From the following Old Folks Home DSQ, May 8, 2002:
Did you have a job as a kid/teenager? What were the main responsibilities of that job? Anecdotes are appreciated.
I think you all know about some of my experiences in the Avondale cabbage fields as a young man with my brothers and sisters. Many were the days that I wondered what it was like to go to school. But we worked for our days. And we worked very hard. Mamá gave us very tiny burritos with only a few little beans (burrititos para los perezosos) if we didn't fill all of our boxes by the end of the day.
During the cotton season, things were very tedious. It was our job to pick the beetles and dirt out of the bolls. We kept our fingernails very long because of this. Me and my brothers liked to leave the dirt under our nails for as long as possible because it looked so dangerous. But I remember that Llolla was very proud of how long her nails got and she would often pretend like she was the perfume lady at the Mall. (Which is not to say that we often went to the Mall. In fact it was only once that my parents took us there, and we broke many things.)
By the time I was ten, my father told me that I was in charge of my brothers and sisters while he was away. This was a very great day for me. Especially since I am not the eldest. There was a lot of anger when Paco found out what father had said. He threw dirt all over into my hair and into my box of cleaned cotton. I worked until very late to make up for what he ruined, but I was still very proud.
I do not know how much we made, since Papá collected the money every day, but I could still tell the times we were paid well for our work. Like the time that Mamá came home with a large piece of cloth to hang between their bed and ours. This was a great relief to us all and we worked all the more in hopes of getting other such gifts.
Such was our loyalty, that I found it very difficult when it was time to finally leave and provide for my own family. But today, I still keep my fingernails long in memory.
Íz