the future. “Who are the new growers?” I ask. “Who’ve caused the overproduction.” “There are two types of growers planting a lot of land. “There’s Grady Auvil — who’s got a lot of ideas, a lot of momentum. He’s a millionaire who’s heading out and moving on.” Her voice is filled with admiration for this local innovator. (Grady Auvil went to New Zealand and brought back the Granny Smith. He’s planting a new ap- Tuck, the organizer pie called “Gala,” a yellow one with orange stripes that ripens early. Auvil’s orchard has a reputation among the pickers as a good place to work.) “Then there’s Lucky Badger,” Lois chooses her words carefully. “It’s owned by retired military people who are looking for a tax write-off. Lawyers, doctors, professional people who can use the write-off will invest in the land, and hire people to run it for them. If they make a little money, fine; if they can write it off, that’s even better! That’s why the thousands of acres are going in.” Later, when I spoke with Gordy Brandt, Fleming’s partner in Little Owl, he was optimistic about the future of apples in the Orondo area. Despite the recent heavy planting, he saw new markets opening in Japan and Taiwan. He thought the growers might get $100 a bin for Goldens, $150 for Reds, and $250 for Grannies. The 400 bins of anticipated Grannies this year, then, could bring one hundred thousand bucks from the warehouse! You have to realize, however, Little Owl Orchard has been a milliondollar investment. With 10 years of hard work and the gamble that frost and disease wouldn’t wipe it out. What the Pickers Had to Say 7n “The Pig,” while drinking Schmidt, I have a heavy conversation with the pickers about their concerns. “I’m concerned about the chemicals,” Will says. “They blow right in a guy’s face. Is he goinna have mutated kids or something? Are the chemicals really bad for you?” Stop-Drop, a natural plant hormone, is used to overcome the abcissic acid in the stems, it keeps the apples from falling all at once. Pesticides, herbicides, and hormones are used. For example, Enderin is used to kill mice. They can do a lot of damage. I saw poison signs up. There is a story that cows wandered into an orchard with Enderin on the ground and died! Paraquat and 2-4-5-TP are often used. Jim the nurseryman says they are similar to Agent Orange. What are the long-term effects? To the pickers? To the ecological system? Chemicals leach into the Columbia. The pickers don’t know, and the growers don’t seem to care that much. They want to get the largest crop in, looking good. “You guys say the poison is a problem, but you don’t know what to do about it?” I ask. “You don’t know how much you’re gettin’. You just cough a lot, you sneeze,” Tim answers. “I feel the picker should know!” Tuck replies. The grower should say, This is what I use and this is when I use it. Then the picker has the option to go to another orchard.” “At least Doyle would tell us if we asked him,” Tim says. “He wouldn’t do any stunts like that one place I worked at — the spray plane went right over us! He was goin’ so low "Ifyou taste a, Jonathan or a Winesap, you 've got a good-tasting apple. I fyou taste a Red, it's like a potato! I f you try to sell a Winesap or aJohnnie in a store, no one 'll buy it.'' over the next row in this biplane, we could nail him with apples! It was only plant hormone, but I don’t know what plant hormone is. And then I get some dumb Okie tel Iin’ me he gets it all over himself. It doesn’t bother him —” “What is the worst part for the pickers, when they come to an orchard?” I ask. “Nowhere to live!” Tim says. “My first year I picked there were three of us. They lived in tents, and I lived in my truck. We cooked on the tailgate in the morning over a funky war surplus stove.” How often does that happen? They replied, “A lot around here! Most places don’t have housing.” Tuck said, “It’s scattered. In Yakima, nobody has housing! You go rent a room in the motel.” What would be a second bad thing? * “The actual picking conditions. Poorly pruned trees, big trees, heavy ladders, small fruit.” From $8.50 to $10 a bin is okay if the fruit is okay. “I wouldn’t even work for $6.50 a bin,” Tuck says. “A few places like that,” Tim adds, “you sorta drop the fruit in the bag, in the bin. They don’t even check. You give ’em what they pay for.” Most of the Little Owl pickers feel sympathy for the Mexican illegals. (They often could be seen at the Orondo store, buying food and necessities. Hanging out. It’s odd, however; neither the whites nor the Mexicans seem to communicate. Possibly it’s the language barrier.) In the last five years, more than half of the pickers are Mexican. (Perhaps as high as 65 percent!) Some growers hire only “Mexican,” because they can pay cheaper wages. And fire them at whim. We drive by Lucky Badger for the heck of it. There was a huge Army tent for housing. It looked like a few pickers slept in used packing cases, bins wrapped in black plastic! Did I see an American flag flying? Tuck went into the office and asked for employment. They told him, Seven dollars a bin. Plus fifty cents bonus, if you are a good picker. Twenty people were waiting in line for a job. “The way people come and go,” the jobber told Tuck, “we might be able to put you to work tomorrow.” There were showers (!), but no housing. Was it a bad orchard? It is a corporate operation. It’s “impersonal.” (It is said at Lucky Badger last season the Migra was called in the last day of the season. Because this orchard gave a fifty-cent-per-bin bonus, getting rid of the Mexicans saved them money.) We talk about how difficult it would be to change some of these conditions. For example, how are you going to organize Mexican workers, when they don’t have legal status? Tuck doesn’t see the need for a bureaucratic union of apple pickers. “It’s a matter of a few people getting together,” Tuck comments, “who are interested in the general welfare of all pickers. Not just at one orchard.” An office of information could be set up. With a mailing address. A mimeographed pickers^ newsletter could be started. It could contain ar- Pickers relax at season’s end tides about picking, hiking — volleyball scores, even. It should tell the good places to pick — and warn people about the bad orchards. There could be a Spanish edition. “You don’t confront people,” Tuck goes on. “You be as diplomatic as possible, but nobody’s going to give you anything unless you ask for it.” In the camp, I had only one serious argument. It was with a glowering red- haired, red-bearded picker, referred to as “Awful Art.” He said in essence, If you are a journalist, why don’t you expose the fact that the Immigration won’t arrest these Mexican pickers One of the running jokes goes: Somebody said they 're going to call in f 'well.' ’ In other words, you gotta be sick to pick apples. and send them back where they came from? I tried to tell him, partly understanding his resentment — if Mexican labor took away jobs for local people, and lowered wages — that it wasn’t the Mexican worker’s fault. It was the grower who hired him. Art still believed, "They should go back to Mexico where they belong!” There was this bad joke way back in the fifties: Observing my lazy streak, my older brother used to tell me sarcastically, “I bet you thought ‘manual labor’ was the name of a wetback!” Mind you, he was putting me down, not Mexicans. Behind the joke was the social reality that Mexicans had to work hard to survive, and at menial jobs. Historically, we should remember that in the Pacific Northwest Chinese and Irish immigrants were used as cheap labor. To break unionism. Today some Americans claim Latins and Southeast Asians are taking away jobs. How true is it? We must remember racist attitudes pit members of the working class against themselves. This is to the advantage of the employers! The PayoffParty f/a w humor comes with hard work. JL VDave and all the rest who aren’t going to pick Grannies are tired of picking. “I hate blankety blank apples!” I tell him. “ I’m not even picking them! I’m sick of asking questions about them.” “Now you’ve got it,” he replies. One of the running jokes goes: Somebody said they’re gonna call in ‘well.’ “In other words, you gotta be sick to pick apples,” Tuck explains. Thorsen isn’t anything, if he isn’t “lucky”! Both he and his sister have been favorites in the camp. Dressed like a baker’s assistant — in his only clean white shirt and pants — Dave was enthusiastic about the party. We all walked down the hill in the dark to Doyle and Thyra’s house, the lights shining invitingly. The kitchen and living room were bright with hospitality: Apple cake (Thyra’s special treat), ice cream, hard cider, pop and Schmidt beer, a half-gallon jug of Black Velvet. As Doyle used an adding machine to tally the bin tickets and deductions, Thyra took flash-bulb photos and made everyone feel at home. Liking David a lot, she had already prepared the ingredients for a “Greenhorned Gringo”! In a glass mug, topped with a maraschino cherry — anchovy instead of sardine — Dave gulped it down, pronounced it pretty good. And wanted another! While someone strummed on the guitar, Bellingham Bob played the harmonica soulfully. (While the others partied, I couldn’t stop “reporting.” I took Thyra aside and asked her how Little Owl got its name. She said, “There were some small owls living on the property when we bought.the place. It seemed like a good name.”) After writing out the checks, Doyle came and joked with everyone. It was time for the season’s end “lottery.” Bin tickets from each participant were placed in a basket and stirred up. At nine dollars apiece, 12 or 13 players, someone would be $110 richer. Was it rigged? Somebody’s 2-year-old reached in and drew out the name. Dave said, “I wanted to see the look on the winner’s face!” That would be impossible, but I don’t think he was that disappointed. HE WON. To applause and good-natured shouts, “You gotta buy the beer! Speech!” Complimenting him for the surprised look on his face, the other pickers agreed it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. Pickers' Dust \ J t / hen I look at an apple, what FF do I see? Yes, I see one of nature’s gifts to humankind. But more than that, an apple calls up a tradition which stretches through autumnal harvests, going all the way back to the Stone Age. I think not only of “Okies” and other migrant workers, of the dust bowl and the Great Depression, but also of “wetbacks” crossing the Rio Grande somehow to arrive in Washington state, 1600 miles northward. I think of the poetry of 20th century America’s greatest balladeer, Woody Guthrie. “Roll On, Columbia, Roll On” means more to me than “The Star- Spangled Banner” because it speaks of a genuine hope and strength, inherent in the land and the people of one of the mightiest river systems in the world. Such rugged, spectacular landscape gives and gives if we will only nurture it and treat it right. Every night that week, while sleeping in my car, I could reach out and drink from the Big Dipper, tipped on end. The air was transparent! The Milky Way, which the Chinese call “the River of Heaven,” quenched my sleep and intoxicated my dreams. I heard Canadian geese, following the dark waters below, softly honk as they homed southward for the winter. As we gathered together in front of the trailers, ready to leave, Dave 10 Clinton St. Quarterly
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