The Kid of the Wheat Fields
A rookie farm hand shares a vivid account of the grueling, back-breaking labor of the Big Bend harvest.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The first morning at the harvest remains particularly vivid. I had crawled into the hay mow about ten o'clock the night before and was awakened by a hearty 'Hi there, pile out.' Beneath me, the spike pitch and Paul Metcalf were feeding the horses. As I went to the field, I found the heading crew working in a beautiful level stretch of wheat that nodded at the morning breeze. I was the 'kid,' a title I grew to detest, as I clumsily struggled to handle a pitchfork while my fellow crew members watched with grins. I was also 'framed' by the other drivers who took the six best horses, leaving me with three useless ones. Barney, the oldest, was particularly lazy, and despite my frantic yells and eventual use of a black-snake, he simply meditated on his retirement. By the end of the day, having failed at pitchforking and driving, I had proven to the men exactly why I was the 'kid.'
“I was the 'kid.' No Shorty or Midget or Stocky, but just—the 'kid.' My, how I did grow to detest that name!”
While harvest technology has shifted from horse-drawn header boxes to massive combines, the cultural rite of passage of the 'rookie' in agricultural labor remains a constant. The physical toll of the harvest and the hierarchy of the threshing crew mirror the experiences of seasonal farm workers in Eastern Washington today.
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