All my life I have heard my mother say the phrase, "That was a hard row to hoe". I never really considered it literally. However, when my mother (Helen Coker-Johnson) told me the story of her parents I began to comprehend the significance of the saying.

This story is a simple one. Yet in its simplicity there was hardship, and sometimes despair, but always courage and grit and most of all there was the camaraderie of a family. The story begins with my grandfather, Claude Coker and his wife, Myrtle Turner-Coker, my beloved grandmother.

Granddad was a farmer who lived in the Hurley area all his life with his family of five daughters, Mable Coker-Baker, Hattie Coker-Skaggs, my mother, Helen Coker-Johnson and twin girls Reba Coker-Rowland and Ruby Coker-Eutsler. My mother tells a story of helping Granddad with his farm chores. Although her sisters might have disagreed with her version, she says that she was the only one who would ever help with the plowing of the earth for crops.

Granddad made a seat for her on what she called the "cultivator" and from her perch she would sit and drive the horses while Granddad guided the plow and turned the soil for planting. She and Granddad would then "drop" tomato seeds and when the crop was grown they would pick them and take them in the horse drawn wagon to the Hurley canning factory.

I believe this occurred in the late 1920's or early 1930's, as the railroad was built in 1904 to Hurley and a canning factory was built just north of the saddle club grounds. The factory was owned by Harv Slentz and it employed some hundred or more women. The tomato wagons would line up, taking all day to unload where the tomatoes would then be scalded, peeled and canned. After the grueling work of planting, harvesting, hauling and waiting, Mom would then take the job inside the canning factory of peeling the tomatoes. She was paid five cents for every three gallon bucket of peeled tomatoes.

It had always annoyed me to hear the "Hard row to hoe" phrase until Mother told me about her tomato growing youth. Now I have come to realize the gravity of those words for those who lived in the early 20th Century. For folks like my grandparents and my mother the phrase was not mere words, but rather a way of life.

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