Stories
The story of
the Stevenson family
I worked on farms in the summer when I was 14 and 15 and fell in love with the life of working the land.
At 14 I went to Antelope Valley, north of Los Angeles, to plant and irrigate crops (alfalfa and sweet potatoes) planted in the desert by Loe Koenig and Suzanne. Lou was the second husband of Marion, my father's first wife. He was, in his own words, "a geezer," a man in his sixties who had worked in many trades. He told me he had been the first man to have driven a tractor-trailor across the Mississippi and into the West. A while before I arrived, as a trucker, he had bought up the street-car system of Los Angeles when mass transit was destroyed by the oil and auto companies, had transported the cars up to the desert and stripped them of their steel to make a small fortune. He turned around and invested it in desert land, deep wells and strong pumps (which I helped to tend). It was years later that the ranchers began to suck sea water into Antelope Valley.
Suzanne was sexy, a Canadian girl in her 20's who had come to Hollywood to become an actress, but ended up working for Lou at that moment. If I am not mistaken she had originally come to the ranch as a girl friend of my half brother, Bob, the son of Marion and my father, who was nowhere to be seen that summer.
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Lou and Suzanne in Antelope Valley: pouring the fertilizer to plant with sweet potatoes |
Lou taught me how to drive by taking me out into the flat desert in an old commando jeep from World War II without a windshield and saying, "Do whatever you want. You can't ruin this old jeep and you can't turn it over here." And it was he who taught me the phrase: "one boy - one boy's work; two boys - a half a boy's work; three boys - no work at all."
Irrigator, I thrived on the rhythm of sun, sand and water. I learned the strength of water as it begins to vibrate in a channel and after six or eight vibrations, eventually breaks out of the channel to spill across the desert. I battled the gophers who dug holes from one plot to another, letting the water escape. I confronted the kangaroo rats and rattlesnakes expelled from their homes in the alfalfa. And all the while the desert sun bronzed me and warmed my skin to a wonderful fragrance.
The next summer I worked on the Pleasant Valley Ranch across Shoal Creek from Ritchie, east of Neosho. Fourteen hours a day for one dollar and all I could eat of the hearty farm food. Not even a bed of my own but sleeping in the same bed as son of the owners. Hard, strong work. Shoveling cow manure (we milked a hundred head) twice a day. Splitting rails and making fence. My shoulders grew strong throwing an axe and a sledge hammer with wedges. Bucking hundred pound bales. Beautiful moments on horseback, bringing home the cows from the back pasture. Tough days, harvesting rocks from a hillside field to prepare it for planting with gloves to protect from the many black widow spiders.
At the end of a month I spent my entire salary to replace the work boots that I had worn out. I asked for a raise. But old man Bill Burton was a real Arkansas slavedriver. The answer was no. I asked for time out. The answer was two hours on Sunday to go to church and that's all. I quit and called my parents to come and get me. But I cried on the way home. I had loved the land, and I had never quit anything before.
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Stages
1986-1992
Fall of Soviet Empire
1992-1997
UNESCO Culture of Peace Programme