Woman recalls childhood as migrant worker

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    FREMONT, Neb. (Fremont Tribune) — As the child of migrant laborers, Rose Jimenez knew hard work at an early age.

The Fremont woman was about 7 years old when she worked in sugar beet fields in Scottsbluff. In a process called, thinning beets, she hoed up weeds and some beet plants so other beets could grow.

It was exhausting. From sunup to sundown, workers were in the fields for about 12 hours a day.

“You work in the hot, hot sun,” she said. “You can’t take your time, because you got paid by the acre. You had to work hard and do it fast.”

Now 82 years old, Jimenez remembers when her family went from state to state, picking produce and doing other field work. They lived in barns and chicken coops. She and her older brother had few opportunities to attend school.

Little girl birthday parties and dance lessons weren’t part of her childhood.

Yet Jimenez, a great-grandmother, said she’s satisfied with how her life turned out. From field to factory work, volunteer and paid interpreting, and, later, caregiving, Jimenez has had a busy life.

Jimenez was born in 1938 in Lubbock, Texas, the second oldest child of Rafael and Jessie Ojeda. They had 10 children and adopted another.

The family moved from Texas to Nebraska, where they worked in the sugar beet fields in late May and June, before going to other states for work.

There were cherries and cucumbers to pick in Wisconsin and cucumbers and tomatoes to pick in Michigan and Indiana. She least liked picking the prickly spined cucumbers. Bending over to pick them was back-breaking work.

So was picking up potatoes when the family would return to Nebraska. Farmers used a tractor to dig up potatoes, which migrant workers picked up off the ground and put in 100-pound sacks.

When she was little, Jimenez helped put potatoes in a bushel basket.

As an older child, she worked with a potato belt that had a board in the front which held open a burlap sack. She’d put potatoes in the sack, which she dragged between her legs as she made her way down the row.

Potatoes were gathered in the fall. She remembers picking potatoes when it was starting to snow and was cold.

“If you had good farmers, they would build a fire by you at the end of the row so you could warm up,” Jimenez said.

Some farmers roasted potatoes in the fire and their wives brought out butter. Migrants ate the potatoes with whatever they brought for lunch.

Next, the migrants topped beets even in the snow. Farmers dug up the beets which were left on the ground. Jimenez said a migrant worker would use a big machete with a hook to pick up the large beets.

They chopped off the top leafy part with greens thrown to the side.

Jimenez said her younger sister, Esther, accidentally chopped off her thumb while working. Another worker came to her aid.

“He spit and made mud like Jesus did,” Jimenez said, referring to a miraculous Bible story in which a blind man’s eyes were healed after Christ put mud on them.

The man put mud where Esther’s thumb had been severed. He put the severed part of the thumb on top of that, wrapped it all up and took her to the hospital.

Esther still has her thumb.

“It works, too,” Jimenez said.

After migrants topped the beets, farmers used equipment to put them into trucks.

Later, migrant workers picked up the beet tops used to feed cattle.

“We always found some kind of job,” she said, adding that they also picked corn missed by machinery.

The migrant process began all over again in late March or April.

While Jimenez’s younger siblings had more opportunities to attend school, she and her older brother, Ben, had very little schooling.

She remembered going to junior high. Teachers put a second-grade-level book in between the pages of the textbooks for her. Years later, she taught herself to read and write in English from the children’s homework.

Jimenez was about 5 or 6 years old when she started to learn to cook.

Getting home after work, her mother gave the baby a bath and took one herself. The other children took baths afterward. Both parents made supper.

“My mom never rested,” Jimenez said. “She worked all the time.”

Jimenez’s dad built their homes in Scottsbluff, but migrant housing was different. Her mom always took along a broom and a bottle of Hilex, chlorine bleach.

Some farmers in Michigan, Wisconsin and Indiana would move the cows out of a barn or equipment from a shed, which her mother swept and cleaned before the family moved in.

“We lived in chicken coops, too,” she said.

Jimenez met her future husband, Raymond, when she was picking tomatoes in Indiana. He had served in the U.S. Army in Korea and was working for a railroad company.

“He was from Scottsbluff, too,” she said.

That year, she and her sister Esther went with their dad to pick cotton in Texas.

“That was the worst job that I ever had,” she said.

The sharp, prickly bracts on the cotton plant would tear the skin of her hands even when she wore gloves. She and her sister and dad returned home after two weeks.

Raymond, who’d noticed her in Indiana, would give chocolates to her younger siblings to give to her.

She never got the chocolates, but she got a proposal of marriage. She accepted. They married a month after they met.

He worked on the railroad and she stayed home, where she’d care for the seven children they’d have.

“Raymond never wanted me to go to work,” she said, adding that he didn’t want the children left by themselves.

It would be the best time of her life.

“We were always busy,” she said. “I had fun with all my kids.”

When her youngest child went to kindergarten, she did factory work.

The family moved to North Bend, then Fremont after he got a job in a meat processing facility in Schuyler.

For a few months, she opened and ran La Paloma restaurant on 23rd Street in Fremont.

Then she went to work in the former Campbell Soup plant in Fremont, where she deboned chicken. She worked there for almost 11 years.

“You had to work fast and keep up with whatever they gave you,” she said.

Workers stood while they worked.

“You could sit down for — I think — five minutes, but then you’d have to let somebody else sit.”

When she got home after working at the plant or on Mondays when she wasn’t working, she’d get calls asking her to be a volunteer interpreter at a family planning clinic or at what is now called Methodist Fremont Health. She worked wherever doctors needed her to interpret.

Back then, she’d scrub up just like the doctors, don a gown and go into the operating room. When doctors asked the patient a question, she’d interpret.

After the Campbell Soup plant in Fremont closed, she worked as a courtroom interpreter at the Dodge County Courthouse. She was paid there, but only did that job for about two or three years.

She didn’t get many hours interpreting so she became a full-time caregiver, something she did for years.

Raymond died in 2005. Today, she is retired and has 13 grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren. Her oldest brother, Ben, who served in the U.S. Army, later became a missionary in Mexico. Her brother David, now retired, was a sheriff and an undercover officer during his career in western Nebraska.

Her son, Robert, served four tours of duty in Iraq while in the U.S. Army.

Jimenez’s granddaughter, Penelope, a 2020 Fremont High School graduate, is starting classes at Wayne State College and plans to become a teacher.

Throughout the years, Jimenez has made many friends. She still has friends from her days at Campbell Soup along with those who live in the same apartment complex.

“Rose has a large group of friends, where she lives,” said longtime pal Jody Coley of Fremont. “She has a big heart and helps others when she can.”

Friends admire Jimenez.

“Rose is one of the strongest, most humble and faithful women I know,” said friend Becky Novacek of Fremont.

Looking back, Jimenez describes her life as very busy and blessed.

“I think I’m satisfied with my life,” she said.

And while she didn’t get a birthday party as a child, she did get to go to the movies a couple of times with friends from church — back when popcorn and pop were 5 cents apiece and it cost $10 to see the film.

It was a nice treat for someone who’d known hard work.

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