{"id":1844,"date":"2014-06-15T05:00:34","date_gmt":"2014-06-15T12:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/?p=1844"},"modified":"2014-06-13T12:45:57","modified_gmt":"2014-06-13T19:45:57","slug":"summer-jobs-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/culture\/summer-jobs-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Summer Jobs, Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Strawberries_in_a_Basket\"<\/a>Picking berries.<\/strong><\/p>\n

My first summer job was picking raspberries. I was ten years old.<\/p>\n

The following summer I picked strawberries. For three or four weeks my friends and I gossiped across the rows, ate lunch together, and sampled the sweetest, smallest berries. When the field boss wasn\u2019t looking, we threw rotten berries at each other. Most of the time, though, we tried to work fast and pick the rows clean. At night we dreamed of strawberries\u2014rows and rows of fat red strawberries hiding under green leaves.<\/p>\n

And yes, we competed, hurrying to fill the boxes in our carriers and then presenting them to the adult on duty and getting our cards punched to keep track of how much we\u2019d picked. They paid us by the flat. At the end of the day, Diane usually had more holes in her card than the rest of us. Diane was good at everything. Seven years later when she became the valedictorian of our high school graduating class, no one was surprised.<\/p>\n

\"berry<\/a>My friends and I must have picked strawberries for at least four summers. At the end of each season we waited for the fall clothes to come out. Then we took part of our summer earnings down to the Duchess Dress Shop and bought Pendleton <\/a>pleated wool skirts and sweaters. Anything left over we saved for college.<\/p>\n

Cucumbers<\/strong><\/p>\n

One year after the strawberry season ended, I picked cucumbers. The vines were prickly and the cucumbers heavy. We filled buckets and then dumped the contents into gunny sacks and dragged the sacks up the row and over to the weigh station. Not my favorite job.<\/p>\n

This was all in the 1950s. Now in Washington State the minimum age for working in the fields<\/a> during the summer is fourteen; with parents\u2019 permission it\u2019s twelve.<\/p>\n

Working for my dad.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"barclay's<\/a>One summer I worked for my dad, sanding, staining, and varnishing the shelves, cupboards and doors of a house he was building on Clear Lake. After work we went swimming in the lake.<\/p>\n

Why’d we do it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Recently someone asked me why we worked in the fields during the summer. Wasn\u2019t it hard work bending over those rows, out in the sun all day, our fingers stained and our skin sunburned? I could only answer that it was something everybody did. The fertile fields of Skagit Valley were nearby, and working in the fields only took a few weeks out of a summer filled with swimming, biking, picnics, parties, and drive-in movies.<\/p>\n

\"birthday<\/a>Another prized \u201cjob\u201d was being a junior counselor at Patrol Camp. It didn\u2019t pay a thing, but the week at camp was free, and we had a ball!<\/p>\n

Did you have a summer job when you were a kid? I’d love to hear what you did and what you think about it: Was it a good experience? Did you learn something valuable?<\/p>\n

\"my<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Picking berries. My first summer job was picking raspberries. I was ten years old. The following summer I picked strawberries. For three or four weeks my friends and I gossiped across the rows, ate lunch together, and sampled the sweetest, smallest berries. When the field boss wasn\u2019t looking, we threw rotten berries at each other. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[29,404],"tags":[417,419,425,416,426,935],"class_list":["post-1844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-summer-jobs","tag-harvesting-cucumbers","tag-housepainting","tag-minimum-age-for-field-work-in-washington-state","tag-picking-strawberries","tag-skagit-valley","tag-summer-jobs"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3Kn1e-tK","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1862,"url":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/summer-jobs\/summer-jobs-part-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":1844,"position":0},"title":"Summer Jobs, Part 2","author":"Nicki Chen","date":"June 22, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"A real factory job and a queen contest I probably wouldn\u2019t have run for Loggerodeo queen if I hadn\u2019t worked at the frozen food plant the previous summer. It was my least favorite job, even worse than picking cucumbers. All day long I stood beside a moving belt, separating out\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "summer jobs"","block_context":{"text":"summer jobs","link":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/category\/summer-jobs\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"small-town queens at Seattle Seafair 001","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/small-town-queens-at-Seattle-Seafair-001-1024x765.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/small-town-queens-at-Seattle-Seafair-001-1024x765.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/small-town-queens-at-Seattle-Seafair-001-1024x765.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":9352,"url":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/food\/making-the-most-of-grocery-pickup-surprises\/","url_meta":{"origin":1844,"position":1},"title":"Making the Most of Grocery Pickup Surprises","author":"Nicki Chen","date":"December 20, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"I had blueberries and strawberries in the freezer and a bag of delicious little Honeycrisp apples in the fridge. 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