In a Pickle: A Family Farm Story

by Jerry Apps

  “Hey, see you're back at work,” Jesús said to Blackie.

  “Yeah, I'm back.”

  “Have a good vacation?”

  “Weren't no vacation.”

  “Heard it was,” the young migrant said, taunting. It appeared these two were taking up where they had left off.

  “Okay, boys,” Andy said. “There's work to do.”

  Soon green cucumbers were tumbling over the sorter, but even before the first sack was completely dumped, Agnes said, “Stop the machine.” Quarter Mile quickly flipped the switch.

  “We got a problem,” she said quietly to Andy. “See this, looks like that spot rot you told us about.”

  “That's it, all right,” Andy said, shaking his head. “Everybody up to the sorter.”

  The entire crew, including Helen, slowly sorted the entire truckload of cucumbers, tossing out about a third of them. The factory crew helped the migrants re-sack the diseased cucumbers and load them back on the truck.

  “Better ask Jake to come in tonight,” Andy said to Carlos. “I'm afraid we've got a big problem.”

  “What's the problem?” Carlos asked.

  “Diseased cucumbers. See these spots—they'll turn the whole cucumber to mush. Can't salt them. They'll all rot in the tanks. Spoil the other cucumbers, too,” Andy said.

  “Sí,” Carlos said. “I'll tell Señor Jake to come along with the next load.”

  Andy hoped this would be the only time they'd see spot rot. Nevertheless, he got on the phone to J. W. Johnson.

  “Think you better plan a trip over here after supper tonight,” Andy said.

  “What's going on? I haven't got time to run over to Link Lake tonight,” Johnson said in his gravelly voice.

  “Think we've got a spot-rot problem.”

  “Can't be.”

  “Sorted out about a third of Jake Stewart's first load today with spot rot. I said for Jake to come in tonight with the next load.”

  “Jake Stewart? He can't have a problem. You think there's a problem, you handle it,” Johnson said gruffly.

  “Think you better be here. In case we have to reject the whole load,” Andy persisted.

  “Think you're wrong, Meyer. Can't be nothin’ the matter with Jake's cukes. He used our seed, our fertilizer, followed our orders to a T.”

  “I saw the spot-rot cukes, Mr. Johnson. They're bad.”

  “Oh, hell. I'll come. But it'll be a waste of time. I know Jake's got good cukes in those big fields.”

  The crew continued working through the afternoon, sorting the small batches of cucumbers that a few farmers brought in, not seeing any sign of spot rot. Around 6 p.m. Johnson roared up to the pickle factory in a cloud of dust and his usual bluster.

  “You got some of them rotten cukes here?” he asked.

  “Sent ’em all back to Jake's. Loaded them back on the truck. Wanted Jake to see what we'd done.”

  “Well, how in hell am I supposed to know if we got a problem if you ain't got any rotten cukes for me to look at?”

  “I'm afraid you'll see all the spoiled cukes you want when Jake's next load gets here,” Andy said.

  A few minutes later, the big Ford truck returned, stacked high with sacks of Jake Stewart's cucumbers. Carlos eased the truck up to the loading dock, and then got out of the driver's side; Jake stepped down from the passenger side and immediately climbed the stairs to the factory floor.

  Jake nodded to Andy and then said, “Hey there, Johnson. Glad you're here. What the hell is wrong? Mexicans brought back to the farm nearly as many cukes as they took.” His voice was higher than normal, and he was leaning forward like he might fall on his face.

  “I'm sure there's no problem, Jake. Let's get this truck unloaded,” Johnson said to Carlos and the migrants riding on the back.

  Andy flipped the switch and nodded to his entire crew to take their places at the sorter. Green cucumbers began bouncing toward their appropriate slots. The workers at the sorter tossed nearly every cucumber into the reject boxes. This load of cucumbers was even more infected than the previous one.

  “Pull the switch,” Andy said. The big machine shuddered to a stop.

  Andy took a handful of diseased cucumbers over to J. W. Johnson and Jake Stewart. Jake had begun to perspire.

  “See this,” Andy said. He pointed to the small gray spots on each cucumber. Both men looked at the cucumbers but said nothing.

  “Dump another three, four sacks and start the sorter,” Johnson ordered. Once again, the crew tossed nearly all the cucumbers into the reject boxes. With the sorter clear, the crew waited for Johnson's decision. He brushed past Jake and Carlos and pulled the sorter switch himself. There was not a sound as everyone stood, watching him.

  Then Jake, who was now perspiring heavily, spoke to J. W. Johnson. “They're just little spots. Can't be very serious. I did what you said. Planted them just like you suggested, cultivated and fertilized them just so, just like you wanted. Can't be anything wrong with these cucumbers.”

  “See these cukes? See them spots? They're rotten spots. In a few days the whole pickle will rot, and it'll spoil the good ones around it,” Johnson said. His voice had taken on a new tone, more formal, more businesslike.

  “But the spots are so little,” Jake said plaintively.

  “Doesn't matter. Spots start out small, get bigger. We're gonna have to turn back your whole load and shut you down.”

  “Shut me down?”

  “Yup, that's what we gotta do, Mr. Stewart. As a representative of H. H. Harlow, I will not purchase these cucumbers.”

  “But I got a contract with you guys. Says you'll buy my cucumbers.”

  “Yes, you do, Mr. Stewart. But read that piece of paper. Says we won't buy any diseased cucumbers. And yours are diseased.”

  “The hell you say. You ain't buying any more of my cukes?” Jake was dumbfounded. “You gotta come out to the farm. See my fields. This is just a fluke.”

  “I don't think it's a fluke, Mr. Stewart. These cucumbers are infected, and we can't buy them,” Johnson said.

  “Just got to where I was makin’ a little money and starting to pay off the seed and fertilizer loan to you guys. Just startin’ to make a little money.”

  “Our company will not buy any rotten cucumbers,” Johnson stated firmly.

  “Well, son of a bitch,” Jake said. “What a helluva note!”

  “This isn't good for anybody,” Andy said. “Sure hate to see this happen to you, Jake.”

  The rest of the factory crew was nearly as dumb founded as Jake. They stood around, looking at the floor and trying to keep their distance from the situation. Every one of them felt sorry for Jake. They knew how much money he had invested in his cucumber fields and how he had depended on the sale of cucumbers to ease himself out of debt. Preacher walked over to Jake and tried to put his hand on Jake's arm, but Jake brushed him off. Agnes said, “I'm sorry, Jake.” But he didn't seem to hear her words.

  “What'll I do with these guys?” Jake pointed toward the migrants, who were standing nearby, listening and wondering what was going on.

  “H. H. Harlow will find another place for them,” Johnson said. “Find some other cucumber fields that can use some late-season help.”

  “What's gonna happen to me?” Jake asked. He was red in the face, and his voice was higher than ever. His question hung unanswered in the humid night air.

  To add to Jake's embarrassment, two days later the front-page story in the Link Lake Gazette carried the headline “Pickle King Dethroned.” Jake wasn't happy about seeing his name in print, especially like this. He stormed into the newspaper office and slammed a copy of the paper down on the counter.

  “I was expecting you'd be in,” Dewey John said.

  “Why in hell did you do this?” Jake asked, leaning forward as usual. His face was red.

  “Jake, it's news. People deserve to know what happened.”

  “Just because that dumb county agent from Portage County found a few spots on my cuc
umbers and disqualified them?” Jake didn't mention that his cucumbers had been refused at the pickle factory on Monday.

  “Yes, that makes news. Did you read the entire article, Jake?”

  “Hell no. headline made me so mad I didn't read any more.”

  “Well, read what I wrote about spot-rot disease and how it has devastated cucumber fields in Michigan. It's serious business,” Dewey said.

  Jake already knew how serious the problem was. He walked out of the newspaper office with his head down.

  18

  Love among the Pickle Vats

  Word about what had happened at the factory spread like a blight. Whether they had a quarter acre or a couple acres of cucumbers, farmers wondered if spot rot would attack their pickle patch next. Ordinarily, the patches would produce for several more weeks. Now there was a better than average chance that many farmers would have to quit picking cucumbers early, plow their fields under, and hope they wouldn't be attacked again next year.

  Only a few days after Jake Stewart's cucumbers were turned back, Andy had to refuse the Patterson family's five sacks. Slowly, more and more folks arrived with cucumbers showing the telltale spots. The country agent's words proved prophetic, and many farmers had to plow under what appeared to be perfectly good cucumber plants.

  Of course the spot-rot problem affected the pickle factory as much as—or more than—it affected the farmers. When all the cucumber fields, big and little, were in full production, the factory crew worked well past midnight every night, sorting, weighing, and salting the day's intake. The H. H. Harlow Company always insisted that no fresh cucumbers sit overnight on the factory floor. According to Harlow policy all cucumbers and appropriate salt and water must be dumped into vats before the crew could go home. A factory manager would be fired if this rule were broken. The company prided itself on producing a quality product, and preserving fresh cucumbers as quickly as possible was one way to assure it.

  With the spot-rot epidemic, the volume of cucumbers coming into the pickle factory slowed dramatically. Nonetheless, Agnes Swarsinski had never worked harder, inspecting each batch of cucumbers that tumbled over the sorter, looking for the telltale round, gray blotch, often no larger than the tip of a pencil eraser. When she spotted a diseased cucumber, she ordered the sorter stopped and the crew inspected each cucumber in the batch for infection. She could have merely said, “Spot-rot infection” and rejected the entire lot, but she saw the sad-faced farm boys and girls who had worked under a hot August sun and who were depending on the few dollars earned from their cucumbers to buy something special—a Red Ryder BB gun, a pair of ice skates, new shoes, or a new dress for school to replace the hand-me-downs from an older sister. She saw the kids’ faces in her sleep, after she rejected their four or five sacks of spot-rot-infected cucumbers. She saw the disappointment in their eyes, sad eyes that knew their hard work was for nothing, eyes that asked why this one source of dependable money should be denied them because of something they did not do—because of some disease that had marched across the cucumber fields of Ames County.

  When a grower with a half acre of cucumbers and a carload of kids arrived, the pickle factory workers inspected the cucumbers one at a time, tossing out the bad ones individually. Agnes and Andy had an agreement, one they hadn't shared with J. W. Johnson. If more than half the cucumbers from one of these small acreage growers were disease free, the factory would buy the good cucumbers and the family would go home with something, even if it was only half of what they had expected. But if spot rot claimed more than half the lot, they had no choice but to reject the entire amount, and the farmer and his kids would return home with the same sacks of cucumbers they had delivered. A few kids burst into tears when Andy and Agnes rejected an entire load, but not many. Farm kids grew up with dashed dreams. The older ones had already learned to heed their elders’ advice: “Never get your hopes up.” They had learned to be surprised when things turned out better than they had planned, and they accepted disappointment with little comment, for it came often. Still, the bad news of rejected cucumbers was hard to swallow, for if anything came close to a sure thing it was growing and selling cucumbers to the Harlow pickle factory in Link Lake.

  Of course when Jake Stewart's cucumbers came in with spot rot, Agnes and Andy rejected entire truckloads. Jake had insisted on sending cucumbers for a couple more days after J. W. Johnson had closed him down. Andy said it would be okay—that maybe in some of his several big fields the cucumbers would be free of spot rot. But they weren't. Jake's workers returned tons of fresh cucumbers to his farm and dumped them on the infected cucumber fields. Their angry eyes dug deep into Andy when he had to tell Carlos Rodríguez, who in turn told his workers, why their source of summer income had ceased, all due to a few spots of rot on every few cucumbers that bounced along the sorter.

  “Are you sure?” Carlos had asked, quietly but firmly questioning Agnes's judgment.

  “We're sure,” Andy had said in an equally firm voice. “J. W. Johnson said absolutely no cucumbers with spot rot.”

  With the decision not to accept Jake's cucumbers, the volume delivered to the factory fell by a third. And with the rejection of several smaller growers, the cucumber volume fell to about one-fourth of what it had been but a week earlier. Andy heard that the Harlow Company had relocated the Rodríguez family and Jesús to a farm in a neighboring county that so far had avoided the spot-rot problem.

  Andy began letting his crew go home early and come in late. On a drizzly foggy Wednesday, he let everyone go by four in the afternoon. He knew no one would pick cucumbers in the rain. He stayed on. He had office work to do, some reports that Helen had prepared for him to sign, and some repair work around the factory. Something was always breaking, it seemed. Andy had spotted a cracked board covering one of the pickle vats, and he decided to work on that first.

  He remembered a small pile of boards stacked under the factory's main floor. Two doors allowed access to this shadowy area, where the rich smell of fermenting cucumbers was strong. Neither of the doors was locked, as there was nothing much to steal there, aside from a few boards and pickle-sorter parts.

  When Andy entered the area, he noticed that the opposite door stood open. This was not especially unusual, as the town kids often snuck into this mysterious area to play tag, hide-and-seek, and other games. It was a wonderful place for hide-and-seek.

  He heard giggling. As he had done once or twice before, he'd politely tell these kids that they shouldn't play here. They would leave—and of course they would return, because this was one of their favorite places.

  Slowly Andy moved toward the giggling, hoping to surprise the kids and perhaps even scare them a little. He peered around a vat full of number-five cucumbers, and there on a blanket spread out between the vat holding gherkins and one storing number twos he spotted Helen Swanson and Preacher. They were both stark naked. She was giggling as he kissed her on the neck. He whispered something into her ear and she giggled even more.

  Andy slowly backed away and quietly returned to the main floor of the factory. He had known that something more than counseling was going on between the preacher and Helen, but he didn't know it had come to this. After all, Preacher was married and had a houseful of kids—and he was a preacher. Word was that Preacher always spoke on the wages of sin and how sinners were destined to burn in hell. He had often preached on the most deadly sin of all, adultery. And here he was fooling around with Helen like he'd never uttered the words.

  Andy wondered if he should say something to the both of them, let them know he had caught them in the act. Should he sit them down in the factory office and tell them he didn't approve of what they were doing, especially with Preacher being a married man with kids, and a man of the cloth besides?

  He decided to keep quiet, at least for the time being. He thought that what they did on their own time was none of his business. As long as they came to work on time and did what they were supposed to while on the clock, he didn't care how
they spent their off time. That's how he rationalized the situation, anyway.

  But what Andy had seen stuck in his craw. What would Ethel Ketchum do when she found out, pious Ethel, who was quick to judge anybody in Link Lake whom she thought had stepped over the morality line, from those who cussed too much to those who regularly got drunk on Saturday night? And what about Preacher's kids? It was usually the kids who had the most to lose during these deals.

  The following morning the entire factory crew reported for work promptly at nine, the new hour Andy had set. Helen arrived a few minutes early, and the preacher arrived on the stroke of nine.

  Everyone was civil toward each other. Blackie Antonelli even said “good morning,” something he seldom did. Perhaps the crew's behavior had something to do with getting a good night's sleep and the fact that within a few weeks Andy would roll shut the big doors, turn off the lights, snap the big brass padlock in place, and end another pickle season.