Doorway of Boredom
The sun had not yet come up. An early morning chill numbed our hands as we checked strawberry plants, looking for bright red berries hidden under the dark green leaves. The soft swishing of our hands parting the leaves was punctuated by the periodic plunk of berries as we tossed them into wooden carriers.
After a hearty, pre-dawn breakfast, my three young children and I had begun picking in the field just behind my parents’ farmhouse. We had moved to Vashon Island for the summer to help Yoneichi with the harvest.
For a while, it was just Martha, David, Ray, and I. As the sun rose, other people started arriving, most of them workers from previous years, including entire sets of siblings. As we picked, we shared updates on our lives, bursts of laughter punctuating the buzz of our conversation. Many of the pickers had become our friends over the years, working together to harvest the bounty every summer.
Yoneichi pulled up in his green, 1957 Chevy flatbed truck, carrying a group of teenagers from Vashon who had come to help and make some money. Yoneichi jumped out of the cab and quickly took charge. It was the mid-1960s, and Yoneichi had long since replaced Papa-san as the boss of the farm, even though Papa-san continued to work.
The first day of the berry harvest was in full swing, with more than one hundred workers of all ages. We were a mix of humanity from a variety of socio-economic backgrounds—from older migrant workers to sons and daughters of middle-class families in Seattle and Vashon. For migrant workers, this was a way to support their families. For many of the kids, picking berries was the only practical way they could earn money over the summer. I was one of several “straw bosses” who roamed the fields, supervised the workers, and helped everyone stay focused on the harvest.
Most of the pickers were regulars who showed up nearly every day during the harvest, along with a steady stream of newcomers. There were four berry farmers on the island, and some workers would roam among the different farms. Workers collected the berries in carriers, and each carrier contained six boxes that were about six inches on a side and three inches deep. The carriers had handles to make them easier to lug around. When pickers brought the full carriers to the transfer station, Papa-san would transfer the berries to a stackable “flat,” which held twelve boxes.
In exchange for their hard work, pickers got one ticket for each full carrier. The tickets could be exchanged for cash at the end of the day or at any time during the season. Over the course of the day, the stacks of strawberry flats grew impressively, a tribute to the land’s bounty and the pickers’ hard work. The sweet smell of strawberries was everywhere, but it was the strongest and most mouth-watering at the transfer station. No matter how many strawberries I ate, I never grew tired of that wonderful aroma.
Most days by mid-afternoon, it got pleasantly warm, but it rained on us at least a few times every summer. When it did, we kept right on picking. Sometimes, it got hot, sapping everyone’s energy, so we cooled off by taking breaks at a large wooden water barrel that was towed to the field every day.
My children always admired the fastest pickers. One of the best was a gregarious young man named Duane, who one day nearly broke the record of forty-three carriers, falling just one carrier short. Records like this were always set early in the season because the first picking of the fields yielded the largest berries. By the third or fourth picking, it took everyone a lot longer to fill their carriers. To compensate, Papa-san gave out different colored tickets in exchange for full carriers of berries. Each was worth a different amount depending on the color, and the value rose over the course of the season, as the berries got smaller. We started with red tickets, worth 25 cents each. Yellow tickets were valued at 35 cents, and blue ones were worth 50 cents apiece.
While all of the pickers were motivated by money, a few also had an aesthetic sense for their work. Each time, they brought perfectly mounded carriers brimming with ripe, unbruised berries to the transfer station. Somehow, they transformed the simple, repetitive task of picking berries into a craft they took pride in.
Workers were required to pick the rows “clean”—that is, they were expected to pick all of the berries that were ripe, not just the largest ones. Adults got a whole row to themselves, but the children got one side of a row or the other. With the deep furrows plowed between the rows, my youngest, five-year-old Ray, could completely disappear behind the lush growth of the strawberry leaves.
Work always ended around three o’clock, when a large delivery truck arrived to pick up that day’s harvest. Strong young men loaded the berry flats onto the truck, which then went to a nearby barreling plant. There, the fruit was processed, frozen, and later shipped back East, eventually being made into jam or topping.
The harvest lasted about six weeks, depending upon the weather. It was dirty, backbreaking work, even for young bodies.
My kids worked hard every day, up to ten hours a day, six days a week. Sometimes, they would complain. “Mom, I’m tired,” Dave said. “I don’t feel like doing this any more.” His hands were stained red from the berries, his clothes covered in juice and dirt.
“Here, let me help you awhile,” I said. I’d squat down with him at his row and help him fill his carrier much faster. As a straw boss, I did this with all of the workers over the course of the day. Picking with them for even a few minutes helped to sustain their efforts and renew their dedication.
I had my children save all of their tickets for the whole season in separate jars. They counted their tickets almost every night, and kept track of how many they earned from day to day. At the end of every summer, they each received a big payout in cash. This was their spending money for the entire year. After their first year of picking, in 1965, their father took them to the neighborhood bank where they opened up savings accounts and learned to keep track of their money. Martha was eleven years old and David was nine. We decided it was not too soon for them to learn—even for little Ray—how precious money can be.
After the initial excitement of the new season wore off, berry picking was a tedious, hard job, with low pay. To relieve the monotony, some of the young people brought portable AM radios. The fields echoed with the top hits of the day—“Yesterday” from the Beatles, “Satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones, and the Monkees’ “I’m a Believer.” The music lifted people’s spirits, even though it got boring when the same songs played over and over again.
Not everyone coped well with the boredom. Some gave up, often on their first day. Others tried to scam the system in various ways, eventually getting caught and kicked out. Those who stuck with it developed different strategies for staying motivated, such as getting competitive, feeling the responsibility to earn a living, enjoying watching their earnings grow, or simply taking pride in doing a good job. Each of them had to come up with his or her strategy for coping with the inevitable boredom that came with the job.
As adults, my children have told me that the summers they spent picking berries were crucial to their success as adults. It taught them to persevere, which is a useful trait in virtually any career. They also learned the value of money and the satisfaction of knowing they really earned it.
Every job has its boring parts, and almost any job can get boring after awhile. However, I have come to appreciate that boredom is a crucial part of our personal growth. I am glad my children learned to grapple with boredom at such a young age.
Over the years, I have heard from a number of people who grew up working for my brother. All of them have said the same thing: picking berries taught them many important life lessons. Later on, they found that they were stronger and more resilient because they experienced and worked through the inevitable boredom that comes from repetitive hard work.
