As Time Goes By...
"40 days and 40 nights in a labor Camp"
Act III

SSLau

Prelude
In the summer of 1960, Bobby and I were wandering about in Southern California, wondering where we could find a summer job to feed ourselves for the next few months....

Sai Luzon looked around one more time, realizing that"entertainment" was over for the night, and the team drove off into the night....

Life returned to normal after this episode, we worked, slept, ate and became robot-like. Some 30 days after the picking began, it became obvious to Joe and the well-fed Chinn that the growth of the pears outpaced the picking speed. It was time to call up the "foreign legion" to mount an counter attack. One day some 20 to 30 Chicano pickers showed up and started picking from the opposite side of the field. These guys carried canvas bags to hold the picked pears ( as mentioned by Bobby in his article). They strapped the bag from one shoulder across the body to the other side, with the bag in front.

They worked fast and were paid by the number of the bags of pears they picked in a day, in contrast to our hourly wage.

Most of the "legionaries" were unshaven with blood-shed eyes. The senior pickers told us that these guys often drank their time away at night, and were visited often by Sai Luzon and his team. These " legionaries" were migrant farm workers, I learned later at Berkeley from Caesar Chavez. They faced a rather impoverished existence all their life. Chavez tried hard to organize the migrant workers to fight for their benefits. He was rather vocal and constantly at odds with the Lettuce and other big farmers. Chavez passed away a few years ago and was a respected labor organizer.

The Chicano migrant workers showed up early in the morning at our camp and left when we were trucked back to the barracks. We did not work along side with them, but bumped into them every now and then on the field. They looked rather dissipated up-close, some of them stocky. After 5 to 7 days of Chicano reinforcement, almost all pickable pears were gone. The migrant workers left our labor camp and went on to another farm to pick tomato.

After the migrant workers left our camp for good, Joe told us that we would have three days of holidays. During that time, the field would be flooded with water to pump the remaining pears to bigger size.

That was the most wonderful news to us, after 37 days of non-stop pear picking. Holidays at long last.

On our first holiday, Duke's family came to visit ( remember Duke was the Jokesing). Duke showed his younger brother his Japanese army cap, his bed in the barrack, and his ladder. Duke's father smiled all the time, and his mother hugged him time and again, touching his face, his arms. She was full of tenderness and obviously very proud of him. We watched and we watched longingly.

On the second day, we took a trip to Sacramento, the capital of 
California. It was a nice and clean town 40 years ago.

On the third day, Joe let us drive his truck on the camp ground. It was really wild and fun. Everyone tried the old truck, first time for me to drive anything, let alone a truck. Good thing the camp ground was an open field and no driver's license needed. There were two to three special pear trees near the " dining room". These were Asian pears, not the Barlett pears we picked everyday. These trees were " private " trees for the well-fed Chinn. One of the trees was an Asian brown pear tree. Joe told us to pick some of the Asian pears for our  own enjoyment, and we obliged. It was a most satisfying experience. I still think they were the best Asian Brown I ever tasted

During the holidays, we did not get paid, but we got fed the same meals as usual and were allowed to stay in camp.

After flooding the field for three days, the pears were big enough to be picked. Three picking-days later, most of all pears were picked. Time for us to leave and we were paid $400 dollars each.

Bobby and I were lean and sun-hardened. We were, perhaps, at our best physical condition in our life ever at that time. We left camp after 40 days and 40 nights working as pear pickers.

Got on the Grey Hound to San Francisco and Bobby took a train from SF to Urbana to attend UI. He joined up with Desmond Wang, Joseph Lee, Carl Man , Albert Chan, and Ho Kan. I went to the SF peer for the President's Line and met up with Veg Worm, arriving from HK. Veg Worm and I bumped around in SF for a little bit before going south.

I don't know what happened to our fellow pickers we met 40 years ago. Bobby and I stay in touch. In fact, I saw him not too long ago. He and I are Lighters, and Lighters stay friends for life.

Dear Lighters, As Sam "sings it again" at the piano in Rick's Bar in Casablanca...Just remember this, a kiss is still a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh, the fundamental things apply, As time goes by....