Aloha!

I spent one summer working in Hawaii harvesting pineapples. What an adventure this was! The thought of my first airplane flight and the chance to go to a tropical paradise were overwhelming for me. I was so excited when I went to an orientation meeting to learn the details of this job, then was devastated to learn that I was partially color blind (I hadn't known this previously) and was put on a waiting list. Fortunately, enough people who had been selected before me opted not to go and this opened a space for me.

Why was color vision so important? In order to tell the difference between green and ripe pineapples (see the photos). I can tell the difference between green and gold, so choosing the ripe fruit was not a problem for me.

When people ask me what it was like working in Hawaii, I say that it was fun for the first ten minutes and then was a summer of drudgery. Only after arriving in Hawaii did I learn that we were the migrant workers brought in to do work most of the local population would not do.

I included a photo showing the type of protective clothing we wore to do this work. While we did not use the picking bag, we did wear hats for protection from the sun and the long sleeves, goggles, gloves, and chaps over our pants to protect us from the very sharp leaves of the pineapple plant. We would have liked to wear t-shirts and shorts in the heat, but this simply wouldn't provide adequate protection.



This picture shows the tractor and boom rig used for harvesting. We walked in rows behind the boom; I'm not sure why this photo shows workers on both sides of the boom. Harvesting involved picking the ripe fruit and twisting off the thorny top before placing the pineapple on the belt, where it moved along the boom to the tractor and filled a waiting truck.