In a Pickle: A Family Farm Story

10 Long Days

69 The Link Lake Gazette ran a front-page story about Jake’s pickle fields and the migrants he had in his employ. John wrote about the shacks where they lived and how crowded they were. He had expected letters or phone calls from Gazette readers, but none came. So far the community didn’t seem to care that migrants lived and worked at Jake Stewart’s place or what their living conditions were. During the first days in August, the cucumbers continued rolling in to the pickle factory, truckload after truckload from Jake Stewart’s thirty acres, and sack after sack from the little cucumber patches found on almost every farm around Link Lake. A couple of timely rains and sunny, hot weather contributed to high yields and happy faces. The days at the pickle factory were long and tiring. Andy pulled open the doors each morning at eight. Usually the first customers were already waiting, farmers who had picked their patches the previous afternoon and didn’t want to wait in line at night. In early evening the truckloads of cucumbers would arrive 10 Long Days from Stewart’s farm, and no farmer with six gunnysacks of cucumbers and three rambunctious kids wanted to wait an hour for a truckload of cucumbers to be unloaded and sorted before they could unload theirs. The crew was holding up reasonably well, but as workers grew tired, tempers often flared. So far, Andy was able to keep everyone working, although Blackie Antonelli constantly picked on Quarter Mile Sweet. “Okay, college boy,” Blackie would say. “Bet you can’t lift two bushel boxes of cucumbers at the same time.” Blackie demonstrated that he could easily lift the 120-plus pounds. Without responding, mild-mannered Quarter Mile lifted the two boxes and hoisted them over his head to show he was as strong as—or maybe even stronger than—wiry Blackie Antonelli. Blackie would walk away from such events without commenting , obviously thinking of some other stunt to pull on Quarter Mile, some dirty trick like pushing him into a pickle vat. Andy kept a close watch on the two of them. Agnes Swarsinski was like a grandma to the crew. She worked hard, took no guff from anyone, and always had a wise comment or a joke to tell. “Hear about the two men who walked into a bar?” she asked one noon during lunch. “No, can’t say as I did,” Andy answered, smiling. “They both had headaches.” “What?” “I said they walked into a bar. Didn’t say what kind of bar it was.” Whenever they encountered each other, Blackie and Jesús Moreno were like a pair of fighting roosters, each wanting to fly into 70 Long Days 71 Long Days the other. Back in late July, Blackie had made fun of Jesús’s name again, saying he had no right to use the name of Christ for himself. Jesús bristled, snapped open his folding knife, and made a roundhouse swing at Blackie, who jumped back, grabbing a twoby -four that was leaning against one of the pickle vats. Blackie swung the two-by-four and hit Jesús on the leg, knocking him down. Quickly Jesús scrambled to his feet, his dark eyes wide and menacing, his long, sharp knife poised to catch Blackie in the neck. While this was going on, both Carlos and Andy were in the of- fice, checking on some delivery figures. Who should step between Jesús and Blackie but frail little Preacher; he just walked right up and stood between them. Both were so surprised that they immediately stopped fighting. “Get out of the way Preacher, or you’ll get yourself killed,” Blackie said. “I am a man of the cloth, a man of peace,” Preacher said quietly. “Violence solves nothing.” Catholic Jesús Moreno would pick a fight with anyone, but he had great respect for preachers and priests. “You two cool off and go back to work. Put away that knife, and park that two-by-four,” Preacher said. The young men did as he ordered. From that day on the crew at the pickle factory had new respect for the quiet man who had insisted on praying before they ate their meals. But they also wondered if something was going on between him and Helen; since the incident about praying before their supper, Preacher...