HOW TO
Make Your Dreams Survive Time
I don’t love you, so you know I’m telling the truth
My family ran a small blueberry raking operation when I was young. Grampa was the general. His children and their spouses were his lieutenants, and we the grandchildren were grunts on the raking crew.
The work starts early. Dew soaks the blueberry fields until they’re as wet as shallow ponds. Your sneakers are going to be sopping for the first several hours. You might develop trench foot.
Then the sun comes. A killer sun. It hates dew and it hates you. Your body is 70% dew and this makes the sun furious. It wants a desert planet and dead people, and it fights for this all day, every day.
The work is difficult. Destroying your back is part of it. The rakes are like candy scoopers with long tines, so you have to bend low to reach the bushes, which are knee-high at the highest.
You fill the rake then dump it into a five-gallon pail. A full pail weighs about twenty-five pounds. Children can only carry one at a time, both hands on the handle, and many rest stops. My father’s cousin Paul could carry five. How?
One in each hand, one in the crook of each arm, and one in his teeth. He was a blueberry lord.
