MY FIRST WAGES

It had been a slow, hot summer by Scottish standards with
temperatures high in the sizzling sixties, touching on the scorching
seventies, and the neighbourhood boys were appropriately ekeing out the
long holidays in the slow torpor of endless games of cricket.

Until the stranger appeared...tall, authoritative, impressive and
healthy looking, with a broken-down truck, dust-covered Wellington
boots and Irish accent.

He was a contractor for a squad of Irish "tattie hawkers" or potato
harvesters, who every summer swept across the West of Scotland, from
farm to farm, lifting the potato crop. They required extra labour
(young boys; no taxes, etc.) for about a week at a farm in West
Kilbride, a few miles up the coast. The pay was16 shillings a day,
recruiting on a first-come-first-served basis.

"Would you boys like to earn some money for a few days?" (Would we
like to earn some money?! Do dogs pee against trees! Of course, we
would.)

We had decided to get up at ~6 am and cycle up the coast, along with
Roddy and another friend, Archie. But our efforts to be low key and
mature were spoiled by our parent's unintentional interference.

My brother and I were aflamed with excitement and this, unfortunately,
got detected by and passed on to our, normally, cautious parents and
Granny. My father insisted on taking the alarm clock to his bedroom to
ensure we woke up. And my granny was up and all dressed next morning,
to pack us a good sandwich and make a hot breakfast.

When we set off up the coast, it was a breathtakingly beautiful
morning. Brilliant, clean and cool, with the Arran mountains sticking
above traces of sea-mist. It could only be appreciated by my brother
and me, for Archie was still at home, fast asleep, and Rocky was cranky
and sleepy, having gone too late to bed .

When we got to the farm, we saw about 80 boys there already, from 6 to
16 years and from every town in the neighbourhood. We were dismayed,
because we were the only two people dressed embarrassingly like "boys"
and wearing short trousers (we wouldn't even own our first pair of long
trousers until two years later) and, also, because they were only going
to recruit 35.

Other people were also embarrassed, eg. the little rich boy, who
arrived late in a taxi; and Archie, whose father had taken an hour off
work to drive him over to the farm. Suddenly "recruiting" began and the
contractor started hiring and rejecting at express speed: "You're too
wee. You're ok. You're too skinny. You're too young, go home to your
Mammy! (He was heedful of child labour laws). What age are you? 13?
Liar!"

Tiptoeing, growling deeply and tugging our shorts lower at the knees,
we got through, luckily, but 40 other, grumpy boys trudged home to
bed.

The work itself was exploitation: a long row of boys, working in
pairs, tending 20 yard sections of a furrow. Every 2 minutes, the
harvester drove round and plowed up a fresh furrow.

The boys gathered up the unearthed potatoes into baskets, put baskets
into boxes and boxes onto trucks. Non stop for 8 hours with a half hour
for lunch and 2 x10 minute break, mornings and afternoons. It was the
hardest physical labour we had ever done. (Our backs ached for days
from the continual bending over.)

Dried-in dirt caked our fingernails. Nobody could keep up with the
tractor (just as assemblers fall behind in car-factory lines). Every
round we fell further behind, resolving to make a superhuman effort to
catch up the backlog of unpicked potatoes on the next round, but then
we would fall even further behind.

At the end of the day, we queued up in the farm yard to get our
pay--three 2 shilling pieces, wrapped up in a 10 shilling note. The
farmer's wife paid each of us, while the eagle-eyed farmer scanned the
crowd and roared, "None of you boys getting ideas about joining the
line twice?"

We peddled home, tired, and found ourselves the embarrassed objects of
a welcoming party: Three sets of grinning parents, who plomped us all
down on Roddy's front doorstep, which faced the setting sun, and took
our photograph.

I had earned my first wage on a sunny, July day in 1956, when I was 11
years old.