet wide. On one side it had a large canvas cloth which was split down the middle. We would unroll those cloths so that one part of the cloth when on one side of the tree and the other cloth will go the other side of the tree. We would climb up into the tree and with a mallet that we carried in her hand. The mallet was like an ax handle that had a rubber tire wrapped around it. We would hit the branches without mallet and almonds with falloff on the tarp. We would pick up the tarp and walk back toward the sled thus dumping the almonds into the sled.

We did make much money on that job because the farmer kept adding trees to our contract. We would finish one stand of trees and he would add another stand of trees. It was not a very successful operation.

Picking up potatoes

 After the Second World War in the 1950 we started going to California in the spring to work in the fruit. We would stay all summer and then my folks would find a ride for us to go back to Arkansas to stay with Grandma Taylor and go to school. One of the jobs that I had when I was living in California was picking up potatoes. This is a very dirty job. We would go to field early in the morning. We would arrive before daylight. As soon as we could tell the difference between a potato and clod of dirt we would begin working. We would wear a belt around our waist that had hooks attached to a board which would strike us about midway between the knee and hip. The top of the board was attached to the belt. At the bottom of the board were two hooks separated by about 10 inches. The belt was a broad belt that had two large hooks on both sides in the back. On those large hooks in the back were hooked potato sacks which had metal rings in it which were about 10 inches apart. The sacks were about 4 feet long. They had at black mark diagonally across the top about 8 inches down from the top. With these sacks hooked by the metal ring to the hooks on the bottom of the board the sacks were thrown between your legs. When the digger would come by dusk will roll out from it and cover us with the cloud of dirt. We were wet and sweaty in the dust clinging to us so that the only thing you can see of us was the white of our eyes. We would throw the sack between our legs, bend over, and start picking up potatoes. When this sack filled up to the black mark which was on it we would set that sack aside reach around behind and grabbed another sack and start putting the potatoes in it.

We usually got paid about seven cents per sack in order to make seven dollars you had to pick up 100 sacks of potatoes. I could usually pick up about 200 sacks per day. Which meant, I would make about 14 dollars a day. That was not a bad salary for a 16-year-old boy and the 50s. As I stated earlier we start working around daylight in the morning and work till about two o'clock in the afternoon. By that time it was so hot out in the field we had to stop working. We would head back to the labor camps where we were staying. We would clean up by showering and putting on clean cloths. Some days we go to town and go to a movie and other days we would play basketball. Some days we just hang around doing nothing. It was hard work but we had a lot of fun doing it.

Don’t get your ears washed by someone who is mad at someone else

          When my youngest sister was born my folk sent us over to Grandma Taylor house. She and my dad went to his only sisters home where Evelene was born. The time of the year was a few days before Christmas 1941. Grandma was living in a cabin which was a stone’s throw from the Witts Springs Cemetery. On Sunday morning my Grandmother told Wanda to wash my ears to get ready for church. I was six years old at the time. Wanda did not want to do it so Grandma came down hard on her and told her to do as she was told. She proceeded in a manner that showed she was not happy to obey. I was receiving a good deal of pain so I decided that I would quit the premises and go home to mommy. I lit out as fast as my legs could carry me. My Grandma could not have caught me and since I had a head start my sister was having a hard time catching up with me. My brother and a cousin who was also there at the time could have caught me in a hurry. But they were running alongside my Grandma asking what she was going to do when she caught me. I was making good my escape until I came to a barbed wire fence. I could not jump it but I could crawl under but when I had to slow up to crawl under it my sister caught me. My Grandma gave me a good thrashing all the way back to the cabin.