The Editor and I go several days without fresh food on a long, empty strip of interstate that runs through the center of Nebraska. By the time we reach ‘Sebastian’s U-Pick’ we’re starved for anything that isn’t plastic-wrapped or roller-warmed and we’re ready to stretch our legs.
Autumn, here, is cold and dry and the knuckles of my hands are chapped by the ride. I notice the Editor shivering, sometimes, and I wonder what she thinks about on the long, silent stretches between destinations. She would never tell me and she would never admit to the discomfort but we are both clearly relieved by the relative warmth of walking in the apple orchard at ‘Sebastian’s.’
We quickly fill a basket and stop ourselves before filling another, resting, instead, at the base of a tree. After an hour, the woman from the front finds us both napping over the books we’ve neglected for months, each having managed only a few pages more.
“Don’t get up on account of me,” she smiles, seeing our embarrassment, “I wondered if I could just get some quick input from you.”
The woman slides a tablet from her bag and it opens to a question:
‘Should Sebastian’s U-Pick transition to a management structure suitable for conversion from a ‘Partnership’ to an ‘LLC’?’
The woman kneels long enough for the Editor to drowsily press the ‘Yes’ option and smiles again as she stands:
“I’ll get that going right away!”
“Get what going?” the Editor asks, paranoid, suddenly, “I didn’t agree to anything.”
“The management conversion.”
‘On paper, nothing is lazier than a so-called ‘u-pick’ farm, a business that has the audacity to charge customers to take the position of workforce. The reality is that a business’ average customer is entirely ignorant to the nuances of the products and services that they consume. America has not seen a revolution in ‘U-Sew’ sneaker factories because the average shoe-wearer would sooner be sucked into the complex factory workings than understand the first thing about the intricacies involved in even capping the laces that hold them to their feet (destroying the expensive machine and creating a gruesome litigation scenario in the process). A ‘u-pick’ farm, in reality, maintains the normal workforce and hires baby-sitters to keep the pickers from harming themselves or simply descending upon the crops like SUV driving locusts. It is the worst of many worlds.
‘Sebastian’s U-Pick’ embraces the madness of ‘the customer is always right,’ allowing strangers to pick their fruit and to make sweeping, corporate-level decisions based on nothing but their seasonal whims. It has dissolved dozens of times but rises from bankruptcy like a suicidal phoenix, suffering the combined trauma of a lifetime of failed trust-falls.’
Weeks pass and the Editor’s choice follows her. She spends free hours carefully researching tax law and sifting through the poorly digitized newspapers of distant Nebraska counties for any mention of ‘Sebastian’s.’
“It was a moment’s peace,” she explains, “I can’t be the one to ruin it.”
-traveler
