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<\/a>Pat Nugent: He was the king of the town. And I have to say for Ben Albert there was never once, in my fifty-some-odd years knowing that man, that I ever went into his office, met him on the road, met him anywhere, where if I needed something \u2013 PTA, church, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts \u2013 and asked him, he was the most generous man alive. He would get potatoes for the schools, the church, potato chips. Anybody that was getting married, he\u2019d bring up some potato chips. I have a lot of good memories of Ben Albert. He got a lot of people in trouble, because he had an MU-2 airplane, and he would start it up at the runway in the morning, anywhere from 7 to 9 \u2013<\/p>\n
Julia Sharron: Earlier sometimes. [laughter]<\/p>\n
Pat Nugent: Earlier sometimes. And if there was any kid on that runway, they\u2019d get in the plane and they\u2019d go. [laughter] To Rhode Island, Maine, wherever he was going. Ben never called their parents. They\u2019d get home and their mother wanted to know where they were. \u201cOh, I went to Maine with Ben.\u201d [laughter] Kevin Porter, who\u2019s lived in town his whole life, he did that quite often. You\u2019d think your kid is in school and he\u2019s off in Maine with Ben Albert. [laughter] Ben Albert employed a lot of people in this town. A lot of women got to pick potatoes. It was a dirty job, but it was a fun job. He always made sure everybody had something to drink, eat, whatever. If he didn\u2019t, the guys running the harvester did. I can\u2019t really say anything bad about Ben, other than some of the jokes he pulled on people that I won\u2019t repeat. But he was a good man, his family were a good family, and they brought a lot to the town of Worthington. I had a close connection with him. I never had to go buy the potatoes. The only one person in this town that ever had to buy potatoes was Mrs. Frances Albert. [laughter] She bought her potatoes at Corners Grocery \u2019cause I worked there. [laughter] The rest of us, if you wanted potatoes, you went to the warehouse and you got potatoes. If you wanted potatoes and they weren\u2019t quite ready, you could go to the fields and dig them up, way on the edge, where he would see it the next morning \u2019cause he followed all of his fields. He cleared a lot of fields in this town, and I think that appeals to a lot of people who move into town, or drive into town. You see a lot of open fields \u2013 not so many as you used to, but you see a lot of them.<\/p>\n
?: The Jones lot, he made that whole field.<\/p>\n
Pat Nugent: Right. He made the whole field in the Jones lot. Picked the rocks. There were a lot of rocks. Even picking potatoes there were a lot of rocks. It\u2019s amazing, I think they grew as fast as the potatoes did. [laughter] But he did employ a lot of people, lot of good people and \u2013<\/p>\n
Bert Nugent: And a lot of bad people, he hired me. [laughter]<\/p>\n
Pat Nugent: That\u2019s right, he hired you. I do believe that Ben Albert\u2019s grandson, Peter, is here. I know Peter worked in the potatoes, didn\u2019t you, Peter?<\/p>\n
Peter Kievett: A few years. [laughter]<\/p>\n
Norm Stafford: I heard a story once about some non-Worthington harvesters that came up from the city on buses.<\/p>\n
Pat Nugent: We called them migrant workers.<\/p>\n
Norm Stafford: Yeah, and they were good workers and housed fairly. Other farmers in the area did the same thing, but Ben was known to treat them better than most everybody else.<\/p>\n
Pat Nugent: Yes, he did. They would come up by buses and live in the Quonset huts. I worked at Corners Grocery, and Ben Albert had an open account for any of his migrant workers. When they were in the fields, they could come to the store and get whatever they wanted for lunch and Ben paid the bill. The only [migrant workers] that came [to Worthington], to my knowledge, [were with] a man whose name was John Durn. He was from Florida. He was the \u2013<\/p>\n
Bert Nugent: He was the head man of the migrant workers.<\/p>\n
Pat Nugent: He gathered them up and brought them up here. He was good to his workers \u2013 very, very good. They always came back every year. And then when they had the big fire at the Quonset huts, the church and everybody in this town provided clothing and food for those migrant workers. They almost had to take a second bus back to take all the stuff back with them. The town of Worthington has been, and always probably will be, very generous when something like that happens.<\/p>\n Helen Sharron Pollard: I remember that. I remember kids in school collecting things, clothes and shoes and coats.<\/p>\n Helen Sharron Pollard: They went to school with us for a couple of weeks in September, October. And these kids, they were lucky to get into school. They went with their families from place to place, so they didn\u2019t get much of an education. But Mrs. Porter, Ted Porter\u2019s mom, was the third grade teacher and fifth grade teacher at the time. She told us to be kind to these kids because of the kind of life that they had. Peter, you may remember this \u2013 you were a little younger. But we did a count on the swing sets at recess \u2013 you get a 30-count, and then another kid could get your swing. But we always let the migrant worker kids swing as much as they wanted to, because we knew being in Worthington was a treat for them. People would bake cookies and do all kinds of things like that, because \u2013 what a life. You saw those people worked hard. And for the couple of weeks that we worked and made our 35 cents for a barrel this high \u2013 that was their life. For us, those couple of weeks were horrible and dirty and smelly and there were rats and rotten potato smells, and boys would pelt you with potatoes when the bosses were off the fields. We suffered through it for a couple weeks, but those people, that was their life.<\/p>\n Pat Nugent: And they usually started at Florida \u2013 Ben Albert had a lot of farms in Florida. They would go from Plant City [Florida] up to Morehead, get in the Carolinas, then come up into New Jersey. From New Jersey they usually came over to Mass[achusetts]. And they were pretty much the same crew. They probably gained some and lost some. They didn\u2019t come with pedigree papers, but they were good. I never heard of one incident where they ever bothered anybody in the town of Worthington. Ben wouldn\u2019t have stood for it for one thing.<\/p>\n Evan Johnson: Where did they live when the Quonset huts burned?<\/p>\n Julia Sharron: I think that\u2019s when they lived at Lyceum Hall.<\/p>\n Pat Nugent: But they didn\u2019t come up after that, right?<\/p>\n Julia Sharron: No, they only stayed for one year [at Lyceum Hall], I believe. It was that time, on weekends \u2013 I don\u2019t know what happened, but they would come to my house, \u2019cause I lived near Lyceum Hall, in the morning for something to eat. And so a few came and it was fine, but then more came and I sort of ran out of food. And they were so, so polite. They were wonderful people.<\/p>\n Pat Nugent: They were very, very polite.<\/p>\n Sheila Kinney: How long was the season?<\/p>\n Pat Nugent: First frost to \u2013<\/p>\n Bert Nugent: Ice.<\/p>\n Pat Nugent. Yes. Usually the first frost they would peel the potatoes off. When we\u2019d get a first frost they\u2019d burn the vines.<\/p>\n Sheila Kinney: So three to four weeks?<\/p>\n Bert Nugent: Four to five weeks.<\/p>\n Pat Nugent: He also had farms, not just in Worthington but \u2013<\/p>\n Bert Nugent: Plainfield.<\/p>\n Pat Nugent: Cummington, Plainfield, Savoy. He harvested a lot of potatoes. Maine, Rhode Island, Long Island. We were in Maine once with Mr. Albert \u2013 we flew up there, heaven help us, and he took us around. He took us to the Catholic orphanage where he had lived, because his mother and father were busy doing potatoes, they would work the whole coastline. And he and his brother, Jerry, would stay in these orphanages, I don\u2019t know for how many years. This [orphanage] was an old abandoned building, but probably one time it was nice. There was a tree where he used to go hide, he hated it so much. But there was much more to him than you saw. He could be a prankster. We were flying home \u2013 I don\u2019t like to fly, but I had no choice. It was either walk or fly, and I figured I\u2019d get home quicker if I flew. And I was sitting there looking around and I heard somebody say \u201cMU-2 go to 11,000 feet\u201d or something. Nothing. I said, \u201cWell it can\u2019t be us, right?\u201d And I heard it a second time. Then I heard, \u201cMU-2, I told you<\/em> \u2013\u201d and that plane went like this, and my stomach stayed right down to the floor. I was so scared. [laughter] After that he paid more attention. Bert and all them guys thought it was a big joke, but I didn\u2019t think it was very funny.<\/p>\n Norm Stafford: Clarence Witter has some great flying stories about the airplanes and Ben. He told me they didn\u2019t have enough gas to fire the plane up, but they had gas over in the tractor. \u201cWell, it\u2019ll be alright, we\u2019ll use that tractor gas.\u201d So he put that tractor gas in the airplane and it goes \u201cBoom-bang-boom,\u201d backfiring and sputtering, but Ben took off anyway. It just barely cleared the trees. [laughter] They just needed enough to get down to Northampton.<\/p>\n Pat Nugent: Most people here remember the planes spraying the fields. For probably ten years or more it was okay, but then all of the sudden it wasn\u2019t alright, because people realized what was going on. The people that lived in the house across from Lynn Newell called Bruce Homestead \u2013 he used to hang his sheets while his wife went to work, and the spray was yellow. And at most once, twice a week maybe, Bruce would be hanging his sheets, and down they\u2019d go. This one day Bruce had had it, and he took his sheets down to Albert Farms and went in, and the first words out of Ben\u2019s mouth were, \u201cBoy, what pretty sheets you got!\u201d [laughter] He knew it was air spray. So then they finally said, \u201cYou can\u2019t go near Bruce\u2019s house.\u201d Then of course they stopped the spraying.<\/p>\n ?: How about the time the plane took the canoe off a guy\u2019s car at the end [of the runway]?<\/p>\n Pat Nugent: I think Ben told him [the owner of the car] that he shouldn\u2019t have [the canoe] so high on his Jeep. [laughter] And Ben replaced them I\u2019m sure \u2013 whatever happened he paid the freight for whatever. But he could find humor in things a lot of people didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n Norm Stafford: I guess it was 1971 \u2013 and of course I wasn\u2019t around there then \u2013 but George Humphrey had died and Ben was going to do the flyover with the ashes and dump the ashes. That\u2019s a true story?<\/p>\n Peter Kievett: George Humphrey and my grandfather were very good friends, and George before passing away, he had requested, \u201cBen, there\u2019s one thing I want you to do. I want you to scatter my ashes\u201d \u2013 in what would be his backyard, down on Old Post Road in the Jones lot. So of course Ben says, \u201cNot a problem, we can do that.\u201d So they arranged it where the service was at the Congregational Church. Everybody went outside, and at the same time he flew over with Gale Donovan. Somebody that was standing outside said, \u201cWell, okay, this is what they\u2019re gonna do \u2013 they\u2019ll make a turn, fly over and scatter the ashes.\u201d So Ben slows down the plane, Gale opens the little window on the side of the plane. And he\u2019s got the baggie of ashes in his hand. So then he goes up to the window and he\u2019s gonna just \u2013 [tossing gesture] out the window. Simple, easy. Well, as he\u2019s doing so, the pressure from the outside was a little different than the pressure on the inside, so the ashes are coming back, filling the cockpit. And as my grandfather was flying, Gale looks over and says, \u201cGeorge won\u2019t jump! He won\u2019t jump!\u201d [laughter] So he ended up just completely throwing the bag out the window \u2013 forget about spreading ashes. But when they came back and they landed, the whole side of the plane \u2013 right from the little window down the whole side of the plane, was just wood ash, inside and out.<\/p>\n ?: That is a true story.<\/p>\n Peter Kievett: Yeah, it\u2019s true because I got volunteered to clean that. We got a free ride out of it, and as a kid, I would do anything<\/em> for a ride in the plane.<\/p>\n Sheila Kinney: I always had the idea that he shipped the potatoes out by plane, but obviously \u2013 was it just to do business deals or marketing?<\/p>\n Peter Kievett: Well, he loved to combine hobbies with a career, and obviously farming was his career, but he loved to fly. He learned to fly, him and his brother, at a young age, when they lived in Rhode Island \u2013 that\u2019s where they were from. It started with a little plane and evolved to a bigger plane, so as his business was growing his planes were growing also. Obviously it\u2019s an expensive hobby, but there was also the work side of it. Yeah, he grew potatoes and everybody thought that was it. No, there\u2019s more to it than that. He was a potato broker, so he bought and sold potatoes. Obviously he started out selling potatoes to markets for table stock. And in the early \u201960s, this new fad was coming out called \u201cpotato chips.\u201d Companies like Frito Lay came to him, because already he was a well-established potato grower here on the East Coast, and this is where the market is, where most people are anyways. So they came to him and said, \u201cCan you grow these potatoes? We\u2019ll give you the seed and everything, and then you give us back X tonnage of potatoes, you get to keep the rest.\u201d So that\u2019s basically how it all started. A potato chip potato is different than a potato you would normally eat, and Frito Lay was developing their own specific variety of potato exclusively for potato chips. So he changed his whole farming operation to grow potato chip stock potatoes. Of course here in Worthington, where harvests only last for so long, you can only put so much into storage. So what he ended up doing was, \u201cWell, I know these guys up in Maine, I can buy potatoes,\u201d and they were already doing this potato chip brand, and then eventually he\u2019s like, \u201cWell, I\u2019ll buy and sell.\u201d That\u2019s how he became a broker. Then as his business was growing, he said, \u201cWell, I need a fleet of trucks \u2019cause there\u2019s a lot of potatoes to haul here.\u201d And so eventually he had his own truck brokerage too.<\/p>\n Evan Spring: What was your role in this as it developed?<\/p>\n Peter Kievett: My role was grandson role. [laughter] My mother, Bonnie, was his eldest daughter. I was born and raised here in Worthington. And then as I got older I really became his chauffeur. The day I got my license, he said, \u201cGet in the car, we\u2019re going,\u201d and we ended up in Florida. He just couldn\u2019t wait. [laughter] Unofficially, I already was driving \u2013 you can get away with a lot up here in Worthington.<\/p>\n Darryl Smith: You go back to your trucks, they said Ben was up in Dexter, Maine, one time, and it was snowing pretty heavy. He happened to pull into a place and there\u2019s two trucks out of Hatfield, Deerfield, trailer truck owner-operators. And he told them, \u201cWho are you<\/em> hauling for? Well, why don\u2019t you work for me, sell some of my potatoes?\u201d So Johnny Benoit said, \u201cWell, I went to work for him.\u201d He said, \u201cBoy, he\u2019s good to work for. Got your loads done, you went up and saw him, you got paid. We haul a lot of potatoes for him.\u201d<\/p>\n Evan Spring: How current was the equipment and the method of farming? Bert, you would probably know? Was he using the latest stuff, or did Worthington\u2019s environment require a special way of doing it?<\/p>\n Bert Nugent: No, it was the most modern equipment there was, Dahlman harvesters. You had to mount them on your own tractor, but he had quite a few of \u2019em over a time.<\/p>\n Peter Kievett: Ben could see how the market or even the actual industry was heading, and he always wanted to be ahead of the curve, so he actually had a dealership for this modern-day harvesting equipment. Prior to the Dahlman digger, which looks like a dinosaur on four wheels, if you all remember, it was nothing but digging potatoes by hand. It\u2019s kind of funny, my grandfather was putting them in bags, but Joe Sena was putting them in barrels. Barrels is the most common thing, but bags \u2013 I don\u2019t know why he did it. But he actually started this Dahlman harvester business up here. You\u2019d see big farms down in the [Connecticut River] Valley \u2013 Hadley, Deerfield, all those areas \u2013 and they were still digging potatoes and picking them by hand. And back in the early \u201960s, Ben Albert\u2019s farm in Worthington was the show farm of New England. If anybody wanted to see a modern-day farming facility back then, it was, \u201cWell, let\u2019s go to Worthington.\u201d I\u2019ve met a lot of the old-time farmers in the Valley later on, and they can remember Albert Farms, Worthington, was the spot to bring and showpiece modern-day farming equipment. It would go back to my great-grandfather actually, he had employees that were with him for 40, 50 years driving trucks. He did business from Canada all the way to Homestead, Florida. And it always amazed me that we could be traveling down the highway \u2013 of course [Interstate] 95 was a new road, even when I was a kid \u2013 and we would get off the highway and there would be an old diner in some place in Georgia, way down there, and you\u2019d go in and everybody knew Ben Albert\u2019s trucks. Everybody knew who Ben Albert was, even that far away. He represented New England, and in a sense, Worthington, \u2019cause literally it said \u201cWorthington, Mass\u201d right on the [truck] door.<\/p>\n Pat Nugent: He was proud of Worthington, he loved Worthington.<\/p>\n Peter Kievett: Oh, yeah.<\/p>\n Pat Nugent: He loved the town, and if he\u2019d see somebody having a hard time he found a way to help. Send somebody down with a tractor to help or something, he would do it.<\/p>\n Peter Kievett: How many times would somebody working for Ben go in and ask for an advance, and he would happily do it. And of course there was times where somebody just didn\u2019t have money to buy gas. And I can remember as a kid my grandfather saying \u2013 \u2019cause we had the gas pumps right out front of the office \u2013 \u201cWhy don\u2019t you go fill up his tank for him?\u201d He was a giving person.<\/p>\n Pat Nugent: A very generous person, yeah.<\/p>\n George Coling: I\u2019m new to Worthington. Can you tell us where the fields were? And the airport I think is down there on 112, right?<\/p>\n Peter Kievett: Well, through the years there was land that was bought and sold, but for the most part, up here in town, there was several pieces of land up off of Old North Road. You have the field that\u2019s right next to the medical center, across the street, and down to what would be the cornfield, Joyner\u2019s cornfield. And of course what Bert called the Jones lot \u2013 it was a big parcel of land.<\/p>\n Norm Stafford: Where all of them hay bales are right now.<\/p>\n Peter Kievett: Yeah, it\u2019s all hay field. And then down Old Post Road, there\u2019s two fields right there. And then if you go down by the airstrip, there\u2019s another piece of land that\u2019s off to the east side. You can\u2019t see it, but it\u2019s behind Mike Caputo\u2019s house. Kinne Brook Road, there was several pieces of land down there \u2013 it\u2019s called the White Rock Farm right now. I don\u2019t know if you\u2019ve been down on Prentice Road. And then if you go down Kinne Brook further, there\u2019s Fisk Road, and if you go up Fisk Road, the first house on the left, you drive up through their dooryard and there was another farm down there. We called that the White Rock at the time.<\/p>\n Helen Sharron Pollard: And then the Senas had farms up at the top of Buffington Hill Road, and they also had farms on Starkweather Road, which is the road that goes by the school.<\/p>\n Darryl Smith: Well they had the Parson\u2019s lot, out in the middle. Then I think Sena did Burr\u2019s Field at one time, and then up on old Post Road up the Drascals. Joe Sena had that for a while.<\/p>\n George Coling: When did the business cease?<\/p>\n Sheila Kinney: What was the peak? When was peak potato?<\/p>\n Peter Kievett: Well, I think probably the early \u201990s was the peak, and then after that the market really was terrible.<\/p>\n Norm Stafford: State Line Potato Chips reneged on a deal or something?<\/p>\n Pat Kennedy: Why did they come to Worthington to begin with?<\/p>\n Peter Kievett: This is unofficial, but Alberie Albert [1892-1959], my great-grandfather, is originally from Canada, and during the Prohibition he was bootlegging liquor down in New York City, Boston. And on his return trip they were catching onto him, and he had gotten picked up a few times, and of course he had a lot of cash because he had just gotten rid of the loot. So he figured out that land was dirt cheap at that time \u2013 we\u2019re talking the \u201830s. So what happened was, he\u2019d go down and get rid of all the alcohol, and then on his return trip he was buying land, paying out money. So then when he comes to the border, and they searched him, he had no cash.<\/p>\n ?: Money laundering. [laughter]<\/p>\n Peter Kievett: I found a lot of his deeds in my house, in the attic, and I just couldn\u2019t believe how many, all up and down the East Coast. Deeds to beachfront, like 3,000 feet of beach front at Bar Harbor. So now he had all this land. Well, he settled and wanted to raise his kids here in the States. They had purchased a big farm in Slocum, Rhode Island, and he had two boys, two girls. So meanwhile he went out here in Western Mass, where he found a lot of farms that were abandoned, and he got for a penny-a-dollar value. So he had purchased all this property here in this area, and he was growing potatoes also, \u2019cause World War II was ramping up, and he had government contracts. So his two sons were 16, 17-years-old, they needed to do something. And my grandfather\u2019s brother, Jerry Albert, he was the first one that came to Worthington. He moved up here and was farming, but his girlfriend was back there [in Rhode Island], okay? You\u2019ve gotta remember we\u2019re talking teenagers, and he couldn\u2019t take it. So the second year my grandfather came up here and just started working where Jerry left off. It wasn\u2019t just fields, he was clearing land \u2013 like Bert said, he built the whole Jones lot. That Jones lot started out as like 15 acres [of field], but behind that was all blueberry fields.<\/p>\n ?: Commercial?<\/p>\n Peter Kievett: No, they were wild blueberries, stretching from back of Elderberry Lane all the way up to Fort Champion.<\/p>\n Norm Stafford: How many acres is the Jones lot?<\/p>\n Peter Kievett: Cleared, it\u2019s 176.<\/p>\n ?: So he had thousands of acres in potatoes.<\/p>\n Peter Kievett: Yes.<\/p>\n Ben Brown: Almost every big field in town at one time was potatoes.<\/p>\n Evan Spring: So besides Ben Albert, Joe Sena, was that pretty much it for potato farms?<\/p>\n Helen Sharron Pollard: I think so.<\/p>\n Norm Stafford: I wanted to know more about the proposal to have a fly-in resort here, and have lots sold or condos or something like that, and people with airplanes would buy them and land at the airport. I don\u2019t know what happened to that proposal \u2013 did it get nixed by the selectboard, or did it just not fly economically, or what?<\/p>\n Gloria Conwell: I thought it passed.<\/p>\n Helen Sharron Pollard: My mom was a selectman.<\/p>\n Julia Sharron: We went to town meeting, and the people thought the whole idea was preposterous and they would not vote for it at all. Even when Mr. Humphrey wanted to grow corn in the potato fields to make gas, nobody trusted Mr. Humphrey. Remember, Bert? And so nobody wanted to do this, and so it was voted down at Town Meeting.<\/p>\n Norm Stafford: Why was the town meeting involved I wonder?<\/p>\n Julia Sharron: Well, because it was going to be a different use of property for the town and people just didn\u2019t want it, period.<\/p>\n Gloria Conwell: There was a fund drive to get enough money, and I forget exactly how it worked. Back in \u201993, \u201994, and people contributed money to donate the land to the Nature Conservancy, with an agricultural \u2013<\/p>\n Evan Johnson: We did get the APR [Agricultural Preservation Restriction program] on that.<\/p>\n Gloria Conwell: That\u2019s what I meant when I said I thought it passed, that it was protected by the town from becoming a condominium community.<\/p>\n Julia Sharron: Yeah, two different things, right. Chapter 61 is farm land, and they wanted to propose different use, like having an airstrip that planes could come and land on \u2013 and have all these condos so the air pilots could have a place, and it was really very big.<\/p>\n Evan Johnson: 120 units.<\/p>\n Ben Brown: They were talking about it as an \u201cair park.\u201d<\/p>\n Evan Johnson: You would land, and then taxi your plane to your house, and each house had its own individual plane.<\/p>\n Ben Brown: But subdivision laws come into it and so forth. You can\u2019t grow private residences without roads, so then you have to bring roads up to standards. Subdivision laws really got in the way, and I think that was the biggest snag, if I understand it correctly.<\/p>\n Pat Nugent: From what I understand about the quote-unquote \u201cairport,\u201d if the town would have passed that, Mr. Albert would have gotten money from the government to continue his business. I think a lot of it started with Uncle Sam \u2013 it was one loan, after another loan, after another loan. I don\u2019t believe you\u2019d have found many people buying houses on the airstrip with airplanes and heliports, not in Worthington.<\/p>\n Evan Johnson: Maybe not in Worthington, but Ben\u2019s plan was based on a place in Maine that is very much like what he proposed.<\/p>\n Darryl Smith: I was gonna say, how many potato farms \u2013 didn\u2019t Sam Davis have one over there in Chesterfield?<\/p>\n ?: A lot of those people sold their potatoes through Ben. And over in Savoy was an area.<\/p>\n ?: Well, Ben brokered potatoes for a lot of farmers.<\/p>\n Ben Brown: Steve Sena had some in Granville \u2013 that was Joe Sena\u2019s brother.<\/p>\n Helen Sharron Pollard: So who had the potato farm first, the Senas or the Alberts?<\/p>\n ?: I\u2019d say the Alberts.<\/p>\n Peter Kievett: I\u2019d say the Alberts, yeah.<\/p>\n Norm Stafford: Was it still all that same seed stock that came from Frito Lay?<\/p>\n Peter Kievett: No, Joe [Sena] wasn\u2019t growing potatoes for potato chips, it was table stock. You throw it in a bag and sell it in a market.<\/p>\n Darryl Smith: You go down in Easthampton, they had Sena\u2019s apple orchards down there. They had the apple orchard over in Granville. They were a big family that stayed in farming. I think it was Larry Sena, he always sold all his apples down in Brooklyn, down to the projects down there. One year he didn\u2019t get paid, and he said, \u201cThat\u2019s the end of my business.\u201d The broker never paid him for his apples. Wouldn\u2019t take much to go under.<\/p>\n Ben Brown: All the other potato farmers, they were very small in comparison to Albert\u2019s. There was no one at all to compare with Albert in size. Sena\u2019s was basically a family business and so were all these other ones.<\/p>\n Sheila Kinney: So nobody tried to compete \u2013<\/p>\n Peter Kievett: There was no competition, but yet, nobody had the opportunity that the Alberts had, especially where Albert came in and purchased all this land. Nobody had access to that kind of land. Again, Ben was in the right time, at the right place, at the right era. And of course he had the right personality. He was able to build a business and help out these other farmers, and it carried them along. I\u2019ve heard so many stories that Ben would help local businesses. I\u2019m not saying he was financially rich by any means, yet he loved to see anybody who\u2019s attempting to make a go at it, and he would help \u2019em, anybody. Now if you\u2019re gonna stand there with your hands in your pocket, he probably wouldn\u2019t even talk to you. But he would just love people that were driven to move forward and succeed. For instance, the family that operated [Berkshire] Snow Basin [INSERT LINK] back in the day, over in Cummington \u2013 a ski area, family-operated business. They were very good friends. And there was years where we didn\u2019t have much snow, and small family businesses like that, they felt the pinch. He would give them money just to keep open. That\u2019s the way he was, he would would help out anybody that was in need.<\/p>\n Pat Kennedy: Can I ask a question about the workers? Did the same workers come every year? Did people get to know them?<\/p>\n Peter Kievett: Yeah, there was always the generations that progressed into it. I was farming right up to the end \u2013 it was 30-something years \u2013 so I heard all the stories of the older ones saying, \u201cWell, my dad used to work here,\u201d or \u201cMy grandparents used to work here.\u201d<\/p>\n Ben Brown: Was John Durn there that whole time, the boss that brought them all up? Always the same guy?<\/p>\n Peter Kievett: Well, in my generation no, there was no boss. It was just people who maybe had worked last year or the year before, and they would come and apply. You\u2019re talking about the time before me, where it was picking by hand, and the migrants. Even in the \u201970s and \u201980s, we didn\u2019t have migrants at that point. It was a large group of local people who came, and they kind of liked being outside. They liked to have a little bit of income when everybody\u2019s thinking \u201cWe need to get fuel for the house \u2019cause winter\u2019s coming.\u201d<\/p>\n Julia Sharron: Peter, maybe you can expand on this. During the migrant season, many of the local women worked behind the tractor, and they did that for five or so many weeks. Can you explain a little bit what their job was? You\u2019d have maybe six women behind a tractor doing picking or whatever.<\/p>\n Peter Kievett: Basically, in Worthington obviously we have rocks. We have a lot<\/em> of rocks, and rocks of various sizes. But harvesting, it sifts the dirt out, and it also lifts up the rocks with the potatoes. So as it\u2019s loading through the machine into the truck, the rocks need to get sorted out of the potatoes. So that\u2019s what most of the employment would be on the harvesting equipment \u2013 trying to get the rocks out of the potatoes. There could be three, four maybe five people at a time per machine, and we ran two to three machines during the season.<\/p>\n Helen Sharron Pollard: I never picked for the Alberts, but I did pick for the Senas and my sister Ramona did as well. And I just have to tell this story, because Tim Sena had come home from the service. I don\u2019t know what he was in…<\/p>\n Ben Brown: National Guard.<\/p>\n Helen Sharron Pollard: And before he married Catherine Rude Sena, he was up at the field. It was the first time I ever saw him, and I was probably somewhere between 12 and 14 years old. And you can imagine a young Tim Sena \u2013 Pat, you\u2019ll remember. He was a handsome man.<\/p>\n ?: He certainly was.<\/p>\n Helen Sharron Pollard: All muscles, and he\u2019s shirtless on the back of his truck. [laughter] And all of us girls were like, \u201cWho is that?<\/em>\u201d But Cathy was there too, with her beautiful long hair, queening over all of us \u2013 dirty, bedraggled, dead potatoes dripping off us from the boys throwing them at us \u2013 so he didn\u2019t give us a second look. [laughter]<\/p>\n ?: Did you tell him that story?<\/p>\n Helen Sharron Pollard: Tim? Well I don\u2019t know, I guess I just did. [laughter]<\/p>\n Darryl Smith: I remember my mother, when I was a kid, she used to go up and pick for Joe Sena \u2013 yellow baskets and the barrels. And that was back in \u201955.<\/p>\n Helen Sharron Pollard: Yep, those yellow wire baskets.<\/p>\n ?: Literally by hand.<\/p>\n Helen Sharron Pollard: By hand. A machine would have come by to lift the potatoes up.<\/p>\n Ben Brown: A tractor would drag this digging machine. This is much more primitive than the Dahlman diggers Peter was talking about. The tractor would drag it, and it would basically just bring the potatoes up on a conveyor belt and then just leave them on the surface as well as everything else. But the potatoes kind of float up and the dirt would sink down.<\/p>\n Helen Sharron Pollard: So you\u2019d be looking for the biggest potatoes you could get, \u2019cause you want to fill it up as fast as you can.<\/p>\n Ben Brown: You\u2019d fill the basket and then you\u2019d put the basket into a barrel. Then once the barrel was full, you put your number on it, and the field boss signs the numbers in the morning. So, in the time a kid like myself would pick a barrel, these migrant workers would pick six barrels. [laughter]<\/p>\n Helen Sharron Pollard: Oh, ten. Professionals.<\/p>\n Ben Brown: Absolutely, no comparison.<\/p>\n Peter Kievett: The digging equipment that Helen\u2019s describing, it would come through and dig up potatoes, but it would put the potatoes right back on the ground.<\/p>\n Sheila Kinney: You must\u2019ve worn gloves.<\/p>\n Helen Sharron Pollard: No, no.<\/p>\n Ramona Sharron: My fingernails still to this day \u2013 it\u2019s like I don\u2019t have nice nails because of picking potatoes. My sister said how dirty it was. My mother would give us some cotton diapers so that we could wrap them around our face \u2013<\/p>\n Helen Sharron Pollard: Clean ones.<\/p>\n Ramona Sharron: \u2013 so that we didn\u2019t get the dirt into our noses and teeth. I still to this day hate getting dirt on my teeth. We\u2019d have to clean out our ears, and it was really quite a disgusting job. I think I did it in second grade, and every once in a while I would pick a potato that was about the size of a basketball. Mr. Sena would let me bring it home, because I think I was the littlest at that time. I would give it to my mother and she would be so excited, because that one potato would feed us all that night. I think I only did it for a year \u2013 did we do it more?<\/p>\n Helen Sharron Pollard: I did it more, but I was older and my friends were friends of the Sena boys, so we had a in. I had an in to go and get really dirty. And then you\u2019d find mice, families of mice, in the fields.<\/p>\n Darryl Smith: You get back to how many people you had to have on your harvester. I was in the service and I had a job in Rhode Island, so every other day I\u2019d go over to Slocum, Rhode Island, over to Jerry Albert\u2019s place. And they said, \u201cWell, we\u2019re going out to harvest.\u201d I didn\u2019t know what I was gonna do. Well, two guys left in the truck, and I\u2019m looking around \u2013 there\u2019s no rocks. One drives a truck and one drives a harvester, and basically they\u2019re throwing out weeds. You only had two guys on there. And the same thing down in the Valley, they only send out a truck and a driver, there\u2019s no rocks. And then Benny [Albert Jr.] and I went up to Washburn, Maine, one time \u2013 we had to bring a camper trailer back. And I\u2019m looking at the farm, and he\u2019s got three flatbeds up there with his barrel hoops on \u2019em. And I said, \u201cWhat do you need this for?\u201d And he said, \u201cWell, the kids all pick up here \u2013 they go to school in August, then they get out when the harvest comes in, and they pick for three or four weeks by hand. Up here they pick by hand a lot still, and that\u2019s part of their economy.\u201d This was back around the \u201980s. I don\u2019t know if he had the big [harvesters] up there or not, but I ain\u2019t seen a barrel truck since Joe Sena\u2019s. I didn\u2019t think they existed anymore.<\/p>\n Ben Brown: A little barrel hoist behind the cab and an arm that swings out, and then picks up the barrel.<\/p>\n Darryl Smith: Yep. Had an extra transmission in there, so they go real slow. And probably one guy \u2013 you got your driver who\u2019s doing the hoisting on the truck.<\/p>\n Ben Brown: And one guy on the back putting the barrels in order, towards the cab. Hard work.<\/p>\n Evan Spring: There were some environmental problems with well water \u2013 is any part of that story unique to Worthington, or to Ben Albert in particular?<\/p>\n Peter Kievett: It was definitely isolated to this particular farm, to the Alberts. But even down in Northampton, Hadley, it\u2019s a common issue, because more people are aware of the runoff of pesticides that are applied to the farms down there. Here in Worthington, I\u2019m sure Joe Sena probably had some issues with pesticides, yet Ben would take care of that for him, he probably went up and sprayed for him.<\/p>\n Evan Spring: Did it have to do with it being applied by planes, or did all potato farms do that?<\/p>\n Peter Kievett: No, just in general. There were multiple applications done. You had to apply it in the planter, and then it was applied aerially, and then of course applied with a piece of ground equipment.<\/p>\n Evan Johnson: But the problem with the water supply at Radiker Road was the result of the fire up at the farms [on March 28, 1983]. The whole barn was filled with Temik that had burned, and it flushed down into the soil right there. Within just a matter of years they started picking up odd tastes down in the houses on Radiker Road, and that\u2019s when they extended the water line down to pick up those houses.<\/p>\n Julia Sharron: Yeah, it started with Mrs. Joslyn\u2019s daughter one time. There was a puddle of water, and evidently her dog drinks from that puddle and died. So then the people on Radiker Road started to say their wells were contaminated and they couldn\u2019t use the water. So the Board of Selectmen went to the State and wrote up a grant so that we could have town water go down to Radiker Road. So that\u2019s how they got the town water down there. Every well was contaminated, and it was from that fire, but it was also runoff from the fields, and everything else as well.<\/p>\n Evan Spring: I know my neighbor Richard [Mansfield] was personally sprayed by a plane one time.<\/p>\n Richard Mansfield: I moved here in 1972 \u2013 we bought some land, a little pork-chop lot, and it abutted the Alexander lot, which is on Scott Road. We cut a nice driveway back to be near to the land. And for a couple of years I admired the potatoes growing there, and they looked beautiful \u2013 I thought, \u201cBoy, this is where I wanna be.\u201d And then one day \u2013 we were hippies, sitting around a campfire \u2013 and that orange airplane came over and it just sprayed us big time. And boy, I was hopping mad, I was really pissed off. So that began kind of a feud that a lot of people in town joined in, \u2019cause it was getting on peoples\u2019 nerves. And I could hear the talk in the back room [at the Corners Grocery], like, \u201cLook what\u2019s happening to our farming life now that the hippies are coming to town.\u201d [laughter] But really I think it was a legitimate complaint \u2013 that plane should not be spraying us<\/em>. And on top of that, I\u2019m pretty sure \u2013 one time at least \u2013 it did a defoliant from the air. Because I looked over from [Route] 112 I could see this yellow ring on my land, where all the leaves were falling off \u2013 in August, probably it was. Well, I went to the Pesticide Control Board, which is extremely naive, because they didn\u2019t like hippies and they were run by the Agriculture Department. Anyway, to make a long story short, it\u2019s a lot more peaceful without that airplane. [laughter] I\u2019m really glad that airplane\u2019s gone.<\/p>\n Pat Kennedy: Ted Porter told me a story about fishing in the stream behind the barns, I think. And he said, \u201cI used to fish there and one day I went out and all of the fish were floating on top of the stream.\u201d It turned out there was a storage tank for the pesticides out there and it would leak a little, or there would be a little run-off.<\/p>\n Darryl Smith: I\u2019ll tell you what\u2019s out back there. If you see the picture [on display] of the Hemlock tree [at Albert\u2019s Pond], somebody went up and pegged two platforms and a rope. I think Danny Donovan did it. It was all mowed, \u2019cause that was a home-made pond. He made that pond for irrigation. You\u2019d go down there and it was all mowed, and kids would be down there swimming. It was a 30-foot stepladder that somebody had down there, so you could really get out over the water, and you\u2019d be almost 30 feet in the air. Lover\u2019s Leap was 50 feet. The pond was 15 feet deep and you wouldn\u2019t hit the bottom.<\/p>\n Ben Brown: It was that giant hemlock tree \u2013 this was a real hotspot for kids.<\/p>\n ?: Everybody, the whole town.<\/p>\n Ben Brown: As a little kid, it was especially for the bigger kids \u2013 the scary place that you were absolutely not supposed to go, \u2019cause it was too fun and it was dangerous. [laughter] So this Hemlock tree had a giant Tarzan swing, and you would climb up this ladder, and then all the way up into the Hemlock tree if you really wanted the extra oomph. And it would bring you out so far above the pond, you would end up out towards the middle of the pond and you could release [the rope] at least 20 feet up, maybe more than that. For a little kid, it was a pretty good ride.<\/p>\n Peter Kievett: You had the diving board there.<\/p>\n Ben Brown: There was a little diving board towards the end a little bit.<\/p>\n Peter Kievett: And a floating dock.<\/p>\n Ben Brown: And there was a Lover\u2019s Leap. A little sign at the 50-foot platform \u2013 just a board basically \u2013 that said \u201cLover\u2019s Leap.\u201d And at 35 feet there was a little platform, like a treehouse kind of thing, small. There were not too many male children that didn\u2019t at least go off the platform once or twice.<\/p>\n Darryl Smith: I went up Lover\u2019s Leap and I wasn\u2019t gonna jump off that, either. Up come Peggy Shea, God bless her, and she said, \u201cAre you gonna jump?\u201d And I said, \u201cGirls first!\u201d She jumps. [laughter]<\/p>\n Evan Spring: And it had an inflow then, right? Now it\u2019s kind of stagnant.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>Norm Stafford: Those kids of the migrant workers would go to your school?<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>Peter Kievett: State Line was definitely a big player in the demise of my grandfather, because we were a broker also. We were shipping in three, four trailer loads a day to State Line, and the money was starting to add up. You wouldn\u2019t get paid \u2019til 90 days for that particular load, and then 90 days turned about 120 days. And then everything was starting to compound, and they just never were paying. Eventually it got to the point where he was just supporting State Line Potato Chips with his own money, and then that didn\u2019t work out right.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>