And they want to make sure you got that grass into the wash house, but if it was late, the guys going to get mad, because you didn't pick it up right away. When working in the grass, the wind was blowing up the peat dust. You couldn't see your hand in front of your face. I wore two pairs of pants, three shirts, a bandanna over my head, and (a) scarf.
And goggles. Yeah, goggles. And you had to tie your shoe strings around your shoes, because if the peat dirt would get up into your pant leg, you're going to itch like crazy when you sweat. After you finished work in the fields and get into the bunkhouse, you'd have to sweep down the bunkhouse. So you'd get all that dust outta there. That was miserable. There are very racist arguments that farmers make about Filipinos do (doing) this work, because they're (Filipinos were) shorter, and therefore they're closer to the ground. But I'd like to think that, you know, the ways that workers were organized in terms of home towns and in terms of provinces and the relationships that these men had with each other and the obligations that they had to each other, (they) really contributed to the efficiency they had in their work. And they had a reputation for being extremely skilled workers. For picking 100 pounds of asparagus picked (in) a day, Filipino workers received just 90 cents, less than half the amount paid to their white counterparts check this website. This hard-earned cash was often sent to waiting parents and family members back in the Philippines. Filipinos and Filipinas, come to the United States with the intent of bringing their family out of poverty. And their American colonial teachers tell them that they're going to come to the United States, that this is such a land of opportunity, that they're going to pick up gold up off of the streets, and the irony is that Little Manila is centered around El Dorado street. They're going to return in a few months as these extremely, wealthy men, who are coming back to save their families and bring their provinces and their barrios out of poverty. And that doesn't necessarily happen. The early groups of Filipinos who arrived in Stockton were mostly young single bachelors eager to liven up Little Manila and ready to show some style. But who were these guys who arrived in America? And, this is not my imagination, they arrived, you know. You would think they were movie stars, seriously. The way they dressed. The way they smiled and ...their mustaches. They really prided themselves in the way they looked, and that was combing their hair, making that straight line down the center or the side of their scalp just so they would look dashing. The Filipino men dressed... whether they were from Chicago, New York, Seattle...they all dressed the way they dressed in Stockton. They all were flashy. They wore suits that were just unbelievable. They would never go into a store and buy a $20 suit and hit the streets. These guys came out looking like movie actors. And yet they were common laborers working in the agricultural industry. Pinoys, as Filipinos are sometimes called, sought out the American dream in new cars, gambling dens, and dance hall girls. You also have stories of Filipinos with the best intentions of saving money end up losing all their money in the gambling halls or in the taxi dance halls, (or) on clothes and on cars. And one of the things you have to remember is that when these young men and women are coming to the United States, they're in their late teens, (or) they're in the early 20's. This is the first money they're ever earning in their entire lives. And this is also, you know, the birth of the consumer culture in the United States. My father opened the Rizal Social Club. Now they had someplace to go.
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