On Frosty Mornings

FW Kristin interviews FW Red about his years doing agricultural labor in the 1970s and 1980s. Excerpted and lightly edited.

In 1974, there was a camp on the Spokane River below the falls. I went there, had a good time, built a hovel, lay in the sand, and I met some people. The only name I remember now is Mushroom. He had a bus, and it was, “Let us go to apple country and make money picking apples!” I was all over it, so we went up to Okanogan and we were in Brewster, Washington around August or September 1974. It was late at night, past 10, and Mushroom was driving the bus. There as an argument going on in the back, and he looked back to give his piece of the argument and crashed into the side of an apple orchardist’s station wagon. He T-boned the station wagon, and the authorities came for him and took him and said, “You can have your man back when you pay!” Now, there were like 12-14 people on the bus at that time of night, and all of a sudden well over half of the people on the bus had to find their way back to Spokane just right then, and they disappeared. So there was a small handful of us to bail our friend out, and the only way to do it was to actually pay for all of it, and we did. We went and got apple jobs on the heights above Brewster.

One thing about apple harvest at least then, and I imagine today, is that the housing would be a cabin that held apple pickers year after year. No one had any interest in keeping them up, so they were out of the weather but just funky. Funky places. And if you didn’t have a car, then it meant that you gotta find a way to the IGA grocery down in Brewster. You’re isolated at your orchard. But on the other hand, the apple orchardists, they need the help. The rancher would make sure you’d find a way to the store. it’s just in his interest to somewhat help you along, but he’s not your friend. They’re your employer in a rural space.

I remember by late September up there even at 900 feet the frost would be out in the morning. You can’t pick if there’s frost because the apples are so delicate. Indeed, that’s why they have pickers at all, because you can’t do anything to the apple. You have to tip it up, kind of grab it and tip it against the stem. If you break the stem off it’s a juicer right off the bat, and they’ll go through your bin, looking at your bin and saying, “Look at all these apples with no stem!” The stem is a plug that keeps your life force in it, it really is.

I hear now they’re going to have robots that know how to do that, that’s probably true but this is new.

It used to be when I was working it’d be 30 dollars a bin, and one of those Latino brothers, they could do 3, 4, 5 bins a day, but me, I’m clumsy, going up and down a ladder I’m slow, I don’t have my technique down, so I would maybe get a whole bin done, so I was making less than 40 dollars a day in 1983 dollars. A pair of brand new Levis in those days was like 15 dollars.

But! On frosty mornings, some of the orchards are on a hillside and you have to go up a ladder, sometimes a 12 foot ladder, and if you’re on a hillside, in the early dawn, you go up to where you’re in the treetops and you’re looking down over your orchard, and the sun is coming up — oh! this is fine, this is fine.

And there were times when I was going, “Oh my god, when is the season over?” “Oh we’re gonna be done picking October 23rd.” and I’d go, “Oh, praise god in heaven. Praise goodness!” I know I can get through now I have an ending date!