Growing up as a kid, there was an alternative to “weeding beets for the Stokely Canning Company”. The Krier Canning company from Kewaskum, Wisconsin would offer to pick up kids in Plymouth with old school buses (I mean old) and transport the kids to fields of beans. You would pick long string beans off the plants of each row, place them in a large “gunny sack” and when full, they would weigh the beans and give you credit for each pound.
There were usually two or three young “hunks” with each bus to drive and supervise the effort. Interestingly enough, most of the bean pickers were female. How about that! Hunks supervising females.
I decided to give bean picking a try because maybe I could earn more money than weeding beets. Besides, being with a bus load full of girls couldn’t be all bad. So I tried.
I learned the nature of discrimination early. Any row of beans that were being picked by guys were examined closely by the hunks to see if any beans were missed. If they found any, a verbal reprimand took place. If the hunks examined the rows picked by girls and found missed beans, they would pick the beans and then place them in the girl’s bag and say nothing. Talk about unfair.
And then, there were a few young ladies who were rather “loose”. They would disappear from the field with one of the hunks and not be seen for hours. Somehow the young ladies got credited for as much or more beans as everyone else. I could never figure out where the hunk and young lady went but I knew it wasn’t fair (actually I knew exactly where they were). I guess you could call the loose ladies “super-puckered super pickers”.
I know there is a theory that women have more dexterity with their hands and fingers meaning they would make better bean pickers. Perhaps that is true buy the dynamics were bigger than dexterity.
So I went back to my male dominated job of weeding beets where I could earn some big money and things were fair.
I guess my lesson grasshoppers is that things are not always fair. So you have to adjust. The bean pickers earned money their way. I earned my money my way.
Love,
Dad