I left for Eastern Oregon and found a job working driving a tractor for a 7th Day Adventist tomato farmer . I had never driven a tractor, but what the hell. I lived down the road in a County Extension’s agent sheep barn, sleeping on bales of hay next to their feeder. I worked 6 days a week, from 6:00AM until about 1:00AM except on Friday nights, and then ’till sundown. That’s right, an average of 18 hours a day. I worked hauling tomatoes in from the fields until about 5:00PM, and then hauled the packed tomatoes to various coolers until about 1:00AM. Then “home”.

On Saturday I would ride a bicycle I bought from the owner’s kid into town and buy Wyler’s drinks, Chef-boyardee, things like that. I heated them on a Coleman stove, washed myself and my clothes in an irrigation ditch. I’d write my girlfriend last thing at night and mail it in the morning.

(My two friends had turned 18, and could work around machinery. They went home and to work in a cannery. I was by myself. I couldn’t do that until after school started.)

The tomato pickers were about 5 families of Mexican immigrants, all legal, and all of them got paid by the hour so that they wouldn’t pick green tomatoes and just fill the buckets. $1.15, as I recall, for every man, woman and picking child. They lived over the winter in transient housing in Goldendale, Washington, where they took care of asparagus for their rent.

These families followed the crops, and returned to each farmer year after year. The farmer’s counted on them, relied on them, and was out of business if they ever stopped coming. They weren’t treated particularly well, but were treated consistently with no surprises. The owner was a young man married to an older woman, and an alcoholic. I would warn the Mexicans when he was coming out to the fields and they would always look great. If he tried to discipline one of them, usually the one-armed patriarch of the biggest family for being hung-over, I’d stick up for him by pointing out how he was the most productive, the leader, and needed to save face if the farmer was going to have a harvested crop. It always worked, the Mexicans never knew what I said but thought I was Clarence Darrow. And what I said had the added advantage of being true. The farmer was gone 3 and 4 days at a time and I’d decide where they would pick and how long.

They were wonderful people, hard working, tolerant, wary until they trusted me and then loyal and friendly. Young, blond, tall, blue-eyed, I wasn’t trusted by Mexicans working in other farmer’s fields. They would occasionally throw a tomato or rock at me, at which time “my” Mexicans would rise up and throw rocks and tomatoes back. They may have done it for the fun, but I chose to believe they were sincere in protecting me.

One kid was 18, and I’d ask him to help me load the buckets. He was glad to, and in exchange I taught him to drive the tractor. For those people in those days that was the equivalent of a Harvard education – he could work driving a tractor the next year. He had an absolutely gorgeous younger sister, worthy of movies rather than picking tomatoes.

When the farmer and I settled up, he tried to chisel me down from my $1.05/hr to $0.95/hr and charge me for some pipe I ran over. (The pickers got $1.15.) I raised hell and got my money.

I finally went home, back to school, my girlfriend, my family. I got within 10 miles of home on Greyhound at 9:45 PM one night. I called Mom for a ride the rest of the way, and after 3 months of being gone she said it was late and could I find another ride? I did, but got the hell out of there as fast as I could.