Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility
Lessons Learned by Picking Cantaloupes in San Joaquin Valley
gvw_calmatters
By CalMatters
Published 5 years ago on
July 30, 2019

Share

It’s cantaloupe season in the San Joaquin Valley, a time that takes me back to a summer during high school when I picked melons in Huron for farming pioneer Russell Giffen. I didn’t know Giffen. I was merely one of thousands of high school and college students who picked crops in the San Joaquin Valley after a guest worker program had ended.


Opinion 
Jim Boren
Special to CALmatters

At 16, I had no idea I was part of a short-term experiment to get farmers through a labor shortage was created when Congress killed the bracero program after the 1964 harvest.
Braceros began coming to the Valley and other farming regions during World War II and there were as many as 445,000 guest workers at the program’s peak. But the program finally ended amid charges of worker exploitation, wage theft, and criticism over immigration laws.
While the circumstances are different today, there’s a farm labor shortage as immigration still confounds our political elite.
I knew none of this history when I signed on to pick cantaloupes in 1965. But I remember that summer vividly. I had to give up playing baseball for the American Legion team at Hoover High School in Fresno for a chance to make some money and maybe even buy a car. Baseball was my life, and it kept me anchored to school. But the family pressure to make extra money won out.
So my summer would be spent in the cantaloupe fields of Fresno County instead of on the ballfields. It turned out to be one of the most meaningful summers of my youth.
It made me a better journalist, helping me to understand the plight of the farmworkers I would later cover during the labor strife between Cesar Chavez’s United Farm Workers and the region’s farmers. Many of my assignments would take me to Huron in Fresno County. But this time I would be the observer instead of the worker in the fields.

Summer in Huron a Short-Term Adventure

This experience also would become part of my family history, starting with my grandparents, who fled the Oklahoma dust bowl in the 1930s. They picked cotton in the San Joaquin Valley well into the 1950s. They knew farm labor camps and a nomadic life that would ultimately bring them to Fresno, where they found a new path in the booming post-war construction industry.
My grandparents worked in the fields out of necessity. My summer in Huron was a short-term adventure. I knew I would go back home and the cushy cradle of school when the cantaloupe season ended. Even as a teenager, I understood the difference.
The day I showed up at the farm operation in Huron was a typical June, approaching 100 degrees, but it seemed much hotter because of the lack of shade. Most of the high school and college students who would be my co-workers had friends with them. I was going solo because my friends mostly came from families that didn’t need the extra summer income. They thought I was a bit crazy.
I was scared that day, although not for my safety. I feared I wouldn’t fit in and I was unsure if I could keep up with co-workers in the heat. There would be no days off because the melons ripening in the Valley sun would not wait on the weekends. I was pushed on by teenage pride. I couldn’t go back to Fresno and tell friends I quit baseball only to quit picking cantaloupes.
I was assigned to a bunk with metal springs and a thin mattress in barracks that seemed to go on for as far as you could see in the building that would be home. I was told to get ready for work the next day. Wakeup call was 5 a.m.
That first morning, we were ushered into the mess hall. I wasn’t used to eating that early, but the foreman told several of us that our next chance to eat would be at lunch seven hours later. You’re going to be picking melons all morning, he said. Eat! Eat!
There were still some Mexican nationals working that season as a lingering part of the guest worker program, and they filled their plates with tortillas, eggs, potatoes. We joined in.

‘Pickers’ and ‘Loaders’

We were bused to a field and our team was divided into “pickers” and “loaders.” The pickers popped the ripe cantaloupes from the vine and set them on the furrow, and the loaders followed behind, putting them on a conveyor belt that would drop them into the truck that would take them to the packing shed.

We made about $30 a day or $210 a week. That was a lot of money for a 16-year-old in 1965, and allowed me to buy a very cheap car.
I got into the swing of things, and our team moved through the fields each day. I imagined the cantaloupe I picked ending up on the table of a faraway family. I had a sense of pride as I passed the time imagining what the families were like.
As the summer wore on, it seemed my fingerprints were disappearing from the tips of my fingers from the rough hides of the cantaloupes. We’d later joke that we’d be the perfect criminals with no fingerprints.
Later in the season, when the crop began thinning, the system of split labor of pickers and loaders ended. With not as many ripe melons in the fields, we’d pick and load at the same time. They sent half the crews home, but I was kept on until the harvest ended around the first of August.
We made about $30 a day or $210 a week. That was a lot of money for a 16-year-old in 1965, and allowed me to buy a very cheap car.
Now a half-century later, cantaloupes have great symbolism for me. At stores, I check the labels on the boxes to see where in the Valley they are from. If I see Huron, it makes me smile.
Those melons remind me of my farmworker grandparents, a special summer in the fields, and a path to journalism that let me appreciate the many blessings I have been given.
 About the Author
Jim Boren is the director of the Institute for Media and Public Trust at Fresno State. Boren, a former executive editor of The Fresno Bee, has been a journalist for almost 50 years. He can be reached at jboren30@gmail.com. He wrote this commentary for CalMatters, a public interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California’s Capitol works and why it matters.
[activecampaign form=19]

DON'T MISS

When Newsom Gives His State of the State, He Should Be Candid About California’s Economy

DON'T MISS

CA’s Liberal Government Has a Long History of Caving to Special Interests

DON'T MISS

Newsom, Legislators Opt for Gimmicks and Wishful Thinking to Close California’s Budget Deficit

DON'T MISS

Courage to Embrace Change: El Rio Reyes Conservation Trust Boldly Rebrands as Kings River Land Trust

DON'T MISS

Committed to Politics or Committed to Fresno’s Children?

DON'T MISS

Repealing Prop. 47 is a Misguided Battle Cry. It Won’t Make California Safer.

DON'T MISS

Misty Her Might Be Best Superintendent Candidate. But Fresno Unified Still Needs a Statewide Search.

DON'T MISS

How California’s Prized Solution for Methane Gas Is Backfiring on Farmers

DON'T MISS

Many Californians Rely on This Farmers Market Program. Newsom Wants to Cut It

DON'T MISS

Carbon Capture Storage Is Key to California’s Economy & Energy Future

No data was found

Facebook News Tab Will Soon Be Unavailable as Meta Scales Back News and Political Content

16 hours ago

Stock Market Today: Wall Street Rises to More Records to Close Out Its Latest Winning Month

16 hours ago

A Fresno County First: Kerman Council Passes Amended Gaza Cease-Fire Resolution

16 hours ago

UN Top Court Orders Israel to Open More Land Crossings for Aid into Gaza

16 hours ago

How Involved Is Southern California Consulting Firm in FUSD Executive Dealings?

16 hours ago

Biden’s Fundraiser with Obama and Clinton Nets a Record $25 Million, His Campaign Says

17 hours ago

Fresno Unified’s Self-Protection Racket Is Hurting Our Kids

17 hours ago

Rockin’ Out or Laughing, the Valley Has Its Pick of Weekend Events

18 hours ago

Ex-Correctional Officer at Women’s Prison in California Sentenced for Sexually Abusing Inmates

20 hours ago

Caitlin Clark and Iowa Draw Nearly 5 Million Viewers for Second-Round NCAA Win

20 hours ago

PGA HOPE at Riverside Golf Course Introduces Military Veterans to the Game

PGA HOPE, now underway at Fresno’s Riverside Golf Course, is designed to introduce golf to veterans and active duty military members t...

14 hours ago

PGA HOPE at Fresno's Riverside Golf Course
14 hours ago

PGA HOPE at Riverside Golf Course Introduces Military Veterans to the Game

15 hours ago

Cronenworth’s Big Hit Helps Lift the Padres to a 6-4 Win Over Melvin’s Giants

15 hours ago

Shohei Ohtani Reaches 3 Times in Home Debut as the Dodgers Rout the Cardinals 7-1

16 hours ago

Facebook News Tab Will Soon Be Unavailable as Meta Scales Back News and Political Content

16 hours ago

Stock Market Today: Wall Street Rises to More Records to Close Out Its Latest Winning Month

16 hours ago

A Fresno County First: Kerman Council Passes Amended Gaza Cease-Fire Resolution

16 hours ago

UN Top Court Orders Israel to Open More Land Crossings for Aid into Gaza

16 hours ago

How Involved Is Southern California Consulting Firm in FUSD Executive Dealings?

MENU

CONNECT WITH US

Search

Send this to a friend