Joan Remembers
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The local people were marvellous to us
By Joan
Well, I’d never done potato-picking in my life and I couldn’t walk after a week ‘cause the back pain was so terrible. But we had to keep going. We went up the stairs on our bottom and we came down on our bottoms because we couldn’t walk. But it wore off eventually. It showed us just how hard the country people had to work. At the beginning they didn’t seem to appreciate us, but in the end they praised us like mad because we could do everything they could.
You never knew when there were going to be rats in the haystack. One of our girls jumped off it when she saw a rat. I was lucky enough to never see one, thank goodness, because I would have disappeared forever!
I don’t mind telling you that it was so hard after the first fortnight I honestly felt like giving it up. However, I was frightened because I didn’t want my mother and father to think they had a daughter who couldn’t do it. Their words would’ve hurt me more than staying there.
But I had a wonderful time and my parents didn’t go without food. They used to bring eggs home … But the girls, the young ladies there, thought we were after their men. We all had our own men… [laughs] The local people were really marvellous to us. Oh I had a marvellous time…