In yet another installment of how the political press is silly, one right-leaning outlet leveraged FOIA to discover that the vice president—now candidate for the presidency—hadn’t included a teenage summer job at McDonald’s on job applications. The scandal! Stipulating that this is common practice in résumé tailoring, it nonetheless got me thinking about my first official summer job, for which I needed to get a work permit because I was just 15.
I wanted independence from my parents, to make my own money. I “applied” at a family-owned farm just down the road from our house. The owner, Denise, didn’t ask for any printed résumé. The interview went something like this:
Denise: Can you get up early in the morning?
Me: Yes. (But actually thinking, maybe.)
Denise: You don’t mind long hours? You’re not a complainer, are ya?
Me: I’m used to picking vegetables and being in the fields. (It was true. We’d lived in a rented brick ranch back then, which sat on farmland that was slowly being developed for housing. The landlord discounted the rent if we tended to the fields and he got his take of the harvest. We grew tomatoes, squash, corn, green beans, you name it. Here I am with one of my prize zucchinis.)
Denise: No back problems?
Me: No.
Denise: You’re hired. Can you start today?
My parents liked the idea of manual labor and how it kept me busy and out of trouble. And that it did. At dawn, I’d walk the half-mile to work, carrying a brown bag lunch. To beat the heat, Farmer Denise had us in the fields early. By us, I mean me and about a dozen or so farm hands who drove the flatbed trucks, and Spanish-speaking migrant workers who picked, like me.
Most of the season, we were tasked with picking tomatoes. You’d have to grab them off the vine at just the right time, when they were newly ripe and hadn’t yet split nor spoiled. We’d fill half-bushel baskets with tomatoes and then walk them back to the flatbed trucks parked at the end of our rows. We were paid a penny per tomato. Denise would inspect every single one at the end of the day, and toss aside any unsuited for market.
We picked rain or shine and in temperatures that soared into the 90s most days that summer. My skin browned; my muscles ached. The migrant workers laughed at me when I’d stand and stretch and moan from all the squatting and bending over. They were so much faster at picking those tomatoes. I always had the need to excel, but in this, I felt like an underachiever.
At lunchtime, we’d pile onto one of the trucks, to be carted back to the main barn, where we could eat our sack lunches in the shade. I sat alone and ate my white-bread sandwiches, coveting the homemade delicacies the others shared over spirited conversations.
At the end of the day, I’d walk back home, filthy and exhausted—and if it was a good-pickin’ day, $15 cash my pocket. I thought about my fellow workers and how for me, that money was to be spent on frivolity—a new pair of jeans, some lip gloss, the latest LP I had to have. For them, it was livelihood. I couldn’t help but wonder how they paid for housing, food, clothing and other necessities on those wages. And yet, they never seemed to complain.
Just when I thought I’d mastered the job, tomato season gave way to pumpkin season, and I got a dose of true backbreaking labor. Pumpkins don’t seem heavy individually, but when you pick about 150 of them and walk each of them down the long row to the truck, in crippling heat, you come to hate the sight of those orange gourds and relish smashing them.
Naturally, the job taught me a lot—the value of money, the feeling of hard labor, the determination and hardships of migrant workers, the relentless demands of a discerning boss, and so much more. Even still, when I went to apply for jobs post-college, farm worker wasn’t on my résumé.
Gretchen A. Peck 