Chit Chat # 45 
" As Time Goes by Too "

Bob Chen

 
The title follows S.S.'s long article. It could also be called " As Time Goes by, Chinese Style ", if one happens to watch the channel 28 or 50 sitcom from England by the same title with Dame Judy Dench in the lead. My memories are fading, but since it was my first summer job, quite a bit comes back. All mistakes are mine if S.S. remembers differently. Here comes the items I remembered: (1) The place where we did the ( Barrette ) pear picking was call Ryan's Ranch, not an orchard. It is between Concord and Lodi by the Sacramento River. The nearest big city was Stockton. (2) The foreman's first name was Joe. The owner was Lincoln Chinn, a SOB for sure. (3) The big Chinese Dinners always include a big fish dish. (4) The double-legged ladder was a three-legged ladder with two legs on one side and a single leg on the other side. The design follows good aerospace practice, light weight and stable. At the beginning, we all climbed up to less than half of it total height of more than 7 feet and less than 10 feet by staying on the low rungs. As time went by, all of us went all the way up to the top and even reaching out to the hard to pick locations. (5) We did wash the blue jeans quite often, almost daily. I remembered my Levi faded quickly with a bar showing between the right knee and the waist. The bar was where we rubbed on the rungs. (6) We went to Stockton once during those 40 days. (7) The last week of the stay, all pears were going down. They brought in the professional Chicano pickers, wearing big canvas bags. (8) One NTU (National Taiwan University) grad got the idea of shaking the tree to collect the fallen pears. Alas, that act got the owner mad, cause the bruised pears can't fetch good prices, and he was watching us from some hiding place. It was lucky that most of us didn't know the swearing words well; otherwise, a riot might have started. (9) The truck with the entertainers was driven by a Filipino, or Mexican. His features looked more Oriental, and Joe said something about being "Sai Luzon" little Luzon, the Philippines, instead of "Dai Luzon" large Luzon, or Mexico.