Page:The Autobiography of a Catholic Anarchist.djvu/104

CHAPTER 6. LIFE AT HARD LABOR—THE HOPI 91 friend, a Hindu rancher, heard him and said, 'You been in jail?' The answer was 'no'. 'Then you are no Communist; you are a bourgeois,' the Hindu said." Leo was an expert who knew how to place the huge wedge to dislocate the shoot without spoiling the roots. These date shoots were set out according to variety, and were watered twice a week. There were about 800 in all that we removed from the sides of the big date trees and they would sell from $2 to $6 each.

The man who had left when I commenced to work at the date grove had already tied male pollen in each of them from 8 to 16 bunches of potential dates in the female trees. Three male trees furnished all the male pollen needed and some was sold to other growers who lacked pollen. My job for the next month or more was to saw off limbs that were dead or in the way of picking later on, and to tie each bunch to a limb above, with wire, in order that it would not become too heavy and break. I also clipped out every other string of dates—they were now the size of a pea, thus giving the tree strength to make larger dates of those remaining. Although I cut off thousands of "ice picks" I found later when picking dates that there was always a stray one to pierce my hand or arm at an unexpected time. Some of the trees needed a ladder extended 20 feet and others were younger and smaller. The big ones were 28 years old.

Early one spring morning, having no work in the date grove or for the Old Pioneer where I live, I walked down the lateral. I went toward the carrot field of the big company for whom I had worked before the tax man caused me to quit in order not to have my wages garnisheed for my share toward the Bomb. This carrot work was piece work and workers were paid as the crates of carrots were filled, so I would have no trouble with Caesar today. Soon my Basque friend picked me up in his truck. Even then I was late, for scores of Mexican families were singing, laughing and working. Around the holidays and later when I worked for this same company cutting lettuce and broccoli at Deer Valley in the sandy ground on the edge of the desert, I had passed the Navajo village and noticed the brightly colored velvet of the Indians as they tied carrots. A friend who had been in the store at noon noticed that the grocer charged a Navajo more for the same article. I had noticed this practice among grocers in the deep south 25 years ago when Negroes purchased anything.

A mechanical digger went ahead and loosened the carrots. The foreman gave me a "claim," a space three rows wide and thirty steps long. I pulled up the carrots and laid them in a row. I was checked out with four bundles of wire covered with tough paper, which cost 4 cents a bundle and was used to tie 4 to 8 carrots in a bunch, depending upon the size. Larger carrots were put in one crate and medium ones in another. Crooked, broken, small, or deformed carrots were discarded. Farmers came and got them by the truck load for their cattle, free of charge, (truck loads of culls were also hauled away in lettuce, celery, cauliflower, and broccoli fields where I worked. Mormon farmers can make much of this waste and make juice from grapefruit and orange culls and