(historical fiction)
June 12, 1975
Picnic Shed
Vienna, Virginia
Dear Mom,
So I got here, no trouble, a city bus drops us on the side of the highway. I stood up by the driver and read the
directions to him, he pulled over at the bottom of a hill and I got out in the middle
of nowhere. Got on at 11th and E in downtown DC and that's the last time I saw stores and traffic lights and people in normal clean clothes. It’s hard to describe this place. Been here almost
two weeks, still not sure if I will make it through the summer but the people
are nice and I would never survive without Sonya. She talked me into this and
she is trying to make sure I am having a good time. Everything hurts – my back, my skin, my face.
Sunburn and poison ivy. Can you send a giant bottle of Calamine lotion? I don’t
know how to buy anything and on my last day off I just slept all day.
I am sitting in this open shack in the woods. “The Picnic
Shed.” A covered kitchen with one lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, a
refrigerator, a stove, table and chairs. At night the bugs are crazy. They come
in and bang all around the lightbulb, buzzing and circling and getting caught
in my hair. We go to bed early. I sleep
upstairs in the shed down the hill in a big room all to myself, on a mattress
on the floor. There is electricity, but
no running water. The outhouse is just
out to the left, and there is a bathtub in the outhouse but I don’t think I
want to try that. The water gets pumped from the stream. Salamanders everywhere. Yech. We have been swimming in the pond next door
at the end of the day. That’s as clean as we need to be. The algae doesn’t
stick to my skin … I am glad about that. The water feels so good, and I don’t
put my feet down on the bottom, disgusting.
Mornings we work in the field – carrying scratchy bales of straw
into tomato patches, they weigh about as much as I do. Then we spread straw around the plants. They
are so picky about how the mulch goes down. It has to be flat, it has to be the
same depth everywhere, no dirt can show through. They don’t exactly yell at me,
but I am still not doing it right every time and I have to go back and cover
the thin places. Why is this a problem. I do not know. And why is everyone else
faster. I do not know. My hands are covered
with cuts from the straw, I have splinters in my fingers. It is steamy hot here
by late morning. I have never been so hot. I guess this is the Deep South. I
wasn’t really thinking about where this place was. It is a sauna by afternoon.
There are four bosses – Tony and Hui (I have no clue how to
spell it but that’s a woman’s name) and Susan and Chip -- and some people a
little older than me who have been here for several summers and then about six
of us who just got here. Just about
everyone went to Oberlin. Who ever heard
of Oberlin. Now I have, a lot. No one
has heard of any school west of Ohio and I am just keeping quiet. Even the bosses went to Oberlin. Everyone talks about co-op and we have a
cooking and cleaning schedule made by the bossiest worker Edie, we have a
schedule for milking the cow next door. I
myself have not milked the cow. That is too much. Some of these people have so
much energy. It’s exhausting.
In the afternoons, that’s when we have the school thing that
got me here in the first place. It
sounded neat when Sonya told me about learning all these Mother Earth News
skills from real farmers. These farmers are not what I had in my head. No overalls. Tony goes barefoot, the other ones wear shoes. They
make reading assignments. One was a college professor. One or another of them
teaches for a few hours after lunch – I can barely stay awake for the whole
talk. It’s so hot, even in the shade. We have heard about basic mechanics,
bookkeeping, plumbing, taking care of farm animals that was very cool, plant
propagation. Prop-O-gation? I never do any of the assigned reading. That is
just too much. One of the guys, Steve, takes pages and pages of notes, and he
does all the reading. So then he asks questions. I never ask questions. I can’t
think of a question. It’s just too much. We are about to start choosing our projects. I
don’t know what to do. I can’t even hit a nail two times in a row. This is
going to be hard. I might team up with another woman Lisa and we might make a
picnic table. She doesn’t seem too sure about anything either but she is
friends with one of the farm kids. The farm kids are sure about everything,
even the four year old. They know how to do everything, they hang out with us,
and they make fun of us when we don’t know how to do something.
I have to go to sleep. Tell Gram I am going to learn about
beekeeping next week. That will make her happy.
Send care packages. I need Calamine lotion, more bandanas and chocolate. I myself have not been off the farm since we
got here, but one person goes to the Safeway with Hui or Susan once a week and
gets the rice and beans and cheese. I don’t have any money to spend anyway. We
don’t get paid until the end of the summer.
Just ten more weeks…
I miss you and Dad and Tiger. I miss sleeping in a room with windows that
close. I am pretty sure when it rains I
am going to get really wet. Luckily it hasn’t rained since I got here.
Love, Loraine
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