PICKIN PRUNES

On the days we were to go out and pick prunes,my dad was always the first one up in the morning about 5:00, followed by my mom.and then it was up to mom to get us up and going. my dad was usually out in the fields about an hour or so before we arrived.he would go out and find the best row of trees for us and then he would start knocking the prunes off the trees with this long pole. by the time we arrived he would have about 10 trees ready for us to pick. there was no getting out of it,you had to work.Although we did come up with some creative excuses to get out of work when it came down to it you had no choice, because you had to fill a certain amount of boxes before you were allowed to leave. My cousin Michael was the most creative of all of us. We would pick and watch Michael all day long,cause he would entertain everybody all day long and them days could get pretty long sometimes. After we were out there for about two hours my dad would get a fire started up ahead of us and by the time we got there he had some nice coals going and all we had to do was throw our tacos on the coals to warm them up or we would get a stick and use that to heat the tacos over the coals. I tell you there was/is nothing like eating tacos out there like that.Wash that down with some water out of those tin cans that they used to fill with water from the well and your drinking the water out of one of those tin cups,I don't know what it was but it sure used to taste good like that. About ten o'clock it started getting hot. I remember picking real fast in the sun and then taking it easy in the shade.About noon it was so hot that some of the prunes would be almost cooked,they would be so hot that when you went to pick them up they would be so soft that if you broke the peel the inside would run out almost like liquid and be too hot to touch.i'm serious here folks,ask any real prune picker. We had these buckets to fill that carried about 2.5 gallons i guess. When the buckets were full you go empty them in a prune box and that prune box would be stacked and counted,then a checker would come over and count them and give you credit for them The checkers job was one of the more respectable jobs out there. By noon it would be unbearably hot. about this time we would take a break for lunch and mom would break out with her delicious tacos.After lunch some days it was so hot all you wanted to do was go lay down somewhere and take it easy. I always liked to make me a bed out of prune boxes and take a nap. Just when you start to feel comfortable, it was time to go back to work again.It had to be very hard for mom to get us going again. You know how it is when kids are tired and sleepy and hot,they don't want to do anything.Sometimes my sisters would intervene and they were like the Gustapo out there. My brothers were never around because they were always doing jobs that didn't involve picking.They would be loading the trailers or working at the dryer. I gotta tell you though that this was a way of life for a lot of families. The money you made during the summer was used to buy everything that was needed to get you through the winter.If you didn't do well money wise in the summer,you were in for a long ride in the winter. Back in them days things weren't set up to help people like they are now a days. there were a lot of times that we made do with beans and my moms delicious tortillas.every once in awhile my dad or my brother would bring home a pheasant that he killed and we would have meat. during the picking season we would move out to the ranch or the labor camp simply because it was more convenient. My dad would invest in this big ol truck so he could load all our belongings that were needed and then on top of all of that we would make ourselves a spot and there we go headed out to a new adventure in prune country, My sisters always wore bandanas on there heads so nobody would see them in the truck, of course Jack and i would do our best to bring attention to them. I remember one time the truck broke down and this guy comes over to the truck to see if he can help, man i thought my sisters were going to crawl underneath all the mattresses and stuff, heh heh mighty funny stuff. To me arriving at a labor camp was almost the same as going to a family reunion,because a lot of the people there were your friends from the year before. As soon as the truck stopped the folks had to reel us in and give us our duties before we could go and play. You always met new people and there was always some bad rides that came in. Pepe with his 48 fleetline,channeled and cool paint job, Henry with his 55 merc. Joker, La mot, La bruja, cepillo. These guys always came in some really cool cars, and in the evening they would park there cars by the camp fire and turn on the radio and you could go sit with them and listen to there music. There was always parties on the weekends and the young folks would dress up. Khaki's or frisco's, french toes, nice shirt and you were ready to go. The oldies but goodies have there roots in the labor camps too. The people, the food, the music, the cars, the clothes, It was all cool, like i said before, you would of had to have been there to know what i mean.