Sew What? My First Job.

While I was out scouting engagement photo locations yesterday, I found myself driving past my very first job. When my middle sissy and I were in our early teens, we got ourselves jobs working at a local farm. We spent the first month or so out in the fields, stringing up tobacco plants so they'd grow straight and tall. After we finished doing that, the girls would go to work in the barns. We sewed tobacco leaves onto string that was then attached to wooden laths. The laths would get put up into the rafters of the barns for drying.

Working on the farm was hard. We had to be there for seven and we lived about a half hour away. We were getting up at six-fifteen and leaving the house by six-thirty to get there on time. The bus left for the fields exactly at seven and you did NOT want to miss it or you'd lose a whole day's pay and your spot at a sewing machine.

This was our summer vacation from school - when most of our friends were sleeping late, going to camp, and lolly-gagging around. But sissy and I wanted back-to-school shopping money so....heigh ho, heigh ho, it's off to work we go....and away we went.

We would tape our fingers up on the way to the farm. 

Every finger got wrapped with heavy duty white tape that the farm provided for us. It helped to protect our fingers from getting stuck with a needle while we were sewing. The machines moved pretty fast and you learned the rhythm just as fast or your fingers got pierced by a three to four inch needle. And you weren't a sewer anymore. They would find someone else that could keep up. So the tape protected your fingers from getting pierced and it also kept them clean. Tobacco is filthy stuff. The tape would be pitch black by the end of the day. When we removed the tape from our fingers at lunch and again at the end of the day, they were wrinkled and pruned and pearly white. I hoarded white tape during the three summers we worked on the farm. This stuff was like gold.

I liked sewing because you made more money. Sewers got paid by the bundle, which held about fifty laths. A good sewer could go through eight to ten bundles a day. We got paid $4 a bundle so sewers could earn between $32-$40 a day. That was good money for a fourteen year old.

Every sewer had a stacker and that person was responsible for keeping stacks of tobacco leaves in front of the sewer, lined up stem to stem. They would get them from bins that the migrant workers brought in from the fields as the boys were picking the tobacco. The sewer would pick up a leaf in each hand, stem side up, and push the stems into the machine where they got pierced, strung onto heavy string, and moved along until twenty pair were strung. 

The stacker would cut the string, wrap the end around the slat and hang it on the end of the sewing machine. One of the migrant workers would come by and pick it up, sending it up to other migrant workers hanging slats in the rafters.

The leaves had to be perfectly placed in the machine to be pierced by the needle or they wouldn't get pierced right and would fall off the string. If any leaves fell off when they were being sent up to be hung, the runner brought the lath back and you had to redo the whole thing. This was not good. It wasted time and time was money.

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It was hot in the fields and it was hot in the barns. 

But at least we were in shade once we moved into the barns. We wore long blue jeans because it was so dirty and we didn't want to expose our legs to the sun or the tobacco or the dirt. If it rained, you worked in muddy puddles with wet, muddy leaves. At the end of the day, when we got home, we would change into our bathing suits and jump into our neighbor's pool. It felt like heaven after those long, hot, summer days working so hard.

After the first summer, we talked two of our neighbors into working with us. So the four of us spent those summers together and we bonded pretty well. We worked with girls from various neighboring towns, migrant workers, boys, and other farming people. And we didn't know anyone except ourselves. We were always close friends since we lived next door to each other, but those summers on the farm really cemented our friendships. I don't think I would've been able to work on the farm for three summers if they weren't with us.

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The barns brought other issues. 

The boys in the fields thought it was funny to put tobacco worms in the bins and hide them in the leaves. You wouldn't find them until you were sewing the leaves and then all of a sudden, SURPRISE!, a huge tobacco worm would be there. If you didn't see it on the leaf, you'd pick the leaf up and it would fall onto you. BLECH. Tobacco worms are disgusting. Google it and see for yourself. 

Sometimes the workers in the rafters would drop a full lath of tobacco leaves as they were hanging it. Those laths were heavy when they were full. We were supposed to wear hard hats to protect our heads but we were always taking them off because it was so darn hot.

I remember one day a lath fell and it hit someone on the head. Luckily, she had her hard hat on or she would have been hurt. We all kept our hats on after that.

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At noon we got on the bus and went back to the farm, pictured above. We sat under that big tree and ate in the cool shade. Peanut butter and jelly never tasted so good. 

I can't say that I loved working on a farm. But I learned a lot about getting along with all kinds of people. And I'll never forget the bond between the four of us - me, sissy, and our two neighbor friends.