The Green City Kid in the Harvest Field
A young, inexperienced laborer struggles to keep pace with a rough, veteran wheat-harvesting crew in the Big Bend region.
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.
On my third day of harvesting, I finally felt the agony of the work beginning to subside. The men, who had originally bet I would not last three days, were beginning to respect my endurance. But the next morning, disaster struck. As I hurriedly tried to harness my team before the header started, I struggled with the gear, eventually putting the hames on Barney, my horse, inside out. He began to totter and collapse under the weight of the incorrectly fitted harness. When the puncher, Paul, finally discovered my mistake, he roared in disbelief. I had nearly choked the animal through my own ignorance. The men bore this episode in mind for several days, keeping the 'green city kid' the subject of their ridicule.
“Say, kid, can’t you even harness a horse yet?”
This account captures the brutal transition for many urbanites moving into the rural agricultural labor market in the early 20th century. Today, the Big Bend is still a major agricultural powerhouse, though the labor dynamics and the 'green' experience of migrant or seasonal workers remain a recurring theme of the region's history.
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