by someone you’ve passed in the grocery aisle without ever seeing
They used to spray us with cold water so we wouldn’t pass out in the fields.
Not the crops—us. Human beings.
It wasn’t some union-regulated safety protocol. Just an old man with a hose, walking up and down the rows like he was watering tired plants instead of teenagers and grandmothers bent over lettuce heads in 102-degree heat.
I remember flinching every time that water hit my back. Not because it hurt—but because it reminded me I was still alive.
I was sixteen the first time I stepped into the fields. I didn’t have a work permit, didn’t speak much English, and had no idea what “labor laws” even meant.
All I knew was that my family needed money, and lettuce needed picking.
We lived in a rusted trailer off Highway 99 in Central California, a couple hundred yards from the edge of the field. The kind of place with one working faucet and a fridge that made more noise than it kept things cold.
My father had gotten sick—lungs full of something the doctors didn’t have time to name—and the bills stacked higher than the kitchen table.
So I quit school and picked up a knife.
Not the kind you see in fancy kitchens or on those TV cooking shows. This one was short, serrated, duct-taped at the handle. The kind that left blisters if you held it too long without gloves.
We used it to slice heads of romaine and iceberg at the base, fast and clean, like clockwork. One head every four seconds if you were good. And I got good, because slowness meant hunger.
There’s a rhythm in the fields. You wake at 4, step into the fog, and your knees are wet before you reach the rows. By 5, the foreman’s barking orders in two languages—none of them kind.
By 10, your back screams and your skin burns through your long sleeves. By noon, the crates are stacked and shipped off to stores you’ll never shop at.
Let me tell you something about lettuce.
It’s delicate. It bruises if you’re rough. Wilts if you take too long. It’s the diva of the vegetable world. Demands perfect temperature, perfect moisture, perfect light. We treated it better than we treated ourselves.
Once, I remember seeing a head of butter lettuce wrapped in mist behind the glass at a Whole Foods in Fresno. $4.99. I stared at it like it was gold.
Back in the field, I made 98 cents per crate. Took me five crates to earn what that one head cost. But even if I’d saved every cent, I wouldn’t have bought it.
Lettuce, to me, was work. Not food. The same way a coal miner doesn’t dream of eating coal.
People like to talk about “farm-to-table” these days. Cute little chalkboard signs. Instagram hashtags. Rustic vibes. But nobody wants to see the brown hands that picked their kale.
Nobody posts the part where Maria, six months pregnant, vomits into her bandana because the heat’s too much and the foreman won’t let her rest.
Nobody wants to hear how the guy next to me kept cutting even after slicing his thumb because he couldn’t afford a hospital visit.
That’s the thing about this country. It wants our labor, not our lives. Our sweat, not our stories.
I worked in those fields for twenty years.
I missed birthdays. Buried my father without flying back home. Watched my little brother leave for Iraq and return without speaking much.
Got married. Got divorced. Saw the inside of an ER once, after a heatstroke. The nurse called me “Juan” even though my name is Pedro. I didn’t correct her.
Over time, machines started coming in. Big, expensive harvesters that didn’t need water breaks or bandaids. At first, we laughed. The machines missed too much. Bruised the product. But they got better. And cheaper. And they didn’t complain.
One morning, the foreman—new guy, younger, white—told me my “position was no longer necessary.” Said it like he was doing me a favor. Handed me a check that wouldn’t cover two weeks of groceries.
I was 37, with a worn-out back, bad teeth, and no diploma. No union. No benefits. Just a limp in my right leg and calluses where my fingerprints used to be.
That was the first time I stepped into a grocery store without scanning for discounts. I walked the aisles slow, like I was in a museum.
Looked at rows of bagged salad mixes—triple-washed, pre-chopped, and smiling back at me like they’d grown themselves.
I reached out to touch one, just to feel the chill.
Then I saw the price. $6.49.
I laughed. Not because it was funny. But because it wasn’t.
There’s this idea that America takes care of its workers. That if you work hard, keep your head down, show up every day, you’ll be alright.
But I worked hard. And I’m not alright.
I have arthritis in both knees. Skin damage on my neck. No savings. No 401(k). And the only time I see a doctor is when the pain’s worse than the cost.
I live in a room behind an auto shop now. I fix flats. Patch up tires. Work under the table for a man who knows not to ask questions. I eat beans and rice. Sometimes a little chicken if it’s payday.
But I still walk by the produce aisle sometimes. Just to look.
I wonder if anyone thinks about us—about the hands that bled so those greens could sit pretty in clamshell containers. I wonder if the college kid holding that salad knows it once grew in 110-degree heat. That someone’s mother picked it, standing in dirt, stomach growling, no break, no shade, no thanks.
Maybe not.
But I think about it. Every time I see a head of lettuce, I remember.
I remember the cold water on my back.
I remember the knife in my hand.
And I remember the taste of nothing—because I harvested your salad,
but I’ve never eaten one.
The soil remembers our footprints long after the grocery shelves forget our names.
There was a time I thought I was dying.
It was the summer of 2007, one of the hottest California had ever seen. We were out near Mendota, working a romaine field that had no shade for miles. The kind of field that made your lips crack and your vision swim before lunch. I hadn’t eaten since the day before. Just water and pride kept me standing.
Then I blacked out.
They told me later I collapsed between rows twelve and thirteen, face-first into the dirt. My arm hit a crate, cut open on the corner, and bled into the ground.
