With summer fast approaching, my memories fade back to what many remember as the worst teen-age summer job ever invented. As a young boy growing up in Purdy, America (Lindsay suburb) during the early 1970's, I believed that "cutting broomcorn" must have started in a Japanese concentration camp as a way to torture prisoners of war during World War II. As a matter of fact, one longtime Lindsay resident said that in 1945 many of the World War II Nazi and Nazi sympathizer POWs, interned at Pauls Valley, were brought to Lindsay to work broomcorn. Unfortunately, the German "Master Race" POWs considered working in the broomcorn patch - cruel and unusual punishment, so they were taken back to Pauls Valley... for recuperation from the oppressive Oklahoma heat. As a boy living down on Rush Creek, I also thought banishment to the broomcorn patch was cruel and unusual, but it was the only summer work we could get. Working 10 to 12 hour days, we could earn as much as $300 for six weeks at $1 an hour. I usually only made about $100 - because when football practice started in the first week of August, I had the good fortune of leaving the broomcorn field for the practice field, usually at around 3 PM. Junior High football practice was a welcome relief from the hard work, and the second week of football practice began two-a-days, so I didn't go to the broomcorn patch at all. As early as 6 AM each morning, several broomcorn crews would meet at the "Ice Dock" on Broomcorn Street to load up onto sideboarded trucks, which would then haul the broomcorn "Johnnys" and "Sallys" to the fields. Those workers who lived near the fields (like me) would arrive at 7AM to begin "cutting" or "breaking" the corn - by hand. I was not big or strong enough to be a "breaker", as it required the worker to walk between two rows of 'fifteen feet tall' corn, breaking 7 or 8 stalks at a time over behind the Johnny - as he walked half a mile each direction. My dad was the fastest breaker I ever saw, even blind.
During the 1960's and into the early 1970's, immigrant laborers, mostly Latin Americans, came north to harvest the broomcorn. Most crews had 20 to 30 Mexicans working alongside us locals, with a few very pretty Jr. High and High school senioritas among them. When I was fourteen years old, I became smitten with the most beautiful thirteen year-old Mexican seniorita I had ever seen, and maybe the only one... working broomcorn down on Rush Creek (my uncle's farm). She couldn't speak a word of English, and I could not speak Spanish nor understand it. All we could do was "make eyes" at each other (she tried to get physically closer to me by "tickling" me under my arms, as I jumped up to grab hold of a tree branch). After a couple of weeks - she left Rush Creek with her family, and I never saw her again... It reminds me of the 1970 pop song by Jeff Christie - Yellow River. You can listen to it on YouTube or my facebook page. "I'm finally returning to Rush Creek."
Thankfully, I graduated to a much easier job by the 9th grade - hauling hay. Hay hauling did have its drawbacks though, as there were no pretty girls around... they were left in the broomcorn patch. I did have the good fortune of meeting one very pretty girl who still cut broomcorn, in November of my 9th grade year, 1971. That's the only reason I ever wished I were back in the broomcorn field.
Fortunately or... unfortunately, the hand harvesting of broomcorn died out in about 1974, and the "Broomcorn Capitol of the World" was no more...
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