DAY 3 — March 22, 2007
"Good clean seed"*
What are the chances that my underground blog would coincide with the Bozeman Daily Chronicle today? Is it just me (read as: a single, 43-year-old woman thrown into close contact with a bunch of burly Dutch farmers) or is the quote from today's story, "Montana has a reputation for good clean seed" really funny?
Another day of easy sorting. No wind, good spuds. Hardly any rocks on the conveyor today. Only four of the expected ten trucks showed up, so we got off at noon. Jim told us to write down an extra hour on our time sheets to make up for the trouble and gas that it took for us to come out for a half-day. Each day he has thanked us each personally for coming, and he frequently tells us we're doing a good job. Instead of paying money to go to PowerPoint obsessed leadership seminars, corporate middle managers should be required to spend a day sorting potatoes for Jim.
Yes, what Jim said about the girls bringing baked goods is absolutely true. I thought he meant the girls on the crew (and while dreading it, I mentally promised to do my part) but it's actually his daughter, wife and daughter-in-law who pony up with the treats. Today, Jodi brought brownies, still warm from the oven. Yesterday at coffee time, Matthew's wife, whose name I'll remember next time (maybe), brought freshly baked chocolate chip cookies.
Matthew met his wife at the Dutch-Reform college in Iowa. (I think it's in Iowa). She's from Winnipeg, where there is a sizeable cache of Dutch Christian farmers, like here in Montana. She and their two boys, whose ages I would peg around one and three years, come every day to bring Matthew a hot lunch served with a spicy dash of hen-pecking. He eats it out of re-used food tubs and drinks water out of an apple juice jar. That impresses me.
The boys are blonde, adorable and very sweetly behaved. I noticed that even though the toddler has vestiges of baby talk in his dialect, he whispers grace over his little bit of home-baked bread with all the solemnity of a true believer. The menfolk entertain themselves by feeding the kids Cheetoes and M&Ms to get a rise out of their nutrition-conscious mom. It raises the tension in the lunch shed just a notch beyond my comfort level, but I'm unusually sensitive.
Part of me is a little scared of these people, their faith and their traditions. If I could turn the head of that big fellow in the ill-fitting Wranglers, how would I like a life of cleaning, cooking, praying and child-rearing? (Mind you, it's all just conjecture.) I'm a bit awed by the sheer practicality of their family system, comforted by its predictability and fearful of its rigidity, all at once. I get the feeling it's kind of like the Spudnik, chugging those spuds out by the ton -- mighty powerful, but where do heart-shaped potatoes fit in? Maybe if I hang around long enough and ask the right questions, I'll find out.
We girls on the crew are all here for different reasons. On the first day, Maureen asked us each, over the conveyor belt, if we were married. No, I'm divorced, with a teenaged daughter. No, Angela just graduated from college in Wyoming and she rooms outside of Livingston with a friend who has two kids. No, Brandy is separated from her incarcerated husband, but is engaged to someone new. She has two or three kids, including a 3-month-old baby at home.
Brandy left early the first day and hasn't returned. My speculation is that after a morning of spud sorting, she might have calculated that the $10 per hour doesn't quite cover daycare. Likely, she doesn't have the luxury of figuring the value of baked goods and philosophical stimulation into the deal.
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*The names in my diary have been changed for the sake of anonymity.
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