A Chilliwack Daydream

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Daydream of an August day in old Chilliwack.

I have been very lazy with the blog...but last night I got an idea to write this while sitting at a light in the west area of Chilliwack. It occurred to me it was a very nice winter evening ...not raining and about 8 degrees Celsius ( that's approx. 46 F) and that is very acceptable ...what is maybe a little less acceptable is the snarly traffic we have in our once little town......it seems like yesterday that the spot I am am sitting at was a soggy hop field and would be covered in barren posts and wires for many acres around at this time of year......what I mean by hops are like... hops....the little buddy plants that go in to the making of that fine beverage - beer.....this area was covered in hundreds af acres of em......people came from far and wide to pick hops ......the local first nations had rows of small cabins that were used to house them in hop picking season..I think where I am waiting at this light is on the very spot.....many transient people were attracted....a lot of wives and children took to this part time summer work.....most of us kids picked hops at one time or another....how much we made was entirely dependent on how much we goofed off.... the days were long ...mums lunches were good .....and riding my bike out to the fields at 5 am on an August morning is memorable....we got five cents a lb at that time....A really good picker (not us) could make 5 dollars for about a 10 hour day......you pick em off vines into huge baskets and it takes a whopping lot of them to make a pound......a buck or a buck and a half was about our speed.....they left your hands stained and you smelled hoppy......I guess that I am thinking like that was 1950....ooow....that's a long time a go...I hate when that happens.

I think I wrote something about this about 200 posts ago.....it seems familiar as I read it over....oh well...a senior moment I reckon.