Chet Walker

Fruit orchards abounded in the counties south and east of Benton Harbor, providing seasonal work picking fruit, everything from strawberries to peaches to cherries to blueberries. I started working in the fields during my first summer in Michigan [in 1951]. Summer mornings, the men would head off to the factories, and the women and children would go to the fields. Every morning in the summer, Mr. Yarbrough’s old flatbed truck would cough itself awake at the projects around 5 A.M. My mother and I would be outside, along with many other people, and we’d climb aboard for the ride to the fields. The farmers treated us pretty well, giving us water and food breaks in the blistering heat. Each of us made up to ten dollars a day. I worked alongside my mother in the fields. Such work was familiar but a far cry from southern sharecropping. Mr. Yarbrough would pick us up at the orchards late in a long day. We’d stagger off the truck at night, almost bent in two by our day of picking.

Two weeks after I graduated from high school [1958], I began the job with the House of David cold-storage plant. This was the first real job I had, other than working in the fruit orchards. I worked the night shift, three [to] eleven p.m. Because of my ‘clout’ as a basketball star, I never had to go into storage lockers to store fruit like the other employees.

Michigan in spring is a blossoming feast, so unlike the red clay of Mississippi. Someone gave me an old bicycle and I rode around admiring the blossoms, and thrilled at the color and beauty of the northern spring.