In
the fall it was apple picking time. Any young girl or boy who applied early
enough could get a temporary one day job apple picking at a nearby orchard in
the Weirton / Holidays Cove area. Droozy, along
with a whole group of boys and girls, stood in line to be signed up for the
day’s work. Droozy was fifth in line, having gotten up at five in the morning
in order to be included among the workers. Out of the fifty that stood there,
the first twenty were chosen. They were loaded on the backs of two red trucks
and driven to a farm. The trees were heavy with apples, one fruit next to the
other. The tree branches were bent under their load. There were red apples and
green ones and some that were yellow in color. At the foot of each tree there
was a ladder which reached to the very top. At the bottom there was a bushel to
store the ripe fruit as they came off the trees. Droozy
was very enthusiastic about her job. She loved eating apples and she especially
liked the opportunity to climb the ladders and to earn the three dollars per day
that each picker was to receive. To her this was a great deal of money since she
was only twelve years old. It paid more than carrying empty milk bottles to the
store, which she did on occasion. For those she received only a penny each. Apple
picking began at six in the morning and the day ended at seven at night. It was
fun at first. For three hours the picking was pretty fast. By the fourth it went
a little slower. She was given thirty minutes for a lunch break to eat the
sandwiches and other delicacies that her mother had so carefully packed. Droozy
was allowed to eat two apples during the day and this was monitored carefully by
a farm boss. He would walk back and forth to make sure that the children were
working hard and not wasting the time or the fruit. By
three o’clock in the afternoon Droozy was very tired. Plop, plop, plop, one
after another of the apples were lowered into the bushels. The day seemed very
long as Doing
that hard work for one day gave Droozy the understanding how hard farm work
really is and how much it takes to grow and harvest fruit. She was appreciative
of the life of the farmers and that they truly must work from dawn to dark to
earn a living. |
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