Page 17 - From the Outhouse 4 -21

17 | P A T R I C I A R A E M E R R I T T W H A T L E Y

FOREWORD

A

s I remember, Sanford, Florida, was known as "Celery City." The name was fitting because celery and cabbage were its cash crops

along with oranges, grapefruit, and watermelon. I also had avocados and mulberries in my yard. Because of its rich soil and the lush
vegetation, Sanford was considered a migrant town because workers were always needed to harvest the produce. Farm workers

toiled long hours to earn as much as they could to take care of their families.

The migrants were seasonal workers. They would travel to Rochester, New York, at the end of the first harvest season in Sanford so that they

could pick other crops up north. I wanted to go, but I couldn't during the summer time. I 'd be envious when my friends returned from

Rochester in late September with plenty of new clothes. I had only two or three new things compared to a whole month's worth of new
clothes that they had. I longed for the money you could earn "on the season" because I wanted to buy new clothes too.

One day while reminiscing with my friend, neighbor, and high school classmate, I learned the truth about working on the seasons (as people

would say back in the day). She informed me that, in her experience, traveling to Rochester was not a good idea, and she expressed that my

mother was right not to let me go. First of all, what I thought was exciting and loads of fun was, in fact, horrible in her opinion. She said that
riding on the back of a truck for hundreds of miles with just a tarp cover was miserable. There was very little space to sit or lie down. The

workers had to sit on their bag of clothes — rain or shine. The very few stops made along the way was cruel. Besides that, restaurant or restroom

breaks were nearly impossible because of the segregation laws in different states.

She described the camps that housed the workers as a collection of one-room cabins with cots that were very uncomfortable to sleep on. She
said that another part of this miserable setting were the assaults and rape attempts on women in the camp. She revealed that she had to fight

off intruders all the time. Oh, my God, how awful was that!