Cutting Asparagus in Gonzales, California — Spring 1965
/Journal of a ‘60s California Farm Worker, Part 2
These five essays are pieces of my life, each one capturing a chapter in my journey from a young migrant laborer to a United States Marine. They begin in the Imperial Valley, where I worked the lettuce fields alongside other Filipino farmworkers, learning the rhythms of planting, cutting, and packing under the desert sun. From there, the story moves to Gonzales, where the asparagus harvest tested both body and will, and where the camaraderie of the bunkhouse softened the hardships of the work.
In Coachella, the grape harvest unfolded alongside weekends in Los Angeles — a mix of backbreaking field labor and fleeting moments of youth, music, and romance. Delano follows, where I arrived in September 1965 during a turning point in farm labor history, as Filipino and Mexican workers stood together in strikes that would reshape the agricultural industry.
The final essay brings me into the United States Marine Corps, where the discipline, endurance, and teamwork I had learned in the fields became the foundation for my military service. Together, these essays are not just my personal story, but also a record of a generation of Filipino Americans whose labor and lives were deeply woven into the history of California and the nation.
At the labor camp in Gonzales, California (Image courtesy of Alex Fabros, Jr. This image has been digitally enhanced using AI.)
Before dawn, the air in Gonzales carried the smell of damp earth and the faint sweetness of cut grass. Laborers, many of them Filipino men who had been in the valley for decades, gathered in the dim light—coffee cups in one hand, long-handled asparagus knives in the other. Some wore denim jackets over work shirts, with caps pulled low; others wrapped bandanas around their faces to keep the dust out.
Laborers sharpening their knives in the fields (Image courtesy of Alex Fabros, Jr. This image has been digitally enhanced using AI.)
The trucks rolled slowly along River Road and Fifth Street toward the fields. In the cool half-light, the furrows shimmered with dew. The spears, just the right height—eight to ten inches above the soil—stood straight and proud, waiting for the cut.
Cutting asparagus in Gonzales was exacting work. You walked the rows with your knife angled just right, sliding it down alongside the spear until the blade reached the crown below the soil surface. The cut had to be deep enough to keep the stalk straight and clean, but not so deep as to damage the plant. A wrong move meant a crooked spear or a wounded crown that wouldn’t produce again that season.
Each worker moved in rhythm—bend, slice, lift, bundle, move forward. The work strained the lower back and legs, and by midmorning, you could feel every muscle from your shoulders to your calves. The bundles were placed into shallow crates, laid gently so the tips wouldn’t bruise.
In 1965, the crews consisted of a mix of long-time Filipino manongs, younger Mexican braceros who had stayed after the program ended in 1964, and a handful of local youth taking on seasonal work before summer. For Filipino men, many now in their 50s and 60s, asparagus season was one of several harvests they followed in the Salinas Valley each year—lettuce in the summer, broccoli and cauliflower in the fall, and sometimes heading north to Stockton for longer asparagus seasons.
You’d hear Ilocano, Tagalog, Spanish, and English mingling in the rows. Someone might start a song—an old kundiman or a ranchera (traditional Mexican music)—and the rhythm would carry down the furrow. Jokes and stories passed between workers as easily as the bundles moved from hand to crate.
By midday, the sun had burned away the fog, and the valley floor shimmered with heat. The crew would break for lunch—rice and adobo from a tin lunch pail for some, bolillo sandwiches or tamales for others. They’d sit along the field edge, backs against wooden crates, looking out over the flat sweep of farmland toward the Gabilan Mountains.
Sometimes, the farmer or foreman would drive by to check the harvest, counting crates and giving a nod if the work was going well. Pay was by the hour for some crews and by the crate for others. In 1965, a good cutter in Gonzales could still make enough in the short asparagus season to carry through until the lettuce crews started up again.
As the afternoon light turned golden, the last crates were loaded onto flatbeds headed for the packing shed. The spears would be trimmed, washed, and cooled before being trucked north to San Francisco or east toward Los Angeles.
At the Gonzales Packing House (Image courtesy of Alex Fabros, Jr. This image has been digitally enhanced using AI.)
The workers would head back into town, some to the labor camp outside Gonzales, while others would go to small, rented rooms in Salinas or Soledad. The knives would be wiped clean and laid aside, ready for tomorrow’s cut—because in asparagus, the field never stops growing, and the work always starts again at dawn.
That spring, the Filipino community’s big event was the Dimasalang coronation dance. The hall was lit with colored bulbs strung across the ceiling, a type of lighting that made everything feel warmer and more alive. The band tuned up in the corner—sax, trumpet, drums, and guitar—playing a mix of American pop, cha-cha, and slow love songs. Families came dressed to the nines: men in barongs or suits, women in gowns, some with traditional Filipino butterfly sleeves.
The six contestants for the 1965 crown were all striking—three were pure Filipino, three were Filipino Mexican—and each one had her circle of supporters in the crowd. I knew each of them well. I had made it a point to date all six in the weeks before the pageant, maybe to see where the sparks would fly.
When they called her name—my future girlfriend—as the winner, the hall erupted. She was a cheerleader at Watsonville High, beautiful in her white gown and tiara, and she carried herself with a grace that made it clear why she had won. Somehow, among all the girls I knew, she and I were drawn to each other in a way that went deeper than looks or dancing. She was the only Filipino girl I ever seriously wanted as my girlfriend, maybe even something more—but I knew if I wanted to keep her, I’d have to work harder, earn more, and prove I was worthy.
Sunday was my day off, the one morning I didn’t have to beat the sunrise into the fields. If I wasn’t at a dance, I climbed into my car and head over the winding Highway 17 to Santa Cruz with her. The surfboards were strapped to the roof, and the day was ours. The cold Pacific didn’t bother me much anymore. After weeks bent over the rows, my back and arms were strong, my shoulders thick.
Each worker moved in rhythm—bend, slice, lift, bundle, move forward. The work strained the lower back and legs, and by midmorning, you could feel every muscle from your shoulders to your calves.
I wasn’t the skinny high school kid I once was. The fieldwork had shaped me—muscle where there used to be bone, sun on my skin, and a kind of quiet pride that came from earning my days in the dirt. When I paddled out into the waves, I felt that strength in every stroke. And when we sat on the sand afterward, watching the sun dip low over the Monterey Bay, I knew these were the days that would stay with me long after the spears of Gonzales had faded from memory.
Not every Sunday took me to the ocean. Sometimes I went home to Salinas to sleep in the room I shared with my one brother. I’d leave some of my clothes there—shirts, jackets, and a pair or two of good pants so he could wear them while he was going to school at Alisal High. He was better dressed than I ever was in high school, and I didn’t mind. I knew what it meant to walk into a classroom feeling like you belonged, and if my field-earned wages could help him stand a little taller, it was worth every cut spear and every sore muscle.
Bibliography
California Agricultural Extension Service. Asparagus Production. Sacramento: University of California, 1964.
California Department of Water Resources. Irrigation Systems in Monterey County. Sacramento: State of California, 1965.
California Farm Bureau. Reports and Bulletins. Various issues, 1965.
FAXRP Oral History Collection. “Gonzales Agricultural Workers, 1960–1970.” Filipino American Experience Research Project, San Francisco State University.
Galarza, Ernesto. Merchants of Labor. Santa Barbara: McNally & Loftin, 1964.
Monterey County Historical Society. Agriculture in the Salinas Valley, 1964–1966.
Salinas, Philippines Mail. April 1965.
Watsonville High School Yearbook. Watsonville, CA, 1965.
Suggested Reading
Baldoz, Rick. The Third Asiatic Invasion: Empire and Migration in Filipino America, 1898–1946. New York: NYU Press, 2011. — Context on Filipino migration and labor in California agriculture.
Bonus, Rick. Locating Filipino Americans: Ethnicity and the Cultural Politics of Space. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000. — Insight into community formation and cultural identity.
Cabanilla, Carlos. Filipinos in the Salinas Valley. Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2011. — Pictorial history of Filipino life in the area.
Galarza, Ernesto. Barrio Boy. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1971. — Autobiographical account of Mexican American farmworker life, with parallels to Filipino labor.
McWilliams, Carey. Factories in the Field. Boston: Little, Brown, 1939. — Classic study of California farm labor conditions.
Alex S. Fabros, Jr. is a retired Philippine American Military History professor.
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