Why every boy needs manual labor

Makes him appreciate that desk job one day

M.M. O'Keefe
Sep 3, 2018 · 3 min read
When I was a boy with soft hands, I learned these things don’t grow on trees. Photo by Harshal S. Hirve on Unsplash

The summer before seventh grade, my mother came home with an announcement, backed somewhat reluctantly by my father. They had rented 3/4 of an acre from a local farmer named Prosper Gosh to grow and pick cucumbers.

“Boys, you will be responsible for picking them.”

The first thing that came to my mind was I wish my grandfather had not made my mother pick beans as a child, a story my brother and I had heard countless times, even though Mom wasn’t much of a storyteller. The second thought I had was I don’t know a darn thing about picking cucumbers.

My three-fourths of an acre of cucumbers wasn’t this big, but sometimes it felt like it. Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

Here are some of the many things I learned that summer:

  • To pick cucumbers, you have to straddle row after row, exposing your fair-skinned back to the blazing hot summer sun.
  • You can’t see cucumbers. You must feel for them. It’s all in the touch.
  • Cucumbers have thistle-like things on them that prick your fingers.
  • Those thistle-like things get embedded into your skin after a few weeks, turning your soft hands green, brown and ugly — with hardened calluses.
  • A machine sorts your cucumbers by size, with a №7 the big guys you see in the produce section and a №1 the pickled miniatures you find in a jar.
  • If you skip even one day of picking cucumbers, your №1s will turn into №3s and your 4s will turn into fives and even sevens, meaning you make less money.
  • You are paid more per pound for smaller cucumbers. The sweet spot combination of size and weight is №3 to №5.
  • Being tied to the land prevents you from accepting invitations from your friends to go to the beach, camp with their families and go to Major League baseball games. “Thanks for the invitation,” I would say, fighting back tears of anger and envy, “but if I do that my №5s will turn into №7s.”
  • No matter how hard and fast I tried to pick, migrant workers from Mexico picked twice the amount of cucumbers I did and hardly broke a sweat.
  • If you lob an overly ripe, yellow №7 high into the air it may land on your mother picking cucumbers three rows from you.
  • The best defense strategy for such a lob is keeping your head down in the vines. When she rises up, wipes the cucumber juice from her back and looks for the culprit, it will appear you are hard at work.

I think I earned something like $83 that summer. Mom, to her credit, picked right beside us and made $127. I do remember that. She bought a new lawnmower.


The experience persuaded me that college was my goal, perhaps with an advanced degree that kept my fingers clean. I appreciate my desk job.

I also appreciate the thousands of hired hands who day-after-day make this country the agricultural powerhouse that feeds the world.

One regret I have as a father is I never gave my sons the prickly experience of picking cucumbers or some other agricultural product. Their hands, feet and determination would have been hardened and they would realize how this country is built on the backs of laborers who work twice as fast and three times as hard as we ever could.

M.M. O'Keefe

Written by

I write about faith, fathers, history, sports & work. I coach mid-life professionals to confidently navigate their careers. See FiredUP50.com.

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