Blueberry Harvesters

We approached a clearing

where thousands of blueberry bushes grew.

In the center was

the packing house--a low building

with open and windows on all sides. 

Parked outside was a school bus

marked "Farm Labor Transport."

The driver, a tall, amiable-looking

man, with bare feet

 stood beside his bus.  

He wore green trousers and a T-shirt.

The end of the working day had come.

Pickers swarmed around a pump--

old women, middle-aged men, a young girl.

A line was waiting to use 

an outhouse nearby.

Inside the packing house, 

berries 

half an inch thick were rolling 

up a portable conveyor belt and, 

eventually, into pint boxes. 

Charlie's sister packed the boxes. 

Charlie's daughter-in-law put 

cellophane over them.

Charlie's son Jim supervised the operation.

Charlie picked up a pint box

in which berries were mounded high,

and told me with disgust 

that some supermarkets

knock off these mounds of extra berries 

to put them in new boxes,

for three or four extra pints 

per twelve-box tray.

At one window, pickers were turning 

in tickets of various colors, 

and being given cash in return.

One picker, 

who appeared to be in his sixties,

tapped Charlie on the arm and

showed him a thick packet of tickets 

held together with a rubber band. 

"I found these,"

the man said. "They must have fallen 

out of your son's pocket." 

He gave the packet to Charlie

who thanked him and counted 

the tickets. Charlie said,

"These tickets are worth seventy-five dollars."