I'll see your weeding onions and raise you loading hay bales onto wagons in South Louisiana, in August. And yes, it "was" hot.
Back at former suburbia home our new large school district described their athletic workout room and it was posh.
I told my husband that the football team of older times (70’s and earlier) were mostly boys from the country. Many arose at 5pm each day to milk cattle and had to get home to do homework and milk again. Others hauled hay during the summer months to “beef up”! Hard work, resting on Sundays after church, a little time Saturday nights to dance or sleep over in town with friends....life was hard but good. Most did so well in school they went to college or in tech positions and moved to run businesses in the cities.
When many parents (we have no children) talk about their kids and grandchildren living at home in their 20’s and working for fast food or not working, it’s sad they don’t have places like these boys grew up to go to for a year and know what real work is like!
the heat and swamps of Ft. Polk was why I opted to enlist for armor with Basic training and assignment to 194th Armored Brigade at Ft. Knox, instead of enlisting to be an infantryman in my late brother-in-laws’ Army National Guard company....All of their enlistees went to Ft. Polk for 6 months of basic and infantry AIT. :)
***loading hay bales***
Wow! Forgot about that! The man we worked for bucking hay would make his own bales and the weight would be close to 80 lb each, for HIS OWN use. For sale to others he made the bales 45 lb, charged them by the bale. We got paid the same for bucking and stacking both.
Then there was the misery of cleaning out chicken houses 10000-15000 chickens in each. $1 a manure spreader load.
Didn’t matter if you had four teens working filling or one , we got 1 dollar a load. Hot, dry, stinking, nasty work.
Any wonder so many of us went on to get educated so we would not have to ever do it again?