Money , Money , Money

  * unidentified boy helping with laundry

Bob and I were encouraged to help out at home and to earn our " allowance " . we had a lot of Chores that needed to be . For the most part Children were the energy saving devices of the 50's but we were high maintanince and we did have some side effects. We frequently needed direction , woul doften forget what we were supposed to be doing and needed to be fed .

Around our house chores included: Folding the Laundry , feeding the dog , Stacking the wood , washing and drying the dishes . During the summer picking vegetables gardening . I don't remember what we earned but it seemed as if we always had a little bit of pocket change for the Grocery store on the corner .

I think more than anything else we were encouraged to help out around the home ..it was expected of us , but our parents also understood the value of teaching us about work and money.

I don't know for sure when bob and i began working in the fields , and i don't remember if it was always Bob and I going out together ..or if I started first . I Just remember I was pretty young when I first started picking Strawberry's .

* Unkown Bean picker 1955
photo Courtesy of Flicr Member KuKak 

Portland is nestled along the Willamette river , one of the rare rivers that runs from South to North in the Western Hemisphere .. The cascades on one side and the Coastal mountain range on the other the Willamette valley is one of the most productive farm lands in the USA .

IN the 50's these crops were picked by a diverse group of farm workers . From the local Grade schools , and High schools ...and Migrant workers from Mexico.

IT worked like this : The first crop were the Strawberries ...early in the morning a bus would pick us up in front of Multnomah School . There would be about a dozen perhaps more of us there . Each of us would have our own lunch and water . The ride to the farm was about 45 minutes long . Stopping occasionally to pick up other Kids on the way . Our destination was a group of Commercial farms near St Paul Oregon . I don't remember the name of these farms . I do remember it was a Japanese family. When we arrived at the Farm we would be assigned rows of Berries to harvest . We would be given an empty flat to place the berries in and when we filled it up we would take it to a collection location , there we would have a ticket punched indicating we had a filled flat . At the collection location our flats would be checked to make sure that the Berries were ripe , no dirt clods or extraneous material in the flat as well . We were paid by the flat , and at the end of the day we received our " wages " in the form of cash . Often we would work side my side with Mexican children sometimes even families . IT was hard work , the sanitary conditions were horrible , the out houses reeked , and the water available at the Farms was nasty . But at the end of the day the cash was nice , and it was yours . After Strawbeery season there was the Bean Season. It was basically the same idea ..the buses from the Farm in this case Alderman farms would pick us up .

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Alderman Farms

As a twenty-four-year-old barrel maker from Michigan, Albert Alderman migrated to Oregon in 1846. A year later, he bought farmland five miles south of Dayton that would eventually become one of the nation’s largest row-crop farms. In the post-World War II era, Alderman Farms employed over 2,500 day laborers on a peak picking of pole beans. Most of the laborers were local teenagers; the farm was the summertime job for thousands of mid-Willamette Valley youth, particularly in Yamhill County.

Alderman’s son, Ennis (1870-1939), built the original 150-acre farm to 1,300 acres by the time it was passed to his son, Urie S. Alderman (1898-1964), upon Ennis’s death. Potatoes were the major crop in 1939; but wartime brought a demand for more crops, and Urie expanded into corn, beans, and strawberries. In 1946, the farm opened its own frozen-food plant. It was a community unto itself, with a service station, maintenance shops, sawmill, helicopter, cafeteria, and 750,000-gallon water tank.
At its peak in the late 1950s, when Alderman owned or leased over 3,000 acres of farmland, the farm set what was believed to be a record of picking 181 tons of pole beans in one day. Some sources said the farm produced 2 percent of the nation’s snap beans.
Pole beans were the most labor-intensive of Alderman’s crops, requiring crews to install and dismantle poles and wires and to irrigate and pick the crops. Alderman Farms hired about 750 pickers a season during World War II, but in the mid-1950s the bean crews grew to over 2,500. Buses brought pickers from as far away as Vancouver, Washington, and the present Lincoln City. The farm leased school buses, many from McMinnville bus operators Joe Dancer and Art Bennett, who also supervised the summer picking crews.
Extensive use of local youth (as opposed to migrants) in the fields was largely a creation of the wartime demand for food and labor. Oregon was a national leader in the use of youth employment during World War II. Summer harvest jobs for middle-class “townies” continued through the 1960s; but strawberry crews were reduced by child-labor laws in the 1960s, and farmers switched from labor-intensive pole beans to machine-harvested bush beans in the 1970s.
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Arriving at the Farm again we would be assigned a row , with beans we had a partner ..one on each side of the row . The beans would stretch up to 5 feet high , so many of the younger children who picked Strawberries were at a disadvantage ..I believe you had to be a certain height to pick beans . The snap beans were picked and placed in a sack ...as you picked more the weight of the sack grew ...the idea was to fill the sack and take it to a collection point where it was weighed ...sometimes these collection points were a good walk way ..most of us had two choices either fill up the sack modestly and spend a lot of time hiking back and forth to the collection point ,( time spent when you could be picking ) or to fill the sack to such a point that you could barely drag it to the scales . Sometimes if you were lucky at the end of the row you might run into a kind hearted adult who would help you with your load . many of the Mexicans working in the fields were kind hearted . The weight of each sack was noted on a ticket you carried and by the end of the day you were paid by the pound . One of the advantages of picking beans was the bean poles and plants afforded you some shade and protection from the Sun,
In addition to Strawberries and Beans we would occasionally pick Raspberries and Blackcaps ( a type of berry used in the printing of money ) . I picked in the Fields for four years ...the money I earned was mine to spend on frivolous things ...My parents still paid for our food and our clothes . .. IT was hard work ...I never really enjoyed it ..the best part was the ride home with money in your pocket and something else I can't describe , just a feeling as you slipped into sleep as the Bus rolled along .
The walk up the hill to our house seemed longer on these days ..but once through the door mom would have kool aide and cookies or cupcakes for us ...it was good to be home ..very good indeed .