Arvid Huisman.

If you use the term “walking beans” today, a lot of younger people may need an explanation.

Back in the 60s, however, many Midwest teenagers earned money each summer by pulling and chopping weeds from soybean fields for area farmers. “Bean walking” or “walking beans” we called it and it was good work.

Chemical weed killers have made bean walking a thing of the past, but I often look back on the task as a great learning experience. Here are just a few of the lessons I learned walking beans:

1. You must always be alert. If you got too relaxed or talked too much with other crew members, you could miss a weed or a volunteer corn plant.

Having to go back to finish off a missed weed puts you behind everyone else. I have OCD tendencies and hated missing a weed.

2. Good tools are important. A pair of good gloves and a sharp corn knife or hoe was essential to doing a good job.

3. Hydration is critical in summer heat. A big swig of water from an insulated jug every round was essential.

We usually drank from a common jug and remained healthy. You knew how much water a body lost in the summer heat when you realized you had been walking for several hours and still didn’t have to… you know… go.

4. Too much ice-cold liquid in the summer heat is not a good thing. Some of the worst stomach cramps I have endured were in a farm field, the result of too many gulps of ice-cold lemonade. Enough said.

5. If female crew members are wearing short shorts and halter tops, it is wise for the male members of the crew to lag behind the females by a few yards.

This allows the males to ogle the females undetected. (Warning: see Lesson #1 above.) To the better mannered reader, this may seem uncouth, but most teenage boys have not yet amassed much couth.

6. Treating workers fairly pays dividends. Farmers who treated their bean walking crews well seldom had problems getting help.

These were the farmers who provided a meal at noon, made sure there was plenty of water to drink, took a break occasionally and usually provided a mid-morning or mid-afternoon snack, commonly referred to as a lunch which is not to be confused with the noon meal, which we called dinner. And, of course, they “rounded up” when calculating pay. On the other hand, farmers who treated their crews shabbily usually had trouble finding workers.

The former far outnumbered the latter where I grew up.

7. Workers have rights, too. An area farmer came to town in his pick-up truck one morning to round-up a bunch of us kids to help weed his soybeans.

When we asked if he preferred we use hoes or corn knives, he said he had everything we needed. Upon arrival at his farm, we discovered that his idea of everything needed was a pair of bare hands.

Assuming we would have a hoe or knife to work with, most of us foolishly had not brought gloves.

Pulling weeds by hand isn’t too bad until you hit a thistle patch. This guy had big thistle patches and expected us to pull them bare-handed.

Later in the morning — while the farmer took a break in his house after leaving us at a farm water hydrant — my friend Jim and I convinced the younger crew members that when the farmer took us back to town for noon lunch (we correctly assumed we weren’t going to be fed on this farm), we would refuse to return in the afternoon.

We did, and the farmer was furious. I’ll bet he found a hoe to get rid of the rest of his thistles.

8. Farm cooking is good cooking. I learned that some farm wives whose families had grown up and left home seemed happy to prepare a big meal for a bunch of hungry teenagers.

I was happy to make them happy. Real mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans fresh from the garden, pork roast, apple pie… (sigh!)

Driving along country roads when the soybeans are sufficiently grown, I think back to the lessons I learned in soybean fields back in the 60s.

“In youth we learn,” wrote Baroness Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, “in age we understand.”

I learned and I understand, and now, I feel a little guilty about Lesson #5.