Jessie Wells, 1965
Item
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Title
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Jessie Wells, 1965
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interviewee
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Jessie Wells
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interviewer
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Henry Glassie
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Date
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1965
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Subject
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Hop pickers
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Hops
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Agriculture
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Otsego County
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Description
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1965 interview of Jessie Wells by Henry Glassie. Clip created for Spring 2017 Cooperstown Graduate Program Exhibition "Hop City Pickers" at the Fenimore Art Museum Research Library.
Photo Credit:
Female Hop Pickers, 1893, attributed to Charles F. Zabriskie, photographic print, H: 6 x W: 8 in. Fenimore Art Museum Research Library, Cooperstown, New York, Florence P. Ward Local History Collection, PH1127.
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Transcription
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When I was a boy about 15, 16 years old, I used to tend box and pick hops with my neighbors. And we used to get up at half past 5 in the morning, and go down to breakfast, and then we'd go from there into the hop yard. Pick hops till noon, go back down for dinner, and we'd weigh us out on the way down, sometimes, to see when we got through dinner we'd weigh ourselves again and see how much we'd eat. Well, we'd pick hops till night. We'd get anywhere from 3 to 4 boxes if we was a good picker, and if we picked ‘em too dirty, why, we'd have to go on the kiln and sort the hops over after we got through our day's work. And it was quite a lot of fun, and quite a lot of hard work. I used to tend box some. I had a pull for it, to pull the poles with, ‘cause they was in the ground so tight I couldn't pull ‘em without having this thing to pull ‘em with. And then at night we'd have a dance, and [unintelligible] had a violin, he'd play a few dances for us, we'd dance a little, have a real good time, maybe nine or ten o'clock we'd go home. Guess that's about all I can say.
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Creator
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Henry Glassie
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Publisher
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Cooperstown Graduate Program, State University of New York-College at Oneonta
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Rights
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Cooperstown Graduate Association
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Format
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audio/mp3
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2.6 MB
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Language
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en-US
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Type
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Sound
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Original Format
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Cassette Tape
