SALINAS VALLEY FIELDS

-by-

Raymond E. Janifer

"Yo! Homeboy. Let's go. We gotta coupla' miles towalk fo' that damn pickin' bus shows up in front of TheRex. Them pickin' folks don't be jivin' Baby Boy. Youmiss that damn pickin' bus you won't be workin' today. You might be workin' somewhere today, but not where yougets yo' pay at the end of the day so you can eat today, Homeboy."

I slowly struggled myself awake and began to remember my promise to ol’ Wild Bill Griffey. Last night just before I had fought off the "missed meal"

cramps enough to finally go to sleep I had told him I would go to work with him in the fields today.

Since he had flunked his vision test and been officially thrown off the football team Wild Bill went to work in the fields everyday. I had no idea what he did out there in the fields in order to make money to survive. Before I had left for college in late August Ihad been a nurse’s aide at a psychiatriatric hospital. Since I had worked in the admissions building most of my work had consisted of passing out medication, escorting patients for medical exams, and answering telephones.

All I really knew about the fields is that aftera day's work you got paid cash money right there on thespot. Today I needed money in the worst way since I hadn’t eaten solid food for a few days. I was prepared to do whatever it took, including cutting Zoology class, to get money enough to eat a decent meal today.

Wild Bill said that I could go with him to work in the fields because he knew that for the last few days Ihadn’t had any money. Before I had dozed off last night fighting hunger pains, I knew today was going to be an especially tough day. For at least the last few days I didn't even have enough money for the canned soup and crackers I had been scavenging from the vending machine in the dorm’s hallway.

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This chilly early September morning as I peeked

from under my dormitory issued horse blanket my old

clock radio from the kitchen table in Chestnutt Hollow

back home in Norristown, PA said 4 a.m. As I rose to my

feet and peered out from my Hartnell College first

floor dormitory window I couldn't even see the

surrounding mountain ranges. I had only recently grown

accustomed to seeing these mountains when I woke up in

the mornings since I had come out to California from

Pennsylvania at the end of August.

I was also unaccustomed to seeing the early side of 4 a.m. Back in PA when I would see 4 a.m. it was usually the late side of it on my way home after being out all night with my son's mother Sherry B. I had never before seen 4 a.m. waking up from having only gotten into bed at 1:30 a.m after having studied Zoology 101 for six hours straight. I had plans for studying myself into medical school, but I wasn’t sure how this particular day would figure into my long rangeplans. As hungry as I was and as cold as it is was it really didn’t matter. All that mattered was somehow

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being able to summon up the courage and strength to make it through this day that was facing me now somewhere on the outskirts of Salinas, CA.

Before I actually took on this task I needed a little reassurance. "Wild Bill you weren't jivin' me when you said we gets paid straight up at the end of the day were you?” I spoke these words to a muscle-bound silhouette that seemed attached to a voice that was being thrown through the screen of my open window. It was still so dark and hazy that I could not actuallysee Wild Bill clearly, but his East Coast accent and playfully gruff manner were unmistakable. I also knew Wild Bill was looking at me scornfully with his one good eye.

I could not tell you whether Wild Bill’s good eye was his left eye or his right eye. All of us African American athletes from back east who were at Hartnell Junior College knew Wild Bill had only one good eye. We just could never tell which one was the good eye andwhich one was the bad eye. To us it seemed like Ole' Wild Bill could always see twice as much with his one good eye as we could see with our own two good eyes.

Before we had even met him, Wild Bill had already been at football practices at two different colleges, but he had never made it to classes at either one. He never made it to classes because after he showed up for

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late summer football practices and the coaches eventually figured out he legally only had one good eyethey would send him home. They didn’t give any thoughtto the fact that maybe 01' Wild Bill would have liked to stay at their colleges and attend classes. Maybe Wild Bill could have even helped out by becoming a student athletic trainer. Maybe he could have helped coach the defensive backfield even if he could not actually be a football player.

Wild Bill growled at me again through my half-openedwindow. His answer was just what I wanted to hear. "Yea. You get to grub it up tonight Homeboy if you can pull a full day of crop. You got one helluva' lot of pickin' to do fo' yo' see any cash. If I was as skinnyas you are I wouldn't go tasting my dessert fo' I earnt’ my supper. Now lets get a hustle on and get on down heah' to The Rex fo' this damn pickin’ bus."

Just from Wild Bill's tone of voice I could tell hedid not believe I had what it took to do a day's work in the fields. To tell you the truth I was not all that sure about it myself. What I was certain of though was that if I didn't pull together the muscle and guts to do a day's picking I was going to be havingan even worse case of missed meal cramps.

I gave Wild Bill a little convincing knowing that it couldn't do much damage to my own wavering

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confidence. "Oh! Is that right Wild Bill ? One helluva'lot of pickin' for I gets my cash. Don't you even worry yourself about me makin' a day's picking. I'm gonna' be eating tonight. I'm gonna be eating it up big time. Maybe I'll even have some fried chicken or abig piece of some of that Salinas Valley beef I been hearing so much about. Maybe I'll even be eating out at the Harvest House tonight with Big Time Smitty. Smitty was Hartnell College’s star running back who hadhis choice of the finest restaurants in Salinas at mealtime every evening thanks to a variety of rich valley ranchers who were team boosters.

“I know I can work in the fields Brother Man. Backhome my old man had me carrying two buckets at the sametime of pure concrete cement mud for stucco work when Iwas 11. That was up a two story ladder and across a half-ass homemade scaffolding that was blowing like Ole' Glory.

Two summers ago I was working on a trash truck withmy Uncle Charlie. Uncle Charlie meant well, but he was a poor black man in the trash business. He had the onlytrash hauler left in our little town without the mechanical container lift on the front. We did all of our lifting by hand. We carried those damn cans on our shoulders then walked them up a ladder on the side of the truck and then tossed them on top of the load that

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was already on the truck. And you know as the truck gotfuller you had to throw the cans higher and higher.

And every Friday at quitting time I had to fight that SOB for my pay before he drank it away at Joe Brown's Bar. This pickin' caint’ be no harder than anyof that mess that I done already been through on Uncle Charlie’s raggedy behind trash hauler and carrying thatdamn cement for Popmouse." As the faint sun began to break the haze that hung over the valley and I could actually see Wild Bill he just stood back from the window and glared at me.

"O.K. homeboy you say you can handle all of that get yo' narrow butt outta' that bed. Lets git' to walkin' for we miss this damn bus. Yo' sure gonna haveto prove you tough as you say you are today. Around about noon it ought to be about a hundred degrees or mo’out there."

I could tell by the way Wild Bill looked at me. Hedidn't think much of my chances with this pickingstuff. He was definitely underestimating just howdesperate I was for a good meal. The next thing I knewwe were walking side-by-side down Central Avenuetowards downtown Salinas to meet the picking bus, and Iaskied him how long he had been doing this pickin'stuff? He answered me gruffly. Since Wild Bill Griffey

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was a stoic by nature I did not realize that I hadtouched a very sensitive part of his grim reality.

"I been doin' this pickin' stuff since I found out that these here fancy pants junior college football coaches did not want any one eyed football players no matter how good they is. They kept’ tellin' me about some insurance liability crap. I keppa’ telling them the only ones gonna' be hurt and be needin' insurance is one of them wide receivers and tightends I keppa' laying out when I hit ‘em. They don't want to hear that even though I be breakin' down all they best players. I was hitting those receivers so hard coming across the middle it got so none of them pretty boy sissies wanted to catch the ball as long as I was stillout there at practice. I think it was one of them widereceivers or tightends who sneaked around and told the coach I only had one eye.

I passed all them little eye tests they give you. Iain’t ever been to no college classes, but I been memorizing those eye charts since sixth grade when I lost my eye from a BB shot. That’s how I managed to play football all through high school. The only thing these coaches always want to know is how I got past thephysical with one eye. To play defensive back with oneeye I knew fifty different offensive sets in my head and at least that many defensive counter sets. They

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supposed to be the coaches, but they act like I can know all of them offenses and defenses, but not be smart enough to memorize an eye chart. This stuff happened to my eye back in Donora, PA when I was real young so I been getting' along doing everything for a long time. Probably been getting along doing everything with one eye longer than some of them so called coaches been coaching with two eyes."

I couldn't believe that they would not let Wild Bill Griffey play football at Hartnell or Northern Arizona. I was maybe five foot ten inches tall and weighed a lean muscular 165 on a good day. Wild Bill was two or three inches taller than me, but he outweighed me by about a good twenty-five pounds of pure rock hard steel mill muscle. In a dormitory full of some of the fastest, meanest and leanest athletes inthe California junior colleges he was easily one of thefastest and maybe even the strongest.

Amongst a group of junior college outlaw athletes that could not go to Division I schools for academic reasons his story was one of the saddest. If a guy could run fast enough, jump high enough, or was simply strong enough a good Division 1 coach could massage a piss poor transcript full of disciplinary suspensions and expulsions past the meanest unsympathetic admissions director, but even these low down rattle

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snakes did not want to be discovered putting a one-eyedfootball player on the field.

Ironically with ol’Wild Bill Griffey it probably would have been the most honest thing that some of these junior college coaches had ever done. Despite Wild Bill being one of the nicest guys I knew at Hartnell College his presence had a way of terrifying people on or off the field. Even standing completely still and smiling he looked rock hard, super fast, and strong. As we walked down Central Avenue in the early morning haze I looked up at the gently swaying palm trees as Wild Bill shared his college football tryout story with me.

"I was down in Flagstaff at Northern Arizona JuniorCollege knockin' down everybody. I was leveling pullin'guards, wide receivers, tight ends, quarterbacks, and running backs, but they said on account of my vision I couldn't play. So, I hitchhiked over here to Salinas, CA to stay with LC for awhile. LC is from Donora, PA like me. He’s my homeboy and he said he had a little pull with the coaches here at Hartnell. LC thought I might be able to play here with him, but these Hartnellcoaches said no just like the ones at Northern Arizona.So, I'm stuck here workin' in the fields 'till I decidewhat I wanna do. Probably go back east to Donora and try to catch on in one of the steel mills again."

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I couldn’t believe that one of the fastest and strongest guys for his size I had ever seen could not be on the Hartnell College football team with a bunch of pretty boy surfers, snuff chewing cowboys, and pot smoking black mercenaries from back East. Today thoughas sad as Wild Bill's story was I was more concerned about making it through my own day in the fields. I knew making this day's work was the only way that I would eat.

As we walked down Central Ave towards The Rex restaurant where we would meet the bus that would take us to the day’s picking I could only think about money in my pocket and food in my belly. I was struck by sheer terror as we reached the corner of Main Street and Central Avenue and made a right turn on Main and started walking towards The Rex. Red, brown, white, and a few black men and women some with young children pulled close to their breasts were huddled under thin blankets, old newspapers, and cardboard laying on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant. They had actuallyspent the night there in front of the restaurant. Theirtattered clothing, tissue paper blankets, and makeshiftcardboard pallets smelled more like Popmouse’s old houndog Joe’s blankets in his outdoor doghouse. These people smelled like a high toxic level combination of urine, musky body odor, and stale wine.

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In fact Popmouse's Joe probably had better accommodations than most of these wretched souls. At least he had a roof over his head and a feeding bowl for table scraps and dry dog food. These people reeked of human excrement and alcohol. Many of them smelled exactly like the people I cared for on the incontinent ward in Building 13 during my nurse’s aide training at Norristown State Hospital.

Until this “great getting up morning" I thought everyone in California smelled like saltwater after riding the waves, or like those slick detectives on television. I would soon find out though that these people stinking up the air and scaring the hell out of me in front of The Rex were not surfers or private eyes. They were migrant workers and homeless people whomet this bus every morning and got their pay right backhere every evening and drank it up in cheap wine and rot gut whiskey. They would get their day's wages in the form of a check that they would cash for a small fee at the liquor store next to The Rex. Then they would spend the balance of their money getting bombed out of their minds, and, go to bed right there on the sidewalk. Then they would just lie there waiting for the next day’s bus to start the whole process over.

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I became even more frightened by the prospect of how many more mornings I would have to be out here at daybreak groveling for my own survival.Wild Bill and I parked ourselves on a nearby step to wait for the pickin’ bus. I could not help but wonder what my classmates were doing at 4:55 a.m. Like the good little Salinas, CA commuter students I had come tohate, because their stomachs were filled with food and their pockets filled with money, they were probably still at home in bed in their parents' comfortable air-conditioned homes. I'm sure they were probably dreaming about those three eggs and two pancakes with ham, bacon, or sausage their mommies would have ready for them when they woke up.

I also wondered what I would be missing in Zoology 101 today since I had been steadily falling behind anyway. I knew it would be at least three more hours before class would be starting. I'd be happy once it started. Then I could just forget about it because allpossibility of me making the class would have been exhausted. I sat there in the early morning twilight thinking. How am I supposed to compete with these little rich Salinas Valley brats academically and keep my basketball game together without eating? They were doing their thing while eating steak, chicken, pork chops, and prime rib. The last two or three days all I

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had to keep me going had been soup and crackers washed down with water fountain punch.

I was supposed to be on an athletic scholarship forbasketball until I arrived in Salinas and found out that Hartnell College, like almost every junior collegein California, was a commuter college that didn't give 'legitimate' athletic scholarships. By the time I arrived in Salinas in late August the school didn't even have a basketball coach. He had left to take a coaching job in Arizona where he was from originally. He had gotten pissed off at the athletic department because football players got paid and treated better than basketball players at Hartnell.

I had been so desperate to play college basketball that I never even gave much thought about the fact thatall of the promises that coach Vanwinkle had made to mewere over the phone in late night long distance calls from the west coast. I had come to Hartnell College three thousand miles from home on nothing but empty promises. I didn't even have a letter of introduction when I arrived, or a place to sleep and unpack my things.

Just before I was ready to come out to Salinas, coach Vanwinkle called me and asked me if I wanted to go to Arizona with him, but I couldn't go to Arizona after telling all of my friends I was going to

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California to be the king of junior college basketball.Now here I was less than a month later with these terrifying people at 5 a.m. waiting for this damnpickin’ bus to the fields. This moment wasn't about athletic stardom or cheerleaders smelling like the latest perfume; it was about survival.

I needed to work today in order to eat even though Ihad to cut Zoology class to do it. Suddenly the ugliestdirty blue bus I had ever seen belching smoke and making horrible animal noises pulled up in front of theRex. The mass of multicolored humanity under the blankets, newspapers and cardboard rose as one and lined up at the door of this tattered bus. Wild Bill and I fell in behind this pitiful throng and took seatstogether on the dirtiest bus I had ever seen. The tightly packed bus intensified the smells that had assaulted my senses out on the sidewalk. The air in the bus seemed cold, but you could tell as that big oldyellowish orange sun began to peer over the mountain ranges that soon this chill would be replaced by a searing heat.

I don't know where we went on this bus someplace on the far outskirts of Salinas. It didn't take long to get there even on this slow behind nasty smelling bus. We were somewhere in the foothills just below the mountain ranges. The bus wheezed to a stop, and two

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little brown Filipino men who organized this work crew ordered us off the bus. I quickly realized everyone seemed to know what to do except me. They circled around to the back of the bus, opened a makeshift tool cabinet attached to the back of it with old belts, and grabbed burlap sacks and what looked like long knives. They quickly assumed duck walking positions in the rowsof neatly organized celery and lettuce plants and beganchopping like mad. There was a big machine behind themthat made a horrible grinding noise and forced their work to keep a certain pace. As I was taking all of this in one of the little brown men came over to me.

"You nevah work field before boy? You work on back of machine o.k. I show you and then you do. You be okay. You got muscle big. Hurry up get up there." I hopped up on the little platform on the back of the machine that followed the pickers controlling the pace of their work. I stood on one side of the rapidly filling burlap sack, and when it was filled I threw it unto the flatbed part of the machine. A man on the flatbed part of the machine’s platform above me threw the bags into something that looked like a big vat. Actually it was a tying machine that quickly sewed the bags shut for shipping. This working in the fields gig is something I think I can handle. Actually its not bad

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I thought as I began throwing the 40 pound bags up untothe flatbed.

Suddenly there was a commotion amongst the black brothers on the makeshift crew and the little brown skinned man who told me to work up on the machine. I couldn't figure out what they were saying, but they were talking loudly and gesturing angrily towards me. The next thing I knew the little brown man was walking over towards me with an empty burlap sack and one of these funny looking knives in his hand pointing towardsthe ground. Then I was squatting over one of these longrows of celery duck walking and cutting. My loyal black brothers had convinced the little brown man that as a newcomer to the crew I should not have a cake job on the back of the machine’s platform. They felt that I should be duckwalking and cutting celery and lettuce low to the ground just like they were.

Who would have ever thought there was an art to hacking off heads of lettuce and celery stalks. After I was cutting a while the little brown man came runningover to my row hollering. He was angry that I was cutting too high up the stalks damaging them and makingthem fall apart. He took the knife and showed me how to pull the stalks over and chop them at the base leaving that nice little supermarket flat round bottom on them. There was just one big problem though with

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making that nice, neat supermarket cut. In order to make this cut nice and neat you had to get down deep inyour duckwalking stance and use the front of the blade instead of the side.

I noticed that there was a very sharp cutting edge on the front of the big knife expressly for this purpose. The front cutting blade was as sharp as the cutting edge on the long side of the knife that was probably used for chopping other types of fruits or vegetables. With my on-the-job training behind me now like the rest of this motley, multicultural crew I had my nose in the dirt, chopping stalks, throwing them behind me, and then hopping to the next stalk without ever coming up out of my duckwalking stance.

It was barely 6 a.m. and my lower back was on fire with long lines of pain producing flames shooting from my waist, racing up my spine to just below the back of my head. My thighs started developing dull pains and stiffness like in the last mile when you are running a long distance race during that time when your mind is not on winning the race but debating whether or not youhave the testicles and mental fortitude to finish the race.

I concluded that's what this day was about the great race to a satisfying meal, and did I have the guts to finish this race and claim my reward? I knew I

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didn't get to eat a meal unless I completed this day. By 7 a.m.the sun had come completely from behind the mountains and bore down directly into the center of my forehead. It beamed into my eyes like a golden laser and forced them into little blood shot slits. Eventually I felt my back and shoulders begin to burn because all I had on was a little athletic t-shirt without sleeves.

Even these damn bums and winos out here in this Godforsaken field had on old tattered straw hats and work shirts to shield their enlarged heads and emaciated bodies from the blazing sun. I hadn't given any thoughtabout how to dress. If I knew the area a little betterI could just come out of this ridiculous duckwalking stance, free myself from this excruciating pain, and walk back into town. Hell maybe I could have even stillmade it to class. As I stood up for a moment though tosurvey the area all I saw was more and more fields as far as I could see. Even if I wanted to give up on thisbitter day of California slavery I couldn't have found my way back home to the dormitory on Central Ave. There was literally nothing for me to do but to get back into my squatting position and continue chopping this damn lettuce and celery.

My life became so much more simplified on this day.If I wanted to eat just keep chopping. The rules out

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here in these God forsaken fields were pretty simple. There was no such thing as working a partial day or an hourly wage in the fields. There was only a full day's wage of $15.83 or absolutely no wage at all. If you wanted that full day's pay you worked from sun up untilsundown. Leave before the full day’s work was done, andyou didn’t get any pay at all or even a ride home.

Without any breakfast to sustain me I became extremely hungry. I was happy when one of the little brown men came around taking a count of who was going to be eating lunch. I was the only one on my little mini-crew within the larger crew that signed up for the$1.75 lunch. I thought I was the only one hungry out here. When the lunch break came I quickly understood why nobody had signed up for lunch. Lunch was two big tubs of something I could not see and a couple cases ofwarm Pepsi. One big tub had the driest rice I had ever seen, and the other had this brown quasi-juicy stuff that looked like light brown diarrhea.

Me and the other sorry souls who had agreed to eatthis slop formed a line Devil’s Island style and marched past the two little brown men. One of them slapped a ladle of the dry rice on your plate and the next one threw a ladle full of the disgusting brown stuff over the rice. You grabbed your own Pepsi at the

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end of the line, pulled yourself up a piece of dirt, copped a squat, and tried to eat this garbage.

The meal turned out to be rice and brown bean juicewith an occassional bean. The rice was cold and the juice on it was colder. I ate it like a gourmet meal ata five star restaurant because if I didn’t make the entire day it would be the only food I would be having today. The Pepsi was hot like drinking warm maple syrup, and it did not really help to wash down the riceand bean gruel. It was outright fraud to call it a Pepsi because it was more like drinking sweet cough medicine.

We returned for the afternoon’s work and my chopping hand began to blister. Eventually the blisters broke open from the rough hewn handle of the strange chopping blade. I could no longer see the distinct outline of the letter M in the palm of my handbecause there wasn’t any skin left. I eventually changed chopping hands, but the same thing eventually happened to my other hand. My hands hurt so bad that I could barely make the frontward chops to cut the stalks.

The sun continued to zap my will burning my shoulders and arms and blinding me. I was at the point of no return. I didn’t have a watch, but I knew it was mid-afternoon. I was just about to rise up out of my

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crouching duckwalk and try to walk home when someone handed me a dirty rag over my shoulder. I didn’t look back but instinctively I knew to tie the rag around my chopping hand. It quickly soaked with blood, but it allowed me to keep chopping.

I looked over in the mearby weeds and saw a lady. She was squatting behind some tall plants urinating while holding her child above the part of her body thatwas otherwise engaged. She made no effort to conceal herself from me. I couldn’t help but see when she was finished and stepped out of the plants that a part of her dress had been torn away. It was the part that my blood was soaking as I chopped away. Deftly she swung her infant over her shoulder and squatted over a line of celery besides a man who had been chopping rapid fire. They were a couple her and this man and the childwas theirs. They were working the field chopping their hearts out and caring for their child. They ignored me. They just chattered in Spanish, and carryied on with their business after having made me a little stronger.

As it moved on later in the afternoon it seemed that everyone on the crew was looking at me. I must have looked as bad to them as I felt. Another tap on the shoulder came this one with a piece of chewing gum.The gum was better than the entire lunch a real

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delicacy; Juicy Fruit. I turned around to say thank you, but no one acknowledged giving it to me. I kept chopping. I wondered where Wild Bill was, but he was with another crew in a nearby field. The sun was still hot but it was beginning to take on an orange hue. My hands were burning and bleeding, but I knew I was closeto the end of the day.

The sweetest sound I heard that afternoon was that old stinking dirty blue bus coughing and chugging through the fields to take us back to town in front of The Rex for our day’s pay. As Wild Bill and I rode back to town side-by-side in silence surrounded by people who were just as exhausted as we were, these people did not look the same people to me. I had barelymade it through this day alive, but they did this everyday. They could have left me out there in those fields bleeding and crying, but instead they had shownme just enough kindness to carry me through.

I would go back to school tomorrow. I would be early and I would work hard. I already felt a lot smarter and classes seemed like they would be a lot easier. After picking celery and lettuce in that California sun for fourteen hours anything would be easier. Wild Bill and I left the bus, got our checks, and cashed them at he liquor store next to The Rex.

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He was not saying much. I had expected him, or anyone for that matter, to at least congratulate me. I had forgotten his Wild Bill’s stoicism. He really was astoic by nature. To him this was just another day’ work, and he woud be going back tomorrow. As we grubbeddown our beef, potatoes, and green beans inside The Rexhe just looked at me kind of quizzically. I could see asmall bit of admiration in his expression, but not much

We finished our meals and began to walk back to thedormitory. As we emerged from the restaurant those migrant workers were lying on the sidewalk again. A fewof them were wandering around drunk and others were eating lunch meat baloney and sardines they had purchased from the little liquor store near The Rex where we had cashed our checks. Wild Bill and them were going back into the Salinas Valley Fields tomorrow, and I was going back to class physically stronger and much, much smarter.

Dr. Raymond E. Janifer, Sr. is professor of English andEthnic Studies at Shippensburg of Pennsylvania. He has a B.A. in English from Millersville University, a M.A. in English from The University of Chicago, an MFA in Professional Writing from The University of Southern California, and a Ph.D in Rhetoric and Composition fromThe Ohio State University. He has been writing a

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variety of journalistic, scholarly and fiction pieces from 1972.

(REJ)

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