Fresno State Fall 1967- 68
On Saturday night I was starting at guard for our first game of the season versus Santa Clara. On Monday I quite football, I was tired of getting yelled at and beat up physically, I saw no future there. By Thursday I was working in the afternoons after class (1:00 to 5:00) in the Ag unit. Ag as in agricultural, Fresno State was and is a big agricultural school located in the heart of California’s central valley, one of the richest agricultural regions of the world. One of my friends worked there, they hired students to help. So he got me a job, it paid $1.45 an hour, good money in 1968. This got me quickly back in touch with reality. First day they put in the top of the barn to stack hay bales, must have been 120 degrees! My job was to take the hay bales off the conveyor and stack them. One bale came off the conveyor every minute, no let up. You wore a long sleeve shirt so your arms would not get scratched up and leather chaps to protect you legs from betting cut up. They knew I had just played football so they wanted to test me, actually to break me. They didn’t, I needed the money! The lesson learned here, study hard; you don’t want to do this the rest of your life. Second lesson – Wherever you go you have to prove yourself and earn respect. They did not care what I had done before; I had to show those guys that I could do the work. Third lesson – Use your legs, those bales get awfully heavy after an hour or so. Fourth lesson – Weight training did not get me ready for this, an early lesson in functional strength.
TheGood
thank you so much , first part was amazing
Mark Day
It seems to me Vern you had a good crew to work for. Often times on my family farm I had to unload hay by myself without the elevator which made going to help the neighbors seem like a piece of cake when you had someone to help stack. I still don’t use an elevator but have found other methods to feed the cows with out needing to put as much hay in the barn. Doing those things sure makes playing sports fun and special though.
Tove Shere
Great story Vern. i worked hay in the summers in Canada for extra money. We used to load the wagons from the fields and then go the conveyor belts. I counted one day how many bales @ 60lbs. a piece I handled on any given day. It was 650. Legs were very important and at the end of the season I would have huge lats. Didn’t get asked out on many dates, but I was really strong.