Footloose in America: Dixie to New England

by Bud Kenny

  On my second day of apple picking, I was the first one in the orchard. It was chilly, but the sun was out. And aside from the geese on the pond, it was peaceful among the apple trees. At first, my body protested when I began to pick, but soon my muscles limbered up and relaxed into the work.

  I had just emptied my fourth bucket in a bin, when the first car full of Mexicans pulled into the orchard. Before long the morning quiet was replaced with that south-of-the-border beat, and the apple trees were jabbering in Spanish. The orchard was festive again.

  The sky began to turn gray while I ate my lunch. From the north, came a wind with the feel of winter in it. I was up in a tree on my third row of Jonah Golds, when the first bit of ice landed on me. Within moments, it was a full blown sleet storm. Through the sounds of the ice landing on the trees, I heard ladders clang and car doors slam. The Mexican voices didn’t have the happy tenor I had grown accustomed to.

  After a few minutes, the sleet gave way to snow. It was a Christmas-card kind of snow that quickly turned everything white. I was in awe of how beautiful it was–but it was obvious the Mexicans were not pleased.

  I don’t know why, but suddenly I started singing. “Oh, the weather outside is frightful, but my dear you’re so delightful. . . . Let it snow, Let it snow, Let it snow!”

  I sang it at least half a dozen times, butchering the words and getting louder with each rendition. Whether the Mexicans heard, or understood me, I don’t know. But when I finished there was not another voice or any music to be heard. The only sounds were those of the snowflakes landing, and the crunching of my foot steps on the way to the apple bin.

  It didn’t take me long to figure out everyone else had left. No one told me to quit picking if it snowed, so I kept working–but it was a frigid affair. The icy apples were hard to hold and my fingers got numb from handling them. So I put gloves on, but they were soon soaked. So I decided it was better to pick bare handed. The worst part was touching the cold aluminum ladder, which made my fingers feel like they were on fire. But I soon came up with a routine that made it more tolerable. I’d put gloves on to move the ladder, pick bare handed, then warm my hands in my pockets while I walked to the bin.

  It had been snowing for almost an hour, when I heard the motor of a vehicle coming toward me. I was climbing down the ladder when Chooey’s truck stopped beside me. Through his open window he asked, “What are you doing?”

  “Picking apples.”

  That little-boy grin bloomed on his face. “I thought so. You okay?”

  About twenty minutes after he drove off, a parade of Mexican cars and trucks pulled across the dam into the orchard. The snow had slacked to flurries, and before long it stopped. The clouds parted, the sun came out and soon the Mexican music returned.

  “Chooey used you today?”

  Chris was handing me a platter of roast beef that Patricia had fixed for dinner as I asked, “How’s that?”

  “After he found you picking apples in the snow, he went to the house and told the Mexicans, “If Loco Gringo can pick in the snow, you can too.”

  Karen said, “You mean Gringo Loco, don’t you?”

  Chris pointed his fork at me and said, “No. Him they call ‘Loco Gringo!’”

  The evening of my third day of apple picking, Chooey stopped by the barn while I was cleaning manure out of Della’s stall. He asked, “How’s it going?”

  “Great! I finished those three rows. Where do you want me to pick next?”

  “I’ll meet you there in the morning and show you.”

  The next day when I got to the orchard, I found a stack of empty bins at the end of the rows I had just picked. I was dismounting my bicycle when Juan pulled up on his tractor. He was Chooey’s cousin, and one of those who stayed in the Harding House. Next to me, Juan was the oldest one working in the orchard. I met him my first day picking and liked him right off the bat–partly because he spoke some English and was closer to my age, and he was the only one who seemed interested in communicating with me.

  Juan had a wife and three children back in Mexico, and he had not been home in three years. His goal was to save enough money to open a small grocery store in his village. So he sent most of each paycheck home for his wife to put away.

  “Chooey sent me to show you what to do,” Juan said.

  “Where are we going?”

  He pointed to the apples on the ground. “Here. You pick these up.”

  My heart sank. My back cringed. I had two broken vertebrae in my lower back. One as the result of a bicycle accident, and the other from when I fell off the roof of my house. Every time I nailed shoes on Della, my back would hurt from being bent over so long. What was this going to do to it?

  “I thought they picked the ones off the ground with a machine.”

  “No, hombre. If you pick the trees, you pick the ground.”

  Juan grabbed my buche, put the strap around his waist and squatted so the bucket dangled between his thighs. Like a machine he began to rake the apples into it with his hands. In less than two minutes the bucket was full. While he waddled toward the stack of bins he said, “These for jugo. Uh, how you say? Juice.”

  “So just throw them in?”

  “Si. No big deal.”

  Easy for him to say. Juan was at least a head and a half shorter than me, and he didn’t have a broken back. But those were just excuses, and there were apples to be picked up. So with the strap around my waist, I squatted down and tried to do what Juan had done. But I didn’t fit under the trees like he did, and my back couldn’t take squatting that long. Soon I was on my hands and knees crawling through the fruit, some of which had begun to rot. Within minutes my jeans were soaked with apple juice and coated with pulp. My nostrils were inundated with the sensations of vinegar, and my back was a race track of spasms.

  When I crawled out from under the tree, I remembered Chooey’s raised eyebrow when I said, “I figure being tall will be to my advantage.” No wonder he said, “We’ll see.”

  Apple picking continued through Thanksgiving and into the first week of December. Weather was always a factor. Some days we couldn’t pick because the apples were too cold. Every morning, Chooey and Chris tested them with pressure gauges and thermometers to make sure fingers wouldn’t harm them.

  They rotated me between three farms. On my bicycle, with the buche on my back, I’d pedal through Albion, or on the tow path along the Erie Canal to the different orchards. The tow path was my favorite. Sometimes I’d go out of my way to take that route.

  The only Mexicans that seemed interested in having anything to do with me were Chooey and Juan. All the others would wave and smile when they saw me. Aside from that, they kept their distance, and there was one who acted like he hated me.

  “Why do you say that?” Chooey asked as he handed me a Bud Lite. I had just given Della her evening feed, when he walked into the barn with the beer.

  “Every time I wave at Alex he turns the other way. And when he delivers bins to me, instead of spreading them down the rows like he does for everybody else, he just drops them beside the road and takes off. I don’t get it. What did I do to him?”

  “You’re picking apples.”

  “So?”

  Chooey swallowed a swig of beer. “He doesn’t think it’s right that you’re picking apples. Alex says it’s a Mexican job, not American. You should get an American job and leave the Mexican jobs alone.”

  If I hadn’t had a mouth full of beer, I probably would have yelled, “What are you talking about? This is America! So this is an American job! He’s probably illegal anyway.”

  But I didn’t. Instead I swallowed the beer and asked, “What do you think?”

  That little boy grin bloomed on his face as Chooey aimed the beer bottle at his lips. “Are you having fun yet?”

  You make more money when you pick bigger apples because it takes less of them to fill the bin. How I wish I’d had a chance to pick Courtlands, some were the size of grapefruit. How I hated picking Fuj
i. It took forever to fill a bin. I was tickled when they sent me to pick Ida Reds. They weren’t Courtlands, but they’re still a good sized apple.

  It was a couple days after Thanksgiving, and apple picking was nearly over. By noon I had filled three and a half bins. I was proud of myself. It would be a banner day for Loco Gringo.

  I had just sat down to eat my sandwich, when Juan pulled into the row with his tractor and dropped off a stack of bins at the other end. Less than a minute later, an old white sedan pulled up and stopped by the bins. I had seen this car several times. It always had two men and a woman in it. One of the men was as tall as me. The other was about six inches shorter, and the woman was so short she was almost a midget.

  Chooey had told me the tall man and woman were married. The other guy was her brother. They worked as a team and were something to watch. Between the three of them they could strip a tree in a matter of minutes. The woman and her brother worked the bottom branches, while her husband picked the top of the tree. Then, after they picked two or three trees, she would go back and pick the ones off the ground. Scurrying around under the trees, her arms moved so fast they were a blur as she raked apples into the buche.

  Chooey said, “They make more money than anybody.”

  And now they were in my row of trees. My first chance to make some decent money, and here they were. While I ate my sandwich I could hear them rolling the bins down the aisle. They were positioning themselves to strip me of a decent day’s wages. It had been cloudy all morning, but now it was downright gloomy. When I stashed the empty sandwich bag in my bike packs, I found myself muttering, “Damn wet-backs! Why don’t they go back where they belong.”

  When I stopped for lunch, I had a bin in the aisle that was half filled. After lunch, by the time I had finished filling it, they had filled five bins and were working on their sixth. And there were only three trees left to be picked.

  While I stood surveying the situation, it began to snow. I was so angry the snow must have sizzled when it landed on me. What was I going to do? Start another bin?

  I had one empty left, and was rolling it toward the three remaining trees, when I noticed they had no more empties. What did this mean? Should I relinquish my empty to them? No way!

  The snow was really coming down when I waddled out from under a tree with my full bucket. When I got to my empty bin I could see theirs was about three quarters full. I paused for a moment and watched the flakes float down into the orchard. What a beautiful sight. The trees, the grass, the bins, me and my fellow workers were being adorned with this soft winter lace. It seems trite to say that the scene was becoming a winter wonderland, but it was. And my anger was tainting it.

  Right then, something comfortable inside took control and propelled me past my bin toward theirs. The woman had just emptied her buche, when she looked up and saw me approach. Fear was on her face, and she took a few steps back. While I emptied my load into their bin, she turned and babbled something to the men. Her husband replied “Yo que se?” (How should I know?)

  At that moment, I felt downright giddy. This was going to be fun. Astonishment was on the woman’s face when I winked at her, and as I turned back toward my tree she began chatter at her husband. Repeatedly the word “dinero” (money) was in her sentences.

  When I dumped my apples into their bin the second time, the husband walked up to me and said, “Hombre, we share the work, eh?”

  “You mean the money?” I could see the woman anxiously waiting behind her husband for an answer. So I looked at her and said, “Dinero? No amigo. This is all yours.”

  She tugged on her husband’s sweat shirt and simply asked, “Que?”

  Before he could reply, I said, “It’s getting cold out here. Comprende?”

  He nodded his head. “Si.”

  “Let’s get these apples picked so we can go get warm. You keep the money.”

  Snow was piling up on the hood of his sweat shirt as a big grin spread across his face. “Gracias, hombre.”

  When I turned toward my tree, she started interrogating him. While I didn’t know what was being said, I could tell it didn’t make any sense to her. Why would Loco Gringo pick apples for them?

  Even if we had spoken the same language, how could I explain myself? Sure, I needed the money as much as they did. But that’s not the only reason I was in the orchard. No more than getting to Maine was the only reason we were walking. We were on the road to truly experience America in her own neighborhoods. I was in the orchard to savor the magic of work that hasn’t changed in more than a hundred years. I wanted to be one of the champions who brings the fruit in before winter ruins it.

  For us, the best part of traveling was when a community included us as if we were part of it. Like the Amish in Holmes County, Ohio. In the orchard, a real bonus for me would have been to be accepted as part of the team that brought in the harvest. Up till now, it had just been me picking for me. I’d been filling bins with my number on it so that come Friday, I got a decent paycheck–but it felt like something was missing. And now, hauling buche after buche to their bins, I found it. Camaraderie. The joy of working with them, rather than beside them. Albeit I forced myself onto their team, I was still part of it, and it felt good.

  How could I explain that to this woman? I couldn’t. So I just returned her nods and smiles, and kept on picking.

  By the time we got to the last tree, the snow had slowed to flurries. So much had fallen that the entire orchard was blanketed in white. The husband and I were on ladders at the top of the tree, when I stopped to gaze around us. I tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Hombre, it’s really beautiful, eh?”

  He looked around us for a few moments, then turned back to me and said, “Si, es muy hermoso. Muy bonito!”

  Suddenly, without thinking, I started singing, “Jingle bells, Jingle bells, Jingle all the way . . . .”

  He started laughing, and I could hear the other two laughing below us. When I looked down, the woman was standing next to the bin clapping to the rhythm of my singing. Her husband reached over, patted me on the shoulder and started humming along. Later, as I emptied my last load into the bin, I heard her under the tree humming the melody to, “Dashing through the snow, in a one horse open sleigh . . . .”

  When the day’s picking was done, we were supposed to take our ladders to the end of the row and lay them under the last tree. The husband and I had just done that, when he turned to me and said, “Hombre, the money. We share work, we share–”

  I held up my hand. “You keep the money. Let’s go home and get warm.”

  “Gracias.”

  The snow had started again, and I was zipping closed the packs on my bicycle, when they drove by me at the end of the row. The woman was leaning out the back window with a pretty smile on her round Mexican face. “Adios amigo. Gracias.”

  That was my finest day of apple picking.

  Bud’s last day of apple picking.

  CHAPTER 15

  WINTER IN THE SNOW BELT

  I Love Snow!

  AND NOT JUST ITS BEAUTY, I like the inconvenience. What else can completely disrupt everything–schedules, traffic, life, society–and yet, make the world look prettier than it really is? Nothing harkens adults back to their childhood like snow. It calls them to slopes with skis, sleds or pieces of cardboard. Parents pack it into balls to throw at their children and each other. Mature grownups will lay down in it on their backs then move their arms up and down making snow angels. Then they’ll urge their children to do it too. Nothing is so magical as snow!

  “I’m glad you like snow so much,” Chris grumbled, as he shook some off a Christmas tree I had just cut for the farm market. “Because I’ve got a feeling we’re in for a hell of a lot of it!”

  Albion, New York is halfway between Buffalo and Rochester, right in the middle of the snow belt. Chris’s forecast was right. We got more than 170 inches that winter–the most ever. And, according to the weather service, it was one of the coldest winters on
record. It seemed like the wind was always blowing. Usually it was a westerly, with either a southern or northern tack. They were Canadian winds that blustered across Lake Erie, which was forty miles to our west, or over Lake Ontario–eight miles to the north.

  By the end of the first week in December, all of the migrants had gone home to Mexico. The night Patricia and I moved into the Harding House, a storm off Lake Erie and an Arctic blast from Ontario, collided at the Watt Farm.

  The sky was gray all day, with a few snow flurries late in the afternoon. But then, about two hours after sunset, the storm windows on the west and north sides of the house suddenly started rattling. The wind wailed around the brick corners and sent the huge pine on the south side to whining. It sounded like a track from a horror film.

  We had set up our bed in the old sunroom on the first floor. Those windows gave us a front row seat for the blizzard, which was lit up by a couple of street lights nearby. The trees and street signs were contorted in so many directions it was hard to tell which of the great lakes was sending the prevailing storm. Then, half an hour into it, there was a loud ping on a north window. Then another, and another. Then a barrage of marble sized ice pellets peppered the glass. It sounded like machine guns in a gangster movie.

  “My God!” Patricia was sitting on our bed with her back against the wall. “Do you think the glass can hold up to that?”

  It probably only lasted a few minutes, but to us it seemed like forever before the ice quit. It was down-right relaxing to have only the howling wind and swirling snow. We both fell asleep to the sounds of the storm.

  In the morning the sky was clear and blue, and everything under it was white, or at least had some white on it. The west side of the tree trunks were caked with ice and snow. Dunes of it were humped over every bush and banked up against the buildings. In the open areas, the surface was textured like ripples on water and sparkled like crystals in the morning sun. You had to have sunglasses to look at it very long.