During the eight months I worked on the sugar beet farm, I learned many things about myself and most specifically about my body. Farm work is not so hard if you can remain in an upright position -- reaching for fruit, pitching hay or following a cultivator. The very worst kind of farm work requires bending forward and maintaining that extended position for long periods.
If you're curious about this, here's an exercise you can try. Lean forward so that your hands dangle a few inches from the floor and hold that position for five minutes. Now imagine how you would feel if you retained that backbreaking position for an hour or even for ten hours.
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I know how it feels, for that is the position you are in when thinning sugar beets with a short handled hoe.
Each day, as the hours wore on, the pain in my back got worse. Finally it became so excruciating that I couldn't think about anything else. I looked up occasionally to see how much farther I had to hoe before I could stand upright and enjoy the luxury of painlessness, then I endured the agony until I got to the end of the row. Using my left hand, I straightened the paralyzed fingers of my right hand, which had callouses that fit the exact contour of the handle of the hoe. Then, with the surge of circulating blood, the fingers would ache as they came back to life.
We would wait until everyone caught up and had a minute to flex his muscles. Then, as a team, we turned around and chopped our way down the next set of rows which vanished a quarter of a mile away. We worked strenuously to reach the end where a reward awaited us: water from gallon jugs stashed in the shade. Each, in turn, drank silently and savored every drop.
And then we moved on to the next rows. Majestic mountains in the distance remained unnoticed. Even thoughts of beautiful women didn't enter our minds. We were only conscious of pain.
We thinned sugar beets, bent into pretzels, twelve hours a day, seven days a week for two months. And as we worked, there were always guards watching us.
Thirty years later, in Japan, I noticed many old men and women walking the streets, their backs horizontal to the ground. At first I thought this must be the result of dietary deficiencies. But later I learned that their deformities had been caused by a lifetime of farm work in a stooped position. Man's next invention after the wheel should have been something that eliminated stooping forever. Or else we should have remained quadrupedal primates.
Another thing I learned during this period was that the body has an amazing capacity for enduring pain. Through sheer will, we can force it to withstand pain in ever increasing amounts. There is a limit, of course, but I never reached it.
Why do people in their right minds keep on going when they are in such miserable pain? In my case, I was committed to doing my share as one of six members of a work crew. But I'm still not sure why we worked so hard. Surely, we could have worked at a more leisurely pace. In the end, working slower just wasn't practical because working hard netted us only a dollar-fifty per day after paying room and board expenses.
Finally the thinning season ended and the weeding began. What luxury! The process involved standing upright and using long-handled hoes. It was child's play, for there was no pain. We daydreamed, talked, and some even sang. Life as a lowly migrant farm laborer no longer seemed that bad. As the season progressed, we topped sugar beets, pitched hay and stacked bales, picked potatoes or threshed grain. Some of the work was dirty, but our backs didn't hurt. We were in migratory heaven.
Though still under guard, our living conditions improved when we moved into an abandoned Conservation Corps (CC) Camp. Spared the stoop labor, the men now had enough energy to socialize. The favorite games were craps and poker.
I liked poker better because it involved both luck and cunning. Old man Nishida was the pro of the bunch. He may have been no more than sixty but he looked ancient. His right eye was watery -- the result of having been speared with a pitchfork in a haying accident. His body language sent the constant message, "Don't fool with me kid, you'll lose." When dealt aces up, he'd look at his hole card and, with no comment, would sometimes lay out a twenty-dollar bill. Remember, that twenty dollars represented thirteen days of work. The old man's timing and reading of his opponents were almost perfect, for those who called, paid dearly.
I never played, but I watched every night and tried to guess what each player was thinking and how Nishida decided what to do. I spent most of my time trying to get into Nishida's head. From these observations, I learned that poker was not a card game, but one of psychology, where you had to figure the odds and manage your money.
The most dreadful moment of the eight months I spent working on the sugar beets was caused by emotional, not physical pain. It happened on the day we saw German prisoners of war working in sugar beet fields. We learned to our chagrin that their conditions were better than ours were, and, further, that they received better pay and free clothes. It was hard to contain the anger that gnawed at our guts.
“It happened on the day we saw German prisoners of war working in sugar beet fields. We learned to our chagrin that their conditions were better than ours were, and, further, that they received better pay and free clothes.”
I know how it feels, for that is the position you are in when thinning sugar beets with a short handled hoe.