I drive through Southwick, MA almost every day and as the growing season progresses, I get to enjoy the farms’ emerging lushness.
Prevalent in the farms of Southwick, MA is shade tobacco, a crop grown for cigars in this part of Western Massachusetts and Connecticut.
Yesterday I noticed one of the tobacco fields was teeming with teenagers working on the harvest and it brought me back to my teen years.
One of my first jobs was working on a tobacco farm in Southwick, MA. I started at 15 and because I was small and fast, I was able to make a good amount of money doing piecework. I was on a team of kids that went row by row tying the tobacco by string wrapped up the stem, but carefully between the tender leaves up to a wire frame above, then cutting the string with your fingers. I can still remember the taped callouses where the string had rubbed and I can still do the motions for the tying to this day!
Working tobacco was a right of passage in Southwick, MA when I was a kid. It was filthy and hot, but everyone did it and somehow we made it fun. There were field mice, tobacco worms (giant green caterpillars), 110 degrees or higher heat under the nets, tar stains on your hands and balls of tar on your hair and back breaking work, BUT it was a job.
I had thought that kind of work ethic was gone until I saw the group of kids working in the field yesterday. I am glad to see that there are still kids willing to put in a hard days work for their paycheck. That lesson has brought me far and I know these kids will benefit from it, too.
Saying that makes me feel like an old fart, but so be it.
Working tobacco was like playing a sport. Each year we were separated into teams with an owner/manager (one of the Arnold brothers), a few coaches (straw-bosses), and our teammates (hopefully our closest friends). If they weren’t our closest friends, it didn’t matter, for they probably would be by the end of the summer. We spent long days on the fields, some of us were better at pitching than hitting (sewing vs. piling), and we arrived home each night sweaty, dirty, and exhausted. But we had a great time every summer.
When that pickup truck pulled up each morning at the crack of a crisp dawn, I dreaded it. I was typically barely awake, freezing even though it was summer, and sore from the previous day’s back-breaking work. As the day wore on, we got dirtier and sillier, but we never lost sight of the work that needed to be done. I always felt pride when my friends and I were chosen to do the “boys’ work” because it meant that I was capable, I was trusted, and someone believed in me. I often tell my children my tobacco stories, and though they aren’t of age, I cannot wait for the day when they might board a filthy pick-up though sleepy-eyed and weary and head to a chilly field to learn the lessons of hard labor, great friendships, and pride in themselves and their achievements, where blistered and taped fingers covered in tar feel like a badge of honor.
Best. Comment. EVAH
I was 14 years of age when I started working in the chilly, hot and sometimes wet tobacco fields. The alarm would go off at 4 am I would catch the filthy bus to take us from Holyoke to the fields. All of your remembrances of what it was like in the fields are the same as mine. I am now 63 years of age and I too remember the great friendships and pride in my achievements even though I was covered with tar, dirt and sweat.
I went to WSC and NEVER knew there was a tobacco farm there. WOW! So cool Les!
Wow, did this take me back! As a teenager (in the mid 70’s) I, and other teens from Pennsylvania spent summers in Massachusetts and Connecticut, living in “camps” and working in the tobacco fields and sheds. I absolutely loved it! Yes, it was hard work but the money and memories made it worth it. We called the people from there working along side us ‘locals”. and we had our share of squabbles. But like I said, I loved it. The work, the people, everything! I must have, I went for four summers! I remember the wrapping (we taped our fingers to prevent cuts from the string) I too can still do that tying motion in my head! Then on to the shed for the sewing, pick up two leaves (one in each hand) and insert into the machine. I can remember two kinds of machines. One with needles and one that twisted..I think we called the person who placed the leaves stackers. Loved the pictures! thanks for sharing. I often wonder if they still take Pennsylvania teens up there. I have heard the the acreage of tobacco is far less now than in the 70’s
Thanks for the comment and sharing your memories!
Does anyone know the telephone #’s? I’d love to sign up my teenagers!
same question as tammie…my teens are looking for summer jobs, and its nearly impossible for 16 or 17 years olds to find one if they dont have experience…like i tell myself, really?? where are they going to get experience if they are still in high school and no one wants to hire without experience? thanks!
I was just thinking of my childhood….living in southwick off northlake ave..humm…going to powdermill…..watching them open the motocross track…picking tabacco and strawberries…..swimming in the lakes north and south…washing myself off covered in mud from working hard….the internet just makes time and space compress and it is possible to visit many things…wow…wow…wow…I too share this memory…thank you for being here and sharing your experience…I am not sure who will read this…but I can tell you…a special memory remains in my heart for the years I spent in Southwick…
I remember wanting to work at the Arnold’s farm in Southwick because my brother and friends did. l finally started at 12 in 1976. I remember planting, spreading fertilizer by hand, suckering the young plants, tying them and then winding the young plants as they grew. Pulling weeds on hands and knees, first picking through last picking and hauling baskets down long hot rows under the nets. Picking nails from debris after a barn fire so Gib could reuse them. Girls in the barns. Softball, swimming at Granville, chariot races, driving tractors, loading baskets, hanging slats and taking them down to be shipped. Good friends, hard work, cold and hot, wet and dry. Best work ethics ever taught.
I remember all of the Arnold’s as some of the best role models I have ever had. Mr and Mrs Arnold, Craig and Stet. Pat Smith, the Wolf brothers, theKnowltons and the Bannishes.
I remember having to go to a pond or a stream to scrub the tar off our bodies before our mother’s would let us into the house to shower, fights between guys from different areas and busting our backs while working peace work.
We made $0.08 per bent suckering young plants and if you broke 80 bents there was a $2.00 bonus. While suckering the boys only were allowed to work a half day doing that. So for a five hour morning we got ten dollars if we broke 80 bents. The guys I worked with were fast so they let us work afternoons tying up plants with the girls. We made another few dollars a day doing that.
After the entire farm was suckered and tied up the boys worked to pick and transport the leaves to the barns so the girls could sew the leaves to slats and hang the product in barns to dry.
The boys picked the leaves from the bottom of the plant upwards based on how much was ripe. Pay varied based on how many leaves we had to pick per plant and how fast the owners wanted it picked. If the leaves were not ripened we worked by the hour for maybe $1.15 per hour. If the leaves were ripe we worked peace work for up to $0.28 per bent with a $5.00 bonus if we picked 100 bents. True girls in the barns got similar pay rates. I remember spending summer vacations at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina with my family and taking Jeff Bannish. We spent our summer savings on fireworks and brought them back to sell for profit selling them a few times….
I remember working on the farm after hours with a few guys most days to set up irrigation systems, replace broken bent poles and wire, etc. Gib picked a few guys that worked hard daily throughout the year to do this. This group of guys got to drive tractors, trucks, fix stuff and work as straw bosses in the fields as we got older. We were also allowed to help take down the tobacco from the barns and prepare it for shipment after it was cured in the fall. The owner would call us when the product was ready on a humid night after school and we would work late into the night.
I knew a girl named Anne Murphy back then as a friend. I left home after joining the Coast Guard in 1983 and worked performing drug interdiction in the Caribbean Sea for a couple years and then in Maine on a bouy tender maintaining aids to navigation and Search and Rescue. I returned home in 1987 and found Anne again. After graduating from sttc I asked Anne to marry me. We did that and moved to Wisconsin after I got work at a boiler manufacturer, Cleaver Brooks.
I love reading these memories, thanks for sharing!
Thank you! This post brought me back to those “thrilling” days. I too worked at Arnold’s for two summers 76 and 77 at ages 13 and 14. We lived in Blandford and that first summer it was just me and some of my Westfield friends that my Mom picked up in the wee early hours of the morning and dropped off at the Arnold Farm on her way to work. The next year, we had a whole crew from Blandford plus the returning Westfield kids. I can still do the tying motion too! 🙂 It was without a doubt the dirtiest, hottest job I ever had. But I wanted a stereo system and my parents insisted I work to pay for it. And work I did. Made friends, laughed a lot, and worked my a$$ off. I can hear some songs on the radio that take me right back…. Philadelphia Freedom, Sarah Smile, Moonlight Feels Right and Chevy Van. Talk of the summer of ’77 was of course Star Wars. (if we girls weren’t giggling about the cute boys hanging up the lathes we brought to them) I tied, winded, carried, piled and sewed in my two summers there. I certainly learned the value of hard work, and the value of a good work ethic. And that stereo system? I still have it, and it still works. Thanks for the memories!
I worked for 3 summers in the shade tobacco fields of Southwick and near by towns for me it was the summers of 1965,1966,1967, there was a camp in SouthWick run by a History teacher from Elysburg,Pennsylvania and she recruited teen girls from this area to go there for the summer.
It was a very rewarding experience for me working for my own money to purchase school clothes.
Not only that Mrs Bird took us on weekends to places like Mystic Seaport, Boston commons, old North Church,Sturbridge Village, I was able to go thru Mark Twains home.
And she also allowed us to be in the Church chore in Southwick which we sang most Sundays for the summer.
There was a small store across the road from the house we lived in and we got passes to go over there to get treats.
I made many frinds in that three summers and the historical places she exposed us to were amazing and so worth the time spent there.
We met local kids that also worked in the same fields as us and we always started out by stringing the plants, then went to the fields to wind the string around the plants so they would grow straight till it was time for the leaves to be picked and then we went into the barns to work on machine to put the leaves on lath that were hung in the rafters of the barn.
Some of the girls got tobacco rash and looked very painful.
We had to do KP duty and it was on a rolling schedule with washing dishes after our great homemade meals were over, some of us made the lunches for the next day and some did dishes.
We had to keep our rooms neat and tidy and had inspections it’s were I learned how to make a military bunk.
Our spare time was washing our own clothes, writing letters home and there was always games and music.
There were two college students from Bloomsburg university who were managers over us in the field and they were wonderful.
Worked on shade tobacco farm for Hathaway and steens in southwick. It was stringing up the plants. Hot days and no water fountains back then. But where else could a 14 year old earn $10 a day???? I lasted all summer, it was hard work and I also still remember the “straw boss” as we called them. I remember the callouses from breaking the string with your hands. GOOD TIMES LOL
I worked at LD Lambson on S Loomis st. The first 2 pickings were on our bits, then on our knees finally standing. I did 176 bents one day. All for $ 1.45 an hour!. 1975 and 76