"W. Kiernan" wrote:
>
> Carrol Cox wrote:
> >
> > Doug is correct on this. One of the most unpleasant afternoons
> > of my life was spent picking cucumbers in a field with a low
> > yield. My back still hurts when I think of it over 60 years later.
>
> Of course, your first day doing physical work after a few years working
> with only your fingers while sitting in air-conditioning is likely to
> leave you aching pretty good. Hey, as the Spandex types say, "no pain,
> no gain," "feel the burn," and all that.
'Twas by far not my first day working. But it was my first and last day at that particular type of working. And at the time of this particular episode I had never been in an airconditioned space in my life except for movie theatres. This was in that epoch when one went to summer movies for the airconditioning more than for the movie. You are roughly correct, however. After two weeks on a gear shaver I no longer had to soak my hands in ice water and rub them with alcohol for 20 minutes every morning before I could close my fingers to pick up a coffee cup. And an older worker in the plant told me that after a year one was numb to it. But I can't believe that the stoop, stand, move, stoop . . . labor is a fit activity for anyone, no matter how enured they become to it.
Michael is correct, however, about the hazards of farm machinery & in particular about the horrors of applying pesticides. The machinery has probably become safer in the years since I did farm work, but I am sceptical about pesticides ever becoming safe for the work force.
Carrol