Show The Herald JoumalCache Sunday June 28J9I7— 5 ' & i j! AJSiwvi6Nds £ LookiNq BAck "£'3u 7 June once meant sugar beets June Today I like the month when everything in the Talley is green and everything la coming to life But it was not always so When I was a kid I looked toward to June with the same warm anticipation that a convicted murderer looks toward to a firing squad June was Just as pretty then and everything wu Just as alive then But in those farofl days June meant inmttMiw li June meant sugar beets! June meant days either bent over with a hoe thinning the damn things or walking down the rows with a hoe weeding them (and that involved a lot of bending to get the weeds and the “doubles"’ that the thinners had missed June was not me of those months I viewed with any anticipation And this June years after the last sugar beet was grown in Cache Valley I’ve been back with them — cataloguing photos of kids thinning beets m Bear River City photographs that came to Utah State University as part of the Compton Photo-gwhArchives from Brigham short-handl- long-handl- ed ed Compton Ardilvoa A ic I put off the cataloguing those particular photos as long u possible but as luck would have it I got around to them in June I think I did a good Job of of cataloguing them however and anyone looking photos of Uds thinning beets ought to be able to find h under the various that I headings subject assigned But I had to fight the temptation to catalogue the photos under a new subject “Child Abuse” That beading may have been a bit editorial so I settled “Child Labor” No one who remembers sugar beets can argue with that one to small army of children thinning sugar beets on the David Holmgren farm in Bear River City about 1905 sugar beet that was the key cash crop I heard over and over again how much better off I wu having it than when my parents were that ace Then the beets were planted in thhk rows and had to be thinned not only along the length of thj row but thrbjghus width! By the time I d was Invested with the hoe we were using segmented seed and later the seed monogerm which theoretically produced only one beet per seed I say in theory because it seemed to me that there were still an awful lot of doubles that had to be grubbed out by hand So every spring Just after the When I wu a kid the valley’s a was June rains that we used to economy agricultural three-tolone Nearly every expect as a normal condition farm had a few cows a few following the mowing of first-cro-p acres of small grains (largely hay we’d go out into the barley) and a few acres of fields with our sugar beets In those years of hou 1950s the It is a real test of the spirit to the valley's field with rows agriculture was still very mix- look at a a of of a mile ed The dairy-base-d quarter economy long and to the last 20 years wu years realize that you're going to have away And U was the noble to drop that hoe again and - short-handle- so-call- to d short-handl- 10-ac- re Seldes Continued from page 4 the Russian revolution Seldes remains a stickler to facts His new book elsiins the Battle of still listed in history books as the American troops' first victory in World War I never took place News reporters wrote their stories from advance' Salnt-Mihl- el - i USU Spociol CoUocflano - ed the beets to I-- or intervals and then picking out every double beet and every nasty littie “Red Root” or “Marshmallow’' that lurked under the leaves of thou select beets you left behind I gueu now that we must have looked like an army of sttnkbugs posteriors in the air baeks bent and hou in the ground Today I am an insomniac But after a day in the beet fields I went to bed like a ch narcoleptic It wu a real breakthrough when the development of the hybrid sugar beet and the drill actually reached the point that we eould have hoes I remember how excited I was the day papa eame home from Trenton with what must have been every hoe in town and announced that from now on the progress in seed and machine meant that we could use them in the fields That must have been about 1858 or 1859 So to the last few years we raised beets instead of crawling up pre-clsi- long-handl- long-handl- ed ed and down thou rows we could stand upright and walk It seemed a great leap toward in the timeleu quest human dignity But thinning wasn't all of it actually to no After thinning eame hoeing A final run through the fields to get the weeds that had grown op since the beets were thinned or u which were left bv the of the thinners And then there was the endtos Oh care-lessne- cultivating And the endless And finally Just Every faU the Union Padfie ran at least two trains around Cache VaUey' picking up the hopper cars full of beets at the various beet dumps Today even the dumps are gone I think there is ooly one left that shows anything we its appearance SO years agmt Topping war 0 brutal operation made more brutal by the invariably bad weather nd It wu one that required every spare hand Whom-- 1 wu- in - grade school at Cornish Elementary we ‘were regularly released a :week in early October for something very mistakenly labeled as “Beet irrigation when the weather turned bad in to the fan there was topping When I was first involved in v the operation it was still being Vacation” It might have been a vacation done by hand Horses were used to plow up the beets and then to those whose fathers didn't the topper — his beet knife in raise sugar beets but to the hand with its hook on (me rest of us it wu no vacation at — went end into the fields aH Well it’s aU in the past now hooked every beet and cut off but the leafy tops From there they cataloguing the photo that were loaded into wagons to be accompanies mis column cerhauled to the beet dumps or tainly brought ba& a flood of isantmemortes directly to the sugar factories at Sugar beets: Good riddance! Lewiston or Whitney briefings and put everything in the past tense he explains When Pershing's troops arrived at the expected battle site the Germans were longgone But military censors not at the front lines that Friday the 13th in September 1818 released the prepared stories Changing times in Journalism have turned him from one of this century's harshest and most persistent press critics to a strong defender of press freedom “When I see the SOBs who are attacking the press now I want to be in the front line of thou defending the press There is no relationship between the press today and the press of my time” Seldes said liifi’ANfr ll lM I'ciliilniiwfM ch I saw the Westmoreland 'ease when he wu attacking CBS and Ariel Sharon attacking Time what they were doing was scaring the life outof CBS and Time If those suits had been successful it would hate intimidated the networks Just like thebnsineamea used to The big advertisers intimidated the press “There are no press or bossing the papers In the picked up anything like a Hearst paper they all followed (he “When owner” But Seldes still calls them u he sees |