We all worked in the fields in the summer picking strawberries, raspberries, beans, hops, filberts, prunes, cherries and walnuts.  The pay wasn't too fancy, 4 cents for a carrier of strawberries and 4 cents for a bushel of prunes. I was just an average strawberry picker, picking between 12 and 16 carriers a day.  But nobody could beat me picking prunes.  I was averaging 40 bushel a day.  No government help in those days.  What you earned is what you had.  Period.  I look back on those early days now with many fond memories, truly among the happiest days of my life.

The hop yards we picked at were near Buena Vista north of Albany.  Everybody camped at the yards, mostly in wall tents.  We had two tents, some straw for mattresses, A 55 gallon barrel lid for a  stove, I dug a small trench and put the lid over it, worked pretty good.  After the days work was done the older boys built a bonfire, the old-timers broke out their fiddles and everybody danced and sang until bedtime.  As you can guess, us younger people thought we were in hog heaven.  I am sure it was not an easy time for my mother, but she never complained, although the first two weeks of September could be wet and cold sometimes.

School started right after hop picking, so my sisters Kate, Grace, Isabell, Mary and my brothers Leo, Nick and myself all headed for Queen Ann Grade School and Lebanon High.  My older brother Norman, my younger brother being too young at the time to go.  We never had to walk 5 miles to school, uphill both ways as the saying goes, but one mile, rain or shine or freeze every day was far enough for me.