THE BUS-AND-BUSHEL- BASKET LINE
Marquis, David Davis and Chris
The Bus-and-Bushel Basket Line Stoop labor is for city folks, too BY DAVID DAVIS AND CHRIS MARQUIS Three hours before dawn, a mist starts to roll in from the river, shrouding the toll plaza of...
...McCrae and Pinkie are back...
...The back-of-the-bus gang leads the pack, pressing forward with incessant chatter...
...You look at the stalks that litter the ground behind you, at the thirteen baskets you've finished...
...Unlike migrant workers, day-haulers don't ask for, or expect, food and shelter—costs that many Delaware Valley farmers say makes migrants prohibitively expensive...
...But his part-time job in a textile mill pays $5 an hour...
...Pinkie holds the wad...
...T-Bone walks up with a clip-board...
...Ninety-eight, maybe 99 per cent of the time, they are not getting minimum wage," says Raymond Cantu, director of the Farmworkers Opportunities Program, a Federally funded training and placement project in Philadelphia...
...There is no water...
...the bus rolls into the deserted lot at Franklin and Wood...
...George Lovett steps down from the tractor and compares his tally with Scotty's...
...Meanwhile, the driver comes by for the final tally...
...Scotty counts forty-five heads and tells the driver to head for Delaware...
...One longtime worker says he can't remember not stopping for liquor on the way home...
...What's your name...
...You squeeze past him back onto the bus...
...He has filled eighteen already...
...Jesus picked twenty-one bushels...
...The van takes on two and rattles up Sixth Street...
...Sobered by the farmer's criticism, he passes it on...
...At 9:30 p.m...
...If you can get on that bus, you have a job...
...Twenty minutes later he returns with a two-inch stack of cash...
...The Bus-and-Bushel Basket Line Stoop labor is for city folks, too BY DAVID DAVIS AND CHRIS MARQUIS Three hours before dawn, a mist starts to roll in from the river, shrouding the toll plaza of Philadelphia's Ben Franklin Bridge and chilling a handful of men standing on the traffic island nearby...
...Back in the bus...
...Inside, dirt-caked hands pull bottles of Thunderbird and packs of potato chips off the shelves...
...Inside, a white cop strolls the fluorescent-lighted aisles whistling "I Just Called to Say I Love You...
...jump start...
...The half-exposed turnips come up easily, but they are smaller than any you've seen on grocery shelves...
...For farmers like Puglia, meeting the needs of day-haulers is cheap: they have none...
...no Social Security number, no W-2 form...
...You knock at the door and the driver, a thin black man wearing a baseball cap, opens it...
...Nobody has money, but Sis extends credit, meticulously recording names in her black book...
...George drives, Bill stacks, and four loaders scramble to bring the fifty-pound baskets to Bill's feet...
...By ten o'clock you've filled only four baskets...
...At 8 a.m...
...Half the riders climb down...
...He turns the rest of the money over to contractor Powell...
...He is part overseer, part trouble-shooter, part entertainer...
...He returns to the bus, takes the driver's seat, and heads for the highway...
...Outside, Scotty plays with Satan...
...It be dark when you get up, it be dark when you go home...
...Across from you is Jesus, a twentythree-year-old Cuban...
...You are two letters...
...They want no showdown in court that will effectively banish them from the work...
...I put on all my class...
...I got 1,040...
...The bus leaves, half empty, and those who stay behind talk of heading home...
...A compact, sinewy ex-convict, T-Bone works for James Powell, one of an estimated seventy-eight day-hauling contractors illegally operating without licenses in Philadelphia...
...By 5:30 the fog and traffic have thickened, and nearly seventy men stand by...
...all hands are needed for the blueberry crop...
...But the engine grinds...
...Solemnly, the workers watch them...
...Think of someone you hate...
...she demands, refusing passage until you pay her or convince her that you didn't eat...
...Lovett Farm," a sign reads...
...Hey man, Bull-Dog might want to fire some of you out there today," he cracks...
...a blue Dodge Ram van swoops into King's parking lot...
...They offer contractors so many cents a bushel, and the contractor, in turn, decides how many workers he will bring in and how much he will pay by the piece...
...Come on," he yells at the workers...
...The night gets darker, the workers drunker...
...The liquor store done closed...
...At 4 a.m...
...What initials do you want to go by...
...This no good...
...T-Bone tells you to transfer with him to the bus...
...North Philadelphia is a land of check-cashing booths, laundromats, and gun shops, a land of first names and nicknames...
...how he wouldn't let you kneel in the dirt...
...Back in the field, the muscular man working next to you says there are only a couple of hours left...
...Everybody was making forty or fifty dollars that day...
...The back of the bus fills up first...
...Scotty says 860 baskets picked...
...Hang on to your knife until you get paid," Sis instructs...
...Yeah, I pick pretty good," he tells you...
...He vows to pick ten more baskets and lays them out for incentive...
...soda, fifty cents...
...Raymond Cantu at Farmworkers Opportunities knows a Cambodian contractor who earned $72,000 in a six-month season running a fleet of five buses...
...If I can't use day-haulers, I'll get out...
...I don't like this late workin'," Scotty says...
...Pinkie maneuvers past the structures and onto the field, where hundreds of bushel baskets lie on their sides...
...The load-up takes forever...
...others stand back, rubbing change in their palms and wishing the coins would transform themselves into the price of a cup of coffee and a doughnut...
...He motions as if flinging the knife into Sis's back, saying, "Si no es bastante...
...The payoff continues...
...They've picked his sweet potatoes for years...
...the motor won't catch...
...Fifteen dollars...
...Don't you hurt Satan...
...You swipe up the green shank with the right hand, grab the beet with the left, wrench off the top, drop the leaf, and toss the beet into the basket...
...Sonny's wife accuses, "Where's your knife...
...how he fired you for going to the outhouse...
...he asks...
...its crest reads "Farm Labor...
...A cluster of buildings—barn, equipment sheds, white two-story house—rises amid ripe fields...
...A police van pulls up to King's 24-Hour Mini Mart...
...For some, it is the day they took in $50 or $100...
...He pours gas into the carburetor and Pinkie grinds the engine...
...no drunks riding today...
...The drinkers talk...
...Workers begin to trudge off the field, their hands hanging like useless mitts at their sides...
...A fried chicken sandwich, today's popular special, is also $1.50...
...The thought of that day gets them through the many others when they don't make minimum wage...
...I can't pay those people for an honest day's work, 'cause they won't give it to me...
...He looks at the $13.60 in his palm...
...he is also an expert watermelon-picker...
...He used to work full-time on this farm...
...Five more, you tell yourself...
...Day-hauling can be lucrative for the contractors...
...Three to five dollars later, each is back in the bus, on his way to a drunk...
...When he orders everyone off the bus for a roll-call payoff, he mispronounces names and then furiously threatens to withhold pay from people for not paying attention...
...Beet-picking takes two hands...
...Contractors like Powell stay out of sight...
...Where's Satan...
...Just a few days remain for sweet potatoes, beets, and peppers...
...Sixty cents a basket...
...Where's Satan...
...The store owners have sent over an employee, fearing that the bus might settle in forever...
...Scotty wants booze as much as anyone...
...Scotty's son, known as Sonny, and his wife sit in the seat across the aisle...
...Here he is," says a young man in the back, holding up a coal-black puppy...
...T-Bone clutches the neck of a half-gallon wine jug and raises it in signal to drive on...
...You have to remember the caliber of people you're working with," says Puglia later...
...Scotty sits in the front seat, telling stories about the old days in the fields and cussing in a voice like Richard Pryor's...
...Then an old yellow one wheezes out of the plaza...
...As the harvest season winds down in the fall, the "day-haulers" of the Delaware Valley more often face disappointment before sunrise...
...Chris Marquis is a writer who recently took a job at "La Nacion" in Buenos Aires...
...He flirts with the cashier, a young Hispanic woman in tight jeans...
...The bus turns deadly silent...
...They line up to ask the gray-haired owner for cigarettes, a fifth of whiskey or gin, as his wife announces and rings up the purchase price...
...Art Puglia, a 280-pound farmer known as Little Caesar, rumbles up to T-Bone on his three-wheel Yamaha chariot...
...A thousand baskets pepper the two harvested acres...
...Occasionally Powell nets more than $1,000, according to Puglia...
...The beets are only half-buried in the loamy dirt, and the leaves come off with one firm twist...
...One of them speaks with Scotty while the other hooks up a flat-bed...
...When the flat-bed is full, McCrae steps onto the bus, and Pinkie drives into the barnyard...
...On this, his first day in the fields, he says it will be his last...
...Up front, T-Bone, who is today's crew leader, is cheerfully drunk...
...Everyone, too, has a Bull-Dog story: How Bull-Dog stood above you in the fields and hollered for you to pick faster...
...There is a quiet sobriety here...
...Everyone except Livingston gets off...
...It is 3 a.m...
...Sonny calls your name and snaps dollar bills, one at a time, into your palm...
...You should have seen the turnips in Maryland...
...They pace and hug themselves against the cold and squint at the buses stopping to pay tolls...
...Hours pass...
...Scotty, both contractor and crew leader, is a tall man with kinky gray hair, He is also a bully...
...A black man in a beret appears, stumbling over invisible obstacles...
...Some boasts run as high as $200...
...at Sixth and Girard...
...Don't pick 'em smaller than that," he says, holding a beet the size of a child's fist...
...Grab 'em and pull 'em like you're angry," he says, snatching a fistful of shanks...
...A diverse crew snoozes, erect in the seats: six women, three Hispanics, a Cambodian...
...Vocal, too...
...Beer is $1...
...Now go to the bus...
...With nothing to do but wait, Scotty starts feeling mean...
...I'm a pro-FESH-on-al...
...Everyone knows Bull-Dog, the Jersey farmer...
...He reworks the math and returns with a stack of bills and several rolls of change...
...Sis is an obese, cranky woman who dispenses money and snacks to the family...
...When you're about to give up hope, a sleek black pickup with mag wheels swings across from Ted's...
...An hour later T-Bone moves down the aisle and counts his men: twelve...
...He feigns anger for the workers' benefit, but like them he knows the farmer dictates when the day is over...
...Some slouch in their seats, eyes closed...
...Each separates a chest-high stack of baskets and lugs them to where he will start...
...You here to make money...
...The others stay in the van, going to Bull-Dog's...
...At lunch time, again there is no water...
...the bus pulls onto a paved drive that cuts through a green field stretching to the horizon...
...The driver says there's room...
...They say he is training his son, Bull-Dog Jr., to act the same...
...A swarthy young man dressed entirely in camouflage—jacket, pants, and headband—is looking for his girl...
...The bus crosses the Ben Franklin Bridge David Davis is a free-lance writer based in Pittsburgh...
...Workers crawl down the bed, leaving a trail of limp shanks and full baskets...
...At 5:30, the driver pulls the bus up to the farmhouse...
...McCrae, a worker nearing seventy, picked only fifteen bushels today...
...Screeches and lurches later, the bus starts up, then rumbles home pervaded by the acrid odor of tobacco and sweat, gasoline and Thunderbird wine...
...At 4:30, the Lovett brothers drive a John Deere tractor onto the field...
...I thought I could pick more," says seventy-year-old Fred Livingston, in a deliberate, gentle voice...
...the rest, black men...
...A half dozen black men stare blankly at you through the dusty windows...
...Farms near Odessa, Delaware, are built on flat land, plantation-style...
...T-Bone shows a specimen to each worker...
...While Sis snacks on sweets, from her bag, Sonny puts away her picnic pots...
...He picks a couple of turnips out of your basket, rolling them over in his hands...
...Across the aisle, Sis holds a flashlight to her lunch ledger...
...Give it some Thunderbird, that'll start it right up...
...He peers under the hood with a hand-held floodlight and tightens a valve...
...The cry, "More gas to the carburetor," seems wisest because it is loudest, and T-Bone sets out for the gas station a half-mile away...
...At noon there is no talk of lunch...
...Satisfied, he jumps off the bus, pushes up the half-hood, and tells Pinkie, the driver, to start up...
...Another hour passes, and forty-one workers stare out the window, hoping to see the lights of the tractor, the signal that the load-up is done and the farmers' count is complete...
...For one day...
...In parking lots or highway turnouts, they stand and wait, these urban serfs—black, Puerto Rican, Cambodian, Cuban—denizens of the concrete-and-stucco world of Philadelphia's ghettos...
...You got nineteen," he says indifferently...
...At Franklin and Wood, a stubby blue bus sits in a vacant parking lot...
...We no make money," he tells you smiling, tired...
...Three times this size...
...No wine tonight...
...Dave is a junkie...
...But he helps the young loaders for free...
...The family is doing well...
...That's one-fifty," she says, slopping some barbecue onto a bun...
...Start at the beginning of the rows...
...Most of the apples are in...
...My eyes is bad," Scotty says sheepishly...
...This is a family operation...
...How many you got...
...Everybody...
...Cuts scar your hands from the dull knife...
...By 4:30 everyone is on his last basket...
...The men stare at it until it stops...
...Money will come slowly today...
...Across the street, a man named Louie leans against a stucco wall, gripping a bottle in a bag...
...From a flat-bed you pull down six bushel-baskets and use them to stake out a four-foot alley...
...The hour-long process remains a family affair...
...Thirty-two baskets takes first place: $ 19.20...
...you return to Franklin and Wood...
...One bus and then another—destination "Atlantic City"—roll by...
...The workers, suddenly quiet, step off the bus...
...he cannot make a fist...
...T-Bone calls some initials...
...Most of the men know each other...
...He earns his pay by delivering what Powell has promised, without incident...
...Some enter the store right away...
...The man pinches the ten and five ones in two fingers...
...The beet field is a three-acre zone with no visible rows, a foot-tall sea of green leaves...
...No luck...
...Just before dawn the bus returns to Franklin and Wood and picks up two more...
...Besides, says Cantu, "The crew leaders tend to find out very quickly who the troublemakers are...
...The drinkers keep to the back, to be close to the bottle of Thunderbird wine that is making the rounds...
...Workers drop their quiet conversations...
...The farm is an hour away—a yellow two-story house, an aluminum barn, a yard crowded with a sleek new tractor, a large flat-bed truck, and an outhouse...
...Moments later he hovers over another...
...Then Little Caesar whirls through the mud on his three-wheeler, picks up T-Bone's basket-count, and rides the thirty yards back to the house...
...Thirty minutes later, T-Bone is back with gasoline in an anti-freeze container...
...But by the end of apple season in November, only 500 or so find work...
...A half-hour passes...
...he asks one worker...
...Turnips," he grunts in a sleepy voice...
...The work begins...
...This farm relies solely on day-haulers to pull in its harvest, according to George Lovett Jr., who manages it with his lookalike brother, Bill...
...On a tree-lined street in Mount Holly, Pinkie pulls the bus in at Ted's Liquor Store...
...Lovett takes the count sheets into the house...
...Homeward...
...Don't flood it...
...They praise the seventy-degree weather, debate Mayor Goode's chances for reelection, and dream about that bottle of wine...
...Hundreds of flies cling to its blue-green ceiling...
...Mercifully, Sonny takes the name-sheet from him...
...Twenty-five baskets...
...But first to the liquor store...
...as the sun begins to rise...
...A group of three white local boys speedily set about stacking up ninety-six man-hours of work on the flat-bed...
...The driver pushes open the door, nods twice, and two men climb on...
...The work begins in late May, when more than 5,000 come out to slum corners to await the buses and vans...
...In six hours, they will come back and do it again...
...He is unhappy...
...Next to him sits his sister, known to all as Sis...
...Many also receive some form of government assistance and fear that disclosure of their hidden farm-labor income will jeopardize those payments...
...A jump-start will do it, he says...
...At 5:30 the bus is nearly full, but Scotty needs ten more workers...
...Some kneel, some stoop, with baskets at elbows...
...Hundreds of farmers in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland, rely on the day-haulers to pull in their harvests...
...Scotty yells...
...The day is finally over for these workers, who have spent eighteen hours away from home, worked eight hours in the fields, and brought home about $8...
...The bus pulls over beside a Dunkin' Donuts at 7 a.m...
...At 4 a.m...
...A man trudges down the bus aisle...
...One, speaking on the condition that she not be identified, says a typical run pays about $400...
...Sixty cents a bushel...
...Finally, the lights...
...they own the bus and spend their days at home making deals with farmers...
...Stepping off the bus, you grab a kitchen knife from a box at Sis's feet and wrap surgical tape around your fingertips and thumbs...
...The cop, Louie, and Dave have disappeared...
...As crew leader he is paid a commission, a few cents on every bushel picked...
...The bus is going to Jersey, too: "Beets today," T-Bone tells the men who walk up...
...Today was not a good one for Powell, who took in roughly $75, or twenty-five cents a bushel...
...In elaborate mime...
...That's funny," the farmer says...
...I still get 1,040," he says...
...Half the workers head back into Ted's...
...If you're gonna pick 'em like that, go back to the city," he shouts over the engine...
...Let's get goin...
...He brags that he got a ride back from a wealthy customer at the station...
...Their new bus had a sticker price of at least $30,000, and Sis peels off gas money from a fat roll of cash...
...For roughly five weeks each year, thirty to forty laborers are bused in daily...
...One woman sighs...
...Don't you hurt my dog...
...In a deserted parking lot, a lone school bus, bright with a coat of yellow paint, waits beneath a streetlight...
...Every day-hauler savors the memory of the time he struck it rich...
...The bus is bigger than yesterday's...
...I don't want to house them," he says later...
...By paying in cash, he skirts the Federal minimum-wage law, which requires workers to be paid at least $3.35 an hour...
...Livingston's earnings, $1.43 an hour, are about what he deserves, say many farmers who use day-haul labor...
...But there are sodas—and sloppy joes, too, courtesy of Sis, who has been cooking over two grills near the bus...
...When McCrae gets $9, he steps off to buy a forty-cent soda from the machine near the outhouse...
...The bus is quiet as you enter...
...Little Caesar counts the money into T-Bone's hand...
...Some farmers flout this law, but usually they don't have to...
...You'll be quiet goin' home tonight," he says...
...Others smoke...
...The only person we're employing is the contractor," says one farmer who relies exclusively on day-haulers to harvest his crop...
...T-Bone calls the men back and assigns each a bed to pick...
...The bus rumbles through North Philadelphia's back streets along a familiar route, plucking workers off street corners...
...But his reading skills are worse...
...Suddenly the bus is full of mechanics...
...Sonny comes by to check your work...
...No one sees T-Bone get paid...
...In any case, the workers keep mum about violations...
...T-Bone, however, is highly visible...
Vol. 50 • April 1986 • No. 4
