Sugar Beets
I'm 78, and I still have scars on my leg from topping sugar beets in West Nebraska and Wyoming. I began thinning beets with my grandfather when I was 8 years old.
My dad worked in both the Great Western sugar factory in Gering, Neb. and the Holly sugar factory in Torrington. My dad also was the hired man for Ted Nanbera, a Japanese farmer, about a mile from our home in the "Rooshin Town" sector of Gering. I remember the German prisoners who were brought to the farm help with the beet harvest, usually in very cold weather. At about age 10 or 11, I had no problem communicating with the prisoners, but my dad wouldn't talk to them. When I asked why, he said they spoke Hochdeutsh (standard German), in a dialect he didn't understand. It took me about 50 years to realize that he wouldn't speak to them because he didn't want to associate with potential Nazis. Many of the German Russian farmers did prepare meals for the prisoners in the Scottsbluff-Gering area.
On one occasion I was in beet field just after a snow. One of the prisoners was topping away when I asked him something, and he gave a silly response. "Ach, du bist so dumm wie ein Esel," (You are as dumb as a donkey) I told him...and the snowball fight began.
My grandfather died in 1954 while I was in the Marines. He and I worked together in the beet, bean, potatoes and grain fields, but I don't recall him mentioning anything about sugar beets in the Norka area.
Dad was born in Melow on der Havel in 1913, just before they came to the U.S. Grandpa would be 123 if he were still living. Dad was killed in an industrial accident in Portland, Ore., in 1971 at age 57.
11 March 2011