Caught in the memories.
The prompts for Silver Bloggers can sometimes do that. This week the prompt invites us to write about our first job.
My first job at the ripe age of 15 was for Sweet Corn Charlie's produce farm in Millersburg, Ind.
Millersburg was (still is) a tiny town of about 850 people.(Source) We lived on a farm a mile and a half out of town, and Sweet Corn Charlie's was on the corner about a half mile from the farm.
In thinking back on the job, I was soon remembering all the work we did on the farm in Millersburg, taking care of our cows. Baling hay all day long in the heat of summer. Shoveling cow manure all day long in the freezing winter. The job at Sweet Corn Charlie's was actually a respite from the work and chores I did at home … and I got paid!
I don't remember who suggested I go down there to ask about a job. It might have been my grandfather, who ran the farm I grew up on. At any rate, I rode my bike down to Charlie's one day in March of 1991 and wandered around behind the barn looking for somebody to ask about a job.
Eventually the eponymous Charlie, who actually went by Chuck, appeared out of the barn, carrying a 5-gallon bucket of water. Chuck was a weird lookin' dude. He had a big walrus mustache and long, shockingly yellow blonde hair, which sort of feathered out at the ends that hung over his ears (think Tom Petty and you've got the picture). He was awkward too, definitely someone more at ease with vegetables than people.
So, I guess he was perfectly suited to grow sweet corn and produce. His wife, Tammy, took care of selling to the public.
I'm not sure Chuck even asked what I wanted when I appeared in his barnyard. I don't remember any preamble from me either. I think I just jumped in with “Can I have a job?”
He sort of huffed and set down his pail. Then he turned around, went back inside the barn, and left me standing there wondering what the heck. Soon enough he returned with a notepad and pen and told me to write down my phone number. At that point there might have been some sort of interview. I think I remember him asking who I was and where I lived. I remember dropping my grandfather's name, though at that point I didn't realize I was 'dropping a name'.
He said he would call me and, just like that, easy-peasy, I was hired. And, basically for the rest of the '90s in Indiana, getting hired was that easy: just show up and ask and you were in. I must have been in my 20s before I had the experience of not getting hired almost immediately.
Spring Work
The work was relatively easy, and the days weren't very long, sometimes a just a couple hours, never more than four or five. Starting in March meant that I got to help with setup for the season: stretching new plastic over the greenhouse's metal frame; banging out old potting soil from the trays and filling them with new soil. Eventually I did get to plant and transplant in the greenhouse.
The toughest work during spring set up was pulling the old plastic sheeting (used to warm the ground so you could plant earlier) out of the fields. It's pretty rainy in March and April in Indiana, and still cold. So we were working in mud, pulling wet plastic free of … more mud. Thankfully we didn't have to do all the work: we looped the freed plastic around a cultivator tine on the tractor and let the tractor pull it. But we still had to make a new loop every 10 feet or so through the field, and whenever the plastic broke.
For the most part, I was by myself with Chuck and his wife, Tami, in the spring. There was one other kid, an Amish guy whose name I can't remember, who helped on occasion. I was home schooled at the time, which is why I could be free to work in the spring, and the Amish were allowed by law to drop out of school after eighth grade to help on their farms. As worked picked up and we started moving plants from the greenhouse to the field, a few other Amish kids joined us.
It was all kids working for Sweet Corn Charlie's. I'm not sure how Chuck got away with it, but his entire crew was between the age of 12 and 15 or 16, and he only paid $1 or $2 an hour, well below minimum wage of $4.25. The story he told is that he could do it because it was agricultural labor, which I doubt is true. The state probably had no idea what he was doing, but he managed to keep everyone involved happy with the arrangement.
He operated with dirt cheap, child labor for years.
Crazy Summer
It was quiet working in the spring. Chuck and I didn't have conversations; we communicated just enough to get the job done. When things got busy later in the spring, there were two Amish girls who helped us, transplanting melons and cucumbers into the new plastic rows, picking the early green beans, but I didn't talk to them.
Things got crazy when school let out in June and corn picking season started. Lynford, Kenneth, Brian and Leon joined the crew. Kenneth, Brian and Leon especially were not there to work so much; they spent most of their time goofing around. To be fair, they were only 12 or 13, and they worked there mostly because their parents wanted them to. Kenneth and Leon were Amish; I think their wages went to the family instead of to them.
These guys ended up being my friends, so I did join in with the dirt clod fights while we were supposed to be picking green beans, and the corn cob fights when we sorting the sweet corn. But, I was the oldest on the crew and felt some responsibility, so I stuck to the work enough that when it came time to pick the sweet corn, I got assigned the job of driving the tractor rather than picking it. Then again, that assignment might have had more to do with the fact that I was 15, and Chuck wasn't going to give that job to a 12-year-old.
I would have preferred to pick the corn. It was nerve wracking driving the tractor. We used a conveyor belt contraption hooked onto the back of the tractor to collect the corn the guys handpicked, and it was pretty complex. (There's a photo of this contraption on the Sweet Corn Charlie's website.) There was one approximately 15-foot arm with conveyor belt that swung out over about six rows of corn. Using a hydraulic lever, I had to keep that arm level and low enough for the guys so they could toss their armloads onto the belt. Of course the field wasn't level, so that took constant watching. Then there was an elevator and another conveyor arm that moved the corn up over the wagon into the six wooden bins on the wagon behind. That too had to be kept level across the uneven ground.
Especially around corners. Once I forgot to raise the arm on the back, hooked a bin and dumped it onto the ground. Thankfully we were still in the barn lot and it wasn't full of corn.
Then there were the mudholes in the field, big enough they basically swallowed the tractor. I was supposed to speed up through them, keeping both arms in line as the tractor and wagon descended and climbed through the hole, and avoid getting stuck. Well, I got stuck a lot, especially early in the season when the fields were still really wet.
The guys didn't mind though. It meant we got to goof around while Chuck went to get the six-wheel tractor and chain to pull us out.
End of Season
I don't really remember how the season ended. I think things just slowly died off. The big push was in June and July when we were picking corn every day. By August for sure the sweet corn was done, and I think Chuck and Tami handled the harvest from that point. I know I didn't do any work in the fall.
I worked two years for Sweet Corn Charlie's. The next summer I was 16 and had my driver's license, and the short, half days were over. After picking the corn in the morning, I got to load up the box truck and deliver produce (by myself!) to farm stands all around Northern Indiana. I don't know how many miles I traveled, but we covered a four or five county area with our deliveries.
For a 16-year-old just learning to drive, it was an adventure. Chuck was still only paying me $2 and change an hour though.
There were better paying jobs available with a driver's license and a car at my disposal.
without the use of AI.