The Professional

I experienced a flashback as I stood at the end of the long soggy, muddy row of strawberry vines. It could well have been the same man in the same cowboy hat from long ago who pointed out that water was standing in the row and we might want to try to avoid it. (Duh!) I was twelve years old again. Looking out over the field, I observed people with varying sized backsides pointing in our direction, bent over the plants looking for the rich red delicacies. Except today was different. I was paying them to be there today.

The mornings were the same. At 5:00 AM, it was always foggy, chilly and dark as I stood on the street corner waiting for the unmarked former school bus now painted blue or green. It was Vancouver, Washington, so rain at some point in the day was pretty much a certainty. Perhaps it would rain all day. It didn’t matter. That didn’t change the schedule. Sometimes I would wait alone with my bag lunch. Most days, other ragamuffin children or adults would join me. This was my first job.

Arriving in the fields, we were directed to our designated row by a man in a straw hat, chosen carefully for his lack of warmth and personality. He gave us our instructions. “Go to the far end of this row and work your way back this way. Don’t miss any berries. You’ll be docked if we find you left good berries on the vine. Leave the caps on the vine. You’ll be docked for any berries with caps on them.” Only the more experienced and best pickers were allowed to pick ‘caps’ which you and I see so temptingly displayed at the grocery store. This job paid maybe a couple of cents more per flat. I admired these pickers and, of course, aspired to join their elite ranks. “You’ll be docked for any damaged berries, so be careful. Don’t pick them green and don’t pick them if they are rotten. You’ll be docked if we find bad berries in your flats. Don’t drop the berries in the mud. You’ll be docked for dirty berries.”

It wasn’t really difficult to fill a flat with the big beautiful berries. I didn’t eat many after the first couple of hours. I’d much rather fill my flat. And I didn’t much mind crawling through the muddy rows throughout the long hours of the day. The hard part was carrying a full flat back to the far end of the row where the big flat bed truck waited to collect the fruit of my labor. It was even more difficult to lift the heavy burden up to the berry nazi on the high truck bed—almost over my head—without spilling the red gold. I would invariably come up short. The kid on the truck would take one or two of the boxes from my flat and pour them over the remaining boxes and send me back for more fruit before punching my card for a full flat. I didn’t like coming up short. I soon learned to overfill my flats though it meant nothing to my paycheck…a practice I would continue throughout life.

But as we picked berries yesterday, I was the expert. I pointed out to the children in our group what to look for. They pointed out to their mother that I was the professional. I had done this for a living. This time, I got to pick ‘caps.’ The lady with the scales weighed my berries. With a sense of having arrived, I paid her what she asked and walked away with my strawberries. I am the professional!