"With a name like Smucker's, it has to be good."
I used to cringe reflexively whenever I heard that slogan in a TV or radio ad.
I'd cringe because, when I was a kid, I had to pick strawberries that went into Smucker's jams and preserves.
"Had to?" you ask.
Yes, had to. By parental decree.
My siblings and I all had to pick strawberries. Every summer. Starting at age 10. And continuing until we found something else to do—something constructive and productive that would keep us busy when school was out.
"Busy," as in "out of Mom's hair."
I picked those damned strawberries from age 10 to age 14, when I finally found something else to do (summer school).
Do I sound traumatized?
I am. I was. "It was hell," recalls former child.
What was hell about it?
First, it was supposed to be summer...that all-too-brief and intermittent time in a kid's life when school was out and we were relatively footloose and carefree until school was...ugh...back in again.
...or, from my parents' perspective, that all-too-frequent period in their life when the kids were out of school for three unbearably long months and had nothing to do but get in the way and cause more trouble than usual until school was...hooray!...back in again.
So. I had to pick strawberries. And picking strawberries traumatized me.
What was so traumatic about picking a sweet little innocent fruit?
Hmmm...where do I start?
- Having to think about and prepare for each day of berrypicking the night before by making and packing my own lunch? Having to go to bed early enough—i.e., when it was still LIGHT OUT, for God's sake, and all the other kids in the neighborhood were still running around, yelling and laughing and having way too much fun—so I could get up at 5:00 the next morning, eat my cereal, grab my lunch, run four blocks down to the bus stop, and catch the bus at 5:30, when it was still DARK OUT?
- Having to ride in a rickety old arthritic former school bus driven by a rickety old arthritic former school bus driver who may or may not know what to do if either one broke down?
- Having to listen to the moaning and complaining and pathetic, cringeworthy attempts at humor emitting from the orifices of my fellow inmates? OK, coming from me, mainly, but still?
- Having to kneel in the dirt between rows of strawberry plants, bare-kneed, reaching for often microscopic berries and plunking them one by one, berry after berry after berry after berry, into a flat that took 147 years to fill, for eight hours a day, five days a week, in the blazing summer sun that burned the hell out of my face, neck, arms, and legs and probably gave me melanoma?
- Having a field boss—named Mrs. WEED, not kidding—stroll by every 20 minutes and check on my progress, assess how "clean" I was picking (was I leaving any ripe berries behind? picking green ones?), examine the contents of my flat to make sure I wasn't "padding" the bottom with dirt clods, and all too frequently making me go back to the beginning of the row to start over and pick "clean"?
- Finally filling a crate and wheeling it back on a rusty metal cart to the pay station (not to be confused with a PlayStation), where the paymaster would check the ripeness of my berries, inspect the crate to make sure I hadn't padded the bottom with dirt clods, and finally, assuming everything was cool, hand me a paper token which, if I somehow managed to hang onto it until payday and not accidentally tear it in half or run it through the wash or lose it or have it stolen, was worth a whopping FIFTY CENTS?
- Thinking about all my friends who didn't have to pick strawberries getting to goof off all day, play ball, go hiking or swimming or fishing or picnicking, and generally enjoy the sunny summer day LIKE KIDS ARE SUPPOSED TO?
- Finally reaching the end of the day, exhausted, burnt to a crisp, caked in dirt and sweat, demoralized because I had earned only $2.50, climbing back onto the rickety old arthritic former school bus driven by a rickety old arthritic former school bus driver, riding 45 minutes back to the bus stop, where I would tumble off and proceed to trudge, feeling as rickety, old, and arthritic as the bus and its driver, UP A HILL THAT WAS ONLY FOUR BLOCKS LONG THAT MORNING BUT I SWEAR TO GOD WAS NOW 4,639 BLOCKS LONG?
Yeah, yeah, I know: your parents and mine had to walk 60 miles to school and back, in the snow, uphill both ways, while carrying 112 pounds of books, on a breakfast of roadkill and a glass of leaded gasoline. So I have nothing to complain about. Snowflake!
And, truth be told, it wasn't all bad: I did get to drink an ice-cold Shasta Black Cherry soda with my lunch (frozen overnight in newspaper and aluminum foil so it wouldn't explode), and I got to listen to all the hits of the mid-'60s (Wayne Newton, anyone?) on my portable transistor radio, and if I found a particularly large and juicy berry, it went directly into my mouth. So, there's that.
And there may be just a little more: in a perverse sort of way, berry picking made me stronger and more resilient than I might otherwise have been. By sticking it out and persevering day after day, summer after summer, I proved to myself that I could endure something awful and not perish. It also made me more careful, patient, observant, and persistent—if only to make sure I had picked all the ripe berries in the row so Mrs. Weed wouldn't arrest and torture me. Carefulness, patience, observation, and persistence also happen to come in very handy when one's chosen career is editing.
One other good thing berry picking did for me: It made me acutely, painfully, exquisitely aware of the value of a dollar. Having to pick two crates of berries to earn one dollar will do that to you. So it was not without a significant measure of respect and trepidation that, after five summers of berry picking, I chose to spend the entirety of my earnings—a whopping $250—on my very first drumset. And eventually, through the same carefulness, patience, observation, and persistence that berry picking taught me, I became a good enough drummer that I was able to earn all of that $250 back and then some—many times over.
Oh, and I also became a good enough editor that I was able to make a pretty decent living at it for 31 years.
How do you like them berries, Mrs. Weed?
