We had come to a clearing
where thousands of blueberry bushes grew.
In the center was the packing house
a small, low building
with open and screenless windows all sides.
In front was a school bus
marked “Farm Labor Transport”.
The driver stood beside his bus.
He was a tall and amiable-looking man,
with bare feet.
He wore green trousers and a T-shirt.
The end of the working day had come.
Pickers were swarming around a pump
-old women, middle-aged men, a young girl.
Inside the packing house, berries half an inch thick
were rolling up a portable conveyor belt,
into pint boxes.
Charlie’s sister was packing the boxes.
Charlie’s daughter-in-law was putting cellophane over them.
Charlie’s son Jim was supervising the operation.
Charlie picked up a pint box
in which berries were mounded high,
and he told me with disgust
that some supermarket chains
knock off these mounds of extra berries
and put them in new boxes,
getting three or four extra pints per twelve-box tray.
At one window, pickers were turning in tickets of various colors,
and they were given cash in return.
One picker, in his sixties, tapped Charlie on the arm
and showed him a thick packet of tickets held together with a rubber band.
“I found these,” the man said.
“They must have fallen out of your son’s pocket.”
He gave the packet to Charlie,
who thanked him and counted the tickets.
Charlie said “ These tickets are worth
seventy-five dollars.”
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