<Begin Segment 34>

AI: So what was the work? Could you describe for people who don't know, could you describe what that beet topping was all about?

TI: Well there was beet topping, and then tomato harvesting for, canning tomatoes was big in that area. And then they raised alfalfa, and they were really kind of backward in the way of farming methods. They had a team of horses and they had these windrows of these alfalfa that were cut. And then they were left to dry in these windrows, and before you can pick 'em up, why, you'd have to turn 'em over once or twice so that they'll dry off on both sides. And then they'll have these -- a thing called a slip. It's like a narrow, long sled with a chain running through the middle of it. And it's in there for purpose of... and the workers, the laborers, maybe there's one or two guys on either side of the slip, and the team of horses would be pulling the sled. And it was your job to fork that thing onto the slip as they went along the windrows, between the windrows. And they would take it back it to this barnyard where they got a stack, started to stack the hay.

Well, they got this, another horse on a tether, and a kind of a boom thing, and the horse would pull that boom -- oh, now I'm getting ahead of myself. But they would, you would take the slip off and hook this chain onto this boom, in a kind of a hoist system. And the horse would walk away from the stack, and then the slip or the sled would go up, up the stack, and then it'll flip it over onto the haystack. And that's the method that they used to build their stack up. Then of course the higher you go up, the more interesting it gets. The haystack... and you have to kind of layer that so it'll bind, so that if you're not going up straight... I mean, it'll kind of bind itself and keep its form and shape. So it won't, in the wintertime when the wind blows, and you have snowstorms, it won't slide off to one side.

JM: Well, they would, that arrangement they had would pick up a whole wagonload of hay at one time and dump it on the stack. They had a ingenious method, they call that the Mormon Pull, but I don't know --

TI: Oh, is that what they called it?

JM: That was the Mormon, they call that the Mormon Pull. Those beets, they were plowed out, after they were ready to harvest, they had a great big plow and it was plowed out, and the beets were laying on the ground. So, then the crew, like us, why, we'd have to go and pick the beet up with one hand and we had this big knife, which looked like a machete, that had a hook on the end of it. You stab the beet, pick it up, and then cut the tops off. Then you throw it in a windrow and we'd just do that all day long, bent over like that. It was backbreaking work, but...

TH: It was hard work.

TI: As I recall, there were only two farmers in Hooper that had trucks. The rest of 'em had horses and wagons. And the only modern part about that wagon I recall, is that they had rubber-tired wheels on the wagons, rather than the steel wheels that they used to, before they converted.

JM: Well this farmer, I think he had average-size beets, they were... and I understand that some places had great big beets, you could hardly pick 'em up. And that is how you can make money, because they paid us by the ton.

AI: So, a beet would be, like, bigger than a football?

JM: Well, they, some of 'em that big around, or just that long. I don't know where Tok was, (...) like one place we went, those things weren't much bigger than a carrot, see. And you can't make any money that way, because they paid you by the ton, so much a ton.

AI: And you're talking about the sugar beets.

JM: Sugar beets, yeah.

AI: They could get quite big, then.

TI: Yeah, well if it had the proper growing condition and good soil, it could get to be a pretty large root.

JM: Well, I understand in Idaho, somewheres in Idaho, they had great big beets, and they did all right. But, like I say, it's really hard work.

AI: So how long did you do this, this work crew? That was from the fall of '42, to --

JM: Well, I spent only one season there, but some people went out every season, which is at least two anyway.

TI: Our season there only lasted about 2 1/2, 3 months then. By the time the harvest was over I think maybe it was pretty close to November, or maybe it was into November when we went back to camp.

<End Segment 34> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.