Courtesy of kristinscraving.com
Mike Rodgers is today’s guest blogger. He works at United Way of the Greater Triangle as the senior network administrator.
When I was 13 or 14, living in sand-pit, pine tree and peach orchard filled south-central Georgia, I worked one summer in a peach “packing shed.”
The packing shed was a locally-owned and seasonally operated fruit processing plant – peaches in the summer, red apples in the fall. And blazing hot in south Georgia all the time.
The peaches began to arrive in eight-foot-square crates by 6am, sometimes even earlier, to wend their way through the cleaners, sorters and packers. Sometimes we finished by 4pm – during peak picking times, maybe one the next morning.
This was a very rural area with typical lower income industries. Most people made their living one way or another from farming, whether cotton, stands of pine for lumber and paper mills or chicken houses and hog farms.
This was an area and a time where women wore aprons in the kitchen, many men still wore hats, extended families lived within shouting distance of each other – and most importantly – people knew, cared about and looked after their neighbors. Many of the people that worked in the shed were older women, mothers and grandmothers who never worked outside the home or off the farm, except during picking season at the packing shed. Small paychecks to add to perennially tight budgets, welcome income no matter how slight.
One day that stands out to me started out as a regular day: hot, lots of peaches and the monotony of the machines and cardboard boxes. But in the afternoon I saw an old station wagon pull slowly into the parking lot, out front where most of the truckers would park waiting for a load. Even though it was a ways from me I could see a woman driving with several kids and what appeared to be bags of clothing and other belongings inside. I’ve seen this many times before – a family moving, trying to get to a place where there might be a paycheck, maybe closer to distant family – or maybe farther away from a more desperate situation. And this time it looked like a tired and sweating single mother, an old station wagon, her kids and everything they owned.
I watched the woman get out of the car and approach one of the loading docks. I couldn’t hear what was said, but she spoke timidly to one of the older ladies working one of the sorting lines, one of the “cull” lines. Cull peaches had some blemish that would not make it to the “prime” packing line, or maybe they were a little too ripe and wouldn’t last until they could be displayed in a grocery store’s produce section. Culls were actually the best eating peaches, always full of flavor and juicy. They were packed and shipped off to be sold at farmer’s markets, restaurants, anywhere that needed the peach in a recipe and not on display for out-of-hand eating.
The older lady then walked with the mother out to her car, looked inside and spoke with the children and the mother for a short while. Then she came back to the shed and huddled with some of the other women that worked in her area. Immediately the scene reminded me of a kicked ant mound out in a field. I watched a seemingly endless number of sweet, older ladies excitedly mill around the loading dock and then the whole bunch headed into the parking lot towards the station wagon.
I watched those loving, caring, little old ladies I worked with give those children handfuls of wonderful, juicy and impossibly sweet cull peaches. I saw a carton of peaches, maybe two, get carried out to the car. And then – and then – I watched several of those elegant, old-country women, who likely lived on the edge of poverty themselves, give that mother money. A few bills here that I could make out, a small rolled up bunch there. These women looked upon this single mother, this mother and her children who were essentially living in squalor, as human beings. Unfortunate as their situation was, they were people, they were worthwhile people that needed a little help, a kind word, a smile and a really, really big hug. Lots and lots of really big hugs it seemed, from what they received from these beautiful country moms and grandmothers I worked with back in the day.
So, what do we do today for a down-on-their-luck mother and her child? Embrace them? Hug them and give to them unselfishly?
Call us at United Way of the Greater Triangle and we’ll tell you what we do for moms, kids, families…and all who need help. We make sure they find it!