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Show 45 Disillusionment took place about five minutes after we reached the field, which stretched from the hills on the east to the river and beyond. I was not one of the gang, but a baby, to be treated as one, set out in the middle of the patch on a "skippy" row, one where the seeder had left long spaces. Papa "blocked" a few hills with his wide-bladed hoe, leaving regular little tufts of green in the thin line of growth. He showed me how to grasp the largest beet in my left hand, thin out all the rest with my right hand, and hill up the dirt around the remaining beet, which was, at this point, only a tail of root with a few green leaves. The thinner stradled the row and crawled on his knees. Papa and Uncle Will were the blockers and they went steadily up and down the rows chopping gaps in the thin green. The thinners, Eldon and our cousins, a boy or two recruited from the town's non-beet growers, about ten in all, followed at a slower pace, but it seemed to me as if they traveled with hare-like speed, bouncing down the rows, as compared to little tortoise me. An hour after I began I was ready to quit, but was in for a rude jolt. "When a job is once begun never leave it till its done, " came along with the Bible in our family. Papa "joshed" this precept into me. "Aw, now, you don't want to quit before you get started. When you get to the end of the row you will have ten cents. " Every time he came by he stopped and helped me with a few hills of beets, bragging about the one I had accomplished since his last visit. |