Remember when Dad worked there during the campaign. He hurt so bad but he was determined to stay with it. And just think of all the years Uncle Norman worked there - and sacrificed his health to work there. What a memory jog.
When the check came in the fall for the payment of the sugar beet harvest, it meant things were a little easier financially for a while. It seemed like ends never quite met, but we survived. We children worried far less than our parents. Uncle Norman's last years became more and more tenuous as a result of his working at the factory. The lung disease that he go as a result was pretty awful, and he suffered quite a bit.
Thoughts? The stench of beet pulp, which permeated the town of Lovell much of the winter and which no one there could complain about, since the sugar factory kept the town alive, such as it was. Plus all the misery Dad went through all those years to raise sugar beets, and when I was 14 years old and driving the old Ford truck with 6 or 7 tons of beets to the Garland beet dump, plus horse flies, deer flies, mosquitoes, gnats, weeds, alfalfa roots, hot sun, dull hoes, whacking, hacking, hoeing, and loving every moment of child labor. Etc. Sugar beets were a hard way to make a living. Now sugar beet farmers sit in the air conditioned stereo equipped cabs of mega thousand dollar super tractors with super digging, loading, and hauling equipment, and where's the sense of accomplishment in all of that? Huh?
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Remember when Dad worked there during the campaign. He hurt so bad but he was determined to stay with it. And just think of all the years Uncle Norman worked there - and sacrificed his health to work there. What a memory jog.
When the check came in the fall for the payment of the sugar beet harvest, it meant things were a little easier financially for a while. It seemed like ends never quite met, but we survived. We children worried far less than our parents.
Uncle Norman's last years became more and more tenuous as a result of his working at the factory. The lung disease that he go as a result was pretty awful, and he suffered quite a bit.
Thoughts? The stench of beet pulp, which permeated the town of Lovell much of the winter and which no one there could complain about, since the sugar factory kept the town alive, such as it was. Plus all the misery Dad went through all those years to raise sugar beets, and when I was 14 years old and driving the old Ford truck with 6 or 7 tons of beets to the Garland beet dump, plus horse flies, deer flies, mosquitoes, gnats, weeds, alfalfa roots, hot sun, dull hoes, whacking, hacking, hoeing, and loving every moment of child labor. Etc. Sugar beets were a hard way to make a living. Now sugar beet farmers sit in the air conditioned stereo equipped cabs of mega thousand dollar super tractors with super digging, loading, and hauling equipment, and where's the sense of accomplishment in all of that? Huh?
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