The alarm goes off at 3:15 in the morning and time to roll out of bed not to make the donuts, but to get ready to host the Potato Pickers Special. It is early, but hosting Pickers’ is one of my favorite things to do. Now if you would have asked me 35 years ago if I liked Potato Pickers Special I would have given you an emphatic no!!!!! Wayne Knight’s voice on at 4:30 in the morning was enough to make me cringe back then. Please please say that Art Coffin is not digging today… please let it rain cats and dogs so the fields are to muddy to pick…. Please let there be a frost and not start digging until 12 noon or later.. But no, the weather was fine and it was going to be another day in the fields. i could smell the bacon and eggs frying and my mother would come in and make sure that I was getting out of bed and getting ready for another day picking the potatoes. What kind of excuse could I come up with today… Mom, I have a stomach ache and don’t feel good. Can i stay home today. She would say you used that excuse yesterday. now finish up breakfast so we can get to the fields.Mom, I have a headache, my fingers hurt, I don’t have any gloves. None of the excuses would work. What I really wanted to do was stay home go back to sleep and then watch the World Series on TV. Not a chance of that happening. As Dick Curless played “Tater Raisin Man” on the radio it was time to get to the fields and start the dreaded job of putting them in the barrel, ticketing the full barrels and then starting all over again. It seemed the faster I would pick the further behind I would get. It seemed the digger man was taunting me.. laughing an evil laugh whenever he would drive by my section as i continued to see more and more exposed rows of potatoes in front of me. The worse part of picking was sticking your glove in a rotten potato…. At lunch time my friends and I would all try to think of ways to break the digger so we could get a break. It never worked.Looking back , it wasn’t that bad.  It was a great chance to learn the work ethic.My mother picking the section next to me and my father stopping by the field sometime during the day after working the nightshift at Pinkham’s to help her. She would average over 70 barrels a day and many days ended with over 100 barrels. I would pick at the most 30 and when I got older maybe 50 barrels, if my parents read this, they will know I might be telling a little white lie about 50 barrels. It was early to bed each night with anticipation of another day. I couldn’t wait to be old enough to work on the back of the truck or work in the potato house figuring those jobs had to be easier then picking. I never did either one, but did get a chance to work on a harvester during my senior year. Ashland had stopped the harvest break my junior year and during my senior year I was able to get a job on the harvester for the Graham boys from 3pm until 10 each night. That was my last experience working the harvest. As I look back most of the memories are fond ones. Learning how to work loving the paycheck at the end of the week. Having money burning a hole in my pockets.. wanting to buy anything  and everything. If it was advertised I knew I just needed it and couldn’t live without it.
Potato Pickers Special has been on the air for 46 years. For the last 10 years I have been coming in on a couple of different Saturdays to talk sports. It is always a great time. Up and at em bright and early and ready to talk sports with Kevin Sjoberg and Sara Gray of the Star Herald. It’s funny to see the reaction of people when you tell them you were on the air at that hour. I have talked to friends of mine across the country and tell them about the show and they can’t believe that people are watching at that hour. I am shocked when someone comes up to me in the store and says I watched you this morning at 4:30. I do a double take and ask what they were doing up so early.  Pickers has become a tradition for many people from the area. From host Wayne Knight to Eddie Hews, to John Logan to Dave Lavway, to Mike Corey, Don Flannery and Tim Hobbs and all of the others who have rolled out of before before sunrise to make sure that the County farmers are getting their message out.It is a unique show, but one that I have come to love and I can’t wait until October 7th for the next Sports Saturday.
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4 Responses to “Potato Pickers Special and an Early Wake-Up Call”
October 9th, 2006 at 4:48 am
Rene
I was touched by your story. Growing up in the county surely was a unique experience. I used to, as a child, wake up and pray that it would rain, or watch the bottom of the screen for my farmer to say he wasn’t “digging today”. My friends and I also tried to come up with ways to break the digger. The thing that we used most often, but never worked, was rolling a big rock into its path hoping it would get caught up in the lags. It was a hadr and dirty job, but it was rewarding. When the season started there was always excitement. as it went on we prayed it would end, but when the season was done, there was a little sadness and anticipation for the next year. My childeren neever really experienced the “Harvest”. The pickng has just about disappeared and been reolaced by the harvester, first the conventional and then the air. Even still they always had the Harvest break. We have moved down near Lewiston. My daughter was absolutley shocked that they do not have harvest break down here. I told her “Maggie, Aroostook County is a whole differet world”.
Thank you for the smile and for the trip down memory lane.
October 9th, 2006 at 11:47 am
Vicki,
Thanks for the kind words and the trip down memory lane. It is fun to reminisce about the way things were. My children never had the opportunity to work in the fields. I think that the potato harvest is one of the reasons that the work ethic of people in the County is among the best in the United States. Thanks again for reading the blog and letting me know your comments
September 14th, 2007 at 10:30 am
I to enjoyed your blog. I was wondering if there are even any farmers that still have people hand pick the potato’s. It seems as though the old way is gone and ther eare no memorie’s to be made for our kids to work long hours in the fields. It is actually sad to think about it.
January 14th, 2008 at 11:56 am
I enjoy waking up @ 4 in the moring during harvest to wake potatoe pickers special. ya during luch we would find a way to break the harvester with the new harvesters they have the rock crusher we would let junk like steel go in it and jam up the crusher so we would get all happy and then start to take our break while the boss would try to get it to work and after he would get it to work we would throw something else in it and take r breaks often the best way to do it is work 2 hrs and jam it up badly so u can at least get a 10 minute break but now that i go to Loring Job Corps Center i still get up @ 4 and get ready then sit down and watch the potato pickers special to see if any farmers were looking for workers on the weekend up in van buren so it has been a tradition for me 11 12 years now i have been watching it since i was 5 but i don’t think that nothing will stop me from watching it but i really do think we need some farmers from each town to do the old way for the younger kids so then they won’t be lazy it would keep the entertained
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