When Sandee and I were first dating I was working for Pacific Coast Nursery (I will call it PCN here on out), they were the largest producer of apple seedlings in the world. They had a farm in Sunnyside, Washington and also some farming operations in and around Portland, Oregon.

Now I had worked for PCN since I was 15, of course when I first started my job description was a "weeder". I was on the "weeding crew". Our job ... duh, was to "weed" or more appropriately put, to remove weeds from between the apple seedlings. We used small weeding tools which we called "hoes", but they were not in any wise shaped like the conventional hoe that people are accustomed to using. These hoes are best described as if you were to make an "S" with straight lines and no curves but without the last turn of the "S". So it was about five inches for the first straight piece (for the sake of this illustration, let's draw it to the left), then go down about six inches, then back to the right for another 5 inches, then the handle went downward for another six inches. The metal was flat, about an inch wide and the first five inches of the "blade" were honed to have somewhat of a sharp edge that could be used for cutting some stouter weeds. The handle was about an inch in diameter, dowel shaped, fastened onto the "tang" part with a chrome ferrel.

They seemed suited for getting into the close quarters between the seedlings, without losing too many of the small little trees. Now mind you, they were planted as close together as 1/4 inch. As they grew, then we would have to thin them out a bit, where the distance would now be about 1 to 2 inches apart. Some of the rows that we would be on in the Columbia Basin farm area, were close to a mile in length. We were crawling on our hands and knees, and many times with our elbows on the ground in the same row for days at a time.

The end of the row seemed an unapproachable goal, but once we arrived to the end of the row, we would then grab one of the adjacent rows heading now in the opposite direction. There were a lot of migrant workers on this crew, and the bucked-toothed foreman in charge of the whole crew was a Mexican man by the name of Simon Rodriguez. We would usually start early in the mornings during the summer months, due to the fact summers in the Columbia Basin reached temperatures over 100 degrees during the day.

We would drive about a half hour to forty-five minutes to the job site, then finish in the early afternoon where Simon would time the drive back so that we all arrived back at the Sunnyside farm by 5:00 p.m. Simon couldn't drive because he lost his driver's license due to a few too many DUIs (in Washington State it was driving under the influence, whereas in some states, it can be DWI, driving WHILE intoxicated). Needless to say, Simon liked his beer. He never drank it on the job, but when 5:00 p.m. on Fridays came ... it was Miller time, or the beer of choice in Washington was Cascade.

By the time I graduated from high school, my responsibilities at PCN were far more diverse. The seedlings, after one year, were then "budded" by making a "T" slit in the outer bark on one side of the "tree" (they were only about a foot high, the trees, not the slit). After the slit was placed in the tree, a branch from a specific desired variety was then used for its "buds". The bud was cut precisely to extract a segment of the branch's bark as well as the live bud. The bud was then slipped into the freshly cut slit in the awaiting seedling. The "budder" would then proceed to the next seedling and implant a bud in it as well. Following behind the "budder" was a person known as a "tyer": the person who would use a flat rubber band and wrap the budding. The wrapper had to be flat and not too tight as to cut off nutrients to the bud, otherwise it just wouldn't grow.

The nursery used French apple seedlings for every one of their tree stock roots. The seedlings were then budded with Jonathon, Macintosh, Red and Golden Delicious or whatever other variety that they may have orders for. The budding process took place in the late summer, as the outer bark of the seedling was easier to slit and allow the bud to be transferred. Budding was far less expensive then grafting, though they still performed a few grafts at the nursery.

By the following spring the rubber band wraps will start rotting off the growing plant and the tree, was then pruned just slightly above the "bud" allowing the nutrients to flow strictly into the new variety of apple tree that was now growing. As the summer approached we would then place a metal stake next to the tree. Using a special automated hand-held tool that dispensed a plastic tape around the tree and stake, it would close it off with a small metal staple in the tape then shear it off making it ready for the next tree to be tied.

These trees would receive sprays of insecticides and fertilizers as the months would go by and I had the opportunity to be a part of the spraying crew. My younger brother, Lonnie had worked with me on one of these occasions (this was before he finally left PCN to work at Valley Heating & Air Conditioning for his future father-in-law).

On this particular day of spraying, we were using DDT (this was banned for "sale" but there were still allowances for people to use up existing supplies ... so we were told) to spray the trees. My brother and I were wearing cut-off blue jeans, tennis shoes, and the tee-shirt was usually discard by afternoon due to the heat. We walked behind the "tractor" which was a catapillar/bulldozer style tread "wheels" that would straddle the row of trees which were around four feet high. The "tractor" had a 500 gallon tank fastened at the rear of the unit with a pump attached to the PTO (power take-off) drive shaft coming out of the "tractor". Two hoses with adjustable spray nozzles came off the pump. We would walk behind the unit as the driver went down a row of trees, and we would spray on either side of us up and down the plantings. The way it worked, was that I would spray one side of the tree on the way up the row, then when we turned and came back the opposite side of the tree was accessible for my brother to spray on the way down.

Needless to say we received our share of "mistings" from the DDT spraying back and forth, and sometimes an occasional "overspray" might even reach beyond the row and land on my brother or vice versa. It actually felt quite refreshing on those extremely hot days. We were too young to know or even care about what DDT could do to a person. We were not even wearing any masks ... it's a wonder that I didn't become sterile from the peltings of spray that I received from Lonnie.

When I graduated high school, I was not thinking of college at the time for the near future or any future as far as that was concerned. I think that stemmed from the fact that both my parents had not attended college and neither deemed it as a necessity. My father had not even finished high school, but he at least received a GED and then later in life went to college and received a diploma from California State University, Fresno. But he was a grandfather by that time, so I never received encouragement to attend college. My three youngest siblings attended college, but by that time I was already away from home and on my own about ten years.

Well, when Sandee and I decided to get married, I felt I needed a "cleaner" job than working for PCN, so I went to work for a "dime" store, sort of a precursor to a K-Mart. It was called Bonanza 88. My official title was "stockboy". My job was to unload the freight when it would arrive, which was usually late at night. The boxes would then be "trucked" using a hand-dolly to the specific aisle in the store where it would later be shelved.

My wages were $1.95/hour, but that was the same pay that I had received while working for PCN, and I came home from work only sweaty not sweaty AND muddy. I guess that was my trade off.