Picking Beans to Harvest Independence

Published in The Christian Science Monitor

            When I was a child in Western Oregon, my family, except my Dad, who worked a full time job, harvested beans. We children earned spending money and bought clothing we needed for the next school year with our earnings, and my mother’s earnings went into the family coffers.

            In the bean field early in spring, workers drove tall wooden stakes into the ground in long rows, strung wires between them at the top and near the bottom and connected the wires with many lengths of string. Bean plants wound tendrils around the strings and grew toward the top wire, blossomed and grew green string beans. Pickers carried buckets between rows and harvested beans. They carried full buckets to the end of their row and emptied them into sacks. Workers came around, weighed and tied the full sacks, issued tickets that told the weight, and trucked the beans to the cannery.

            “Bean bosses” walked down the rows and checked to see that the pickers harvested all large enough beans, dropped the too-large beans on the ground, and didn’t damage the plants or break the supporting strings. “Bean bosses” showed violators of the standards how to do it right, and if they still did not meet standards, sent them home.

            The plants, respectfully treated, produced three or four pickings of beans.

            We moved away from bean-growing country, but we came back when I was early in high school. When the farmer’s truck came around, early mornings, I climbed onto the high-sided back and rode out to the fields with many other pickers and rode the truck home again in the afternoons.

            Between rows of tall bean plants, a picker could be well shaded most of the day. Pickers carried on conversations with other pickers they couldn’t see for tall bean plants as we picked toward the ends of the rows.

            “What time is it?” some watchless picker would call out. Unseen pickers would compete for the best answer, “Morning time,” “Time to mind your own business,” “Time to pick beans.” and even some sympathetic soul who would name the right time.

            Paid according to the weight of what they picked, serious pickers in a good crop earned wages competitive with hourly workers in semi-skilled jobs. I was only periodically serious during hot, humid summer days in the Willamette Valley.

            Tall rows of bean plants in one field ended close to the McKenzie river. I loved to pick my way to the end of my row, then walk down to the river, jump in and swim. I picked my way back along the other side of my row after an hour or so, when other pickers had finished picking their rows and moved on down the field, with several dollars more worth of beans sacked and ready to load on the truck.

            Working where other pickers had moved on was good for quiet thinking while I picked. Sometimes I felt lonely as other voices drifted toward me like echoes, individual words shredded to undistinguished sounds by tall bean plants and distance.

            Friends selected rows side by side or picked opposite sides of one row. Pick from your knees or sit on the metal bucket you pick into, for beans low on the bush. Stretch toward the sun for beans high on the vine.

            We socialized at the top ends of the rows, where pickers filled their sacks, bucket by bucket, where the road ran, and hourly workers weighed sacks and loaded them on the truck. Some mothers kept their small children with them as they picked. Many teenaged pickers kept a younger sibling or two in their care as they picked. Some younger siblings could be talked into picking a few pounds of beans.

            I took time off from picking beans for summer adventures with my family or with friends. When I did work, even when I went at it with all my ambition, I couldn’t pick beans like the people who were out there to earn their living could.

            Still, when school started, I stood in front of the mirror and calculated the cost of the clothes I wore. The tally ran high, because I had purchased stylish, well made, expensive clothing, that would earn a nod of approval from my peers. I had more in my closet, and I had money in my top drawer to start me toward dances, movies, and tickets to games.

            Since I didn’t pick as many beans as some did, I had already started investigating ways to earn money during the school year. I liked the wider choices and the increase in independence I gained from paying for more of my expenses of living.