Can homegrown teens replace immigrant farm labor? In 1965, the U.S. tried

He sank on Randy Carter’s comfortable couch, I’m excited to see Magnum Opus of Hollywood veteran.

On the first floor of the Glendale house, he had photos and film posters he was working on during his 77 -year -old career. “Now the apocalypse.” “Baptism father II.” “Speech.”

What we were about to watch was not close to the caliber of these classics – and Carter didn’t care.

The images of a school bus passing through dusty agricultural land began to play. The title of Reel Carter, which was produced in 1991, shone soon: “Children’s Wonderland”.

Land: In the 1960s, white young children left a summer surfing to listen to the call of the federal government. Duties: Select plants in the California Desert by replacing Mexican farm workers.

A farmer complained to a government official on a scene, as he rejected Carter’s project far away, a emotion studio executives complained, “This is the most stupid, stupid, most skeptical schema I have heard in my life”.

But it wasn’t: “Boy Wonders” was based on Carter’s life.

In 1965, the US Department of Labor, 20,000 high school athletes to hire summer crops to hire A-Takımı-agricultural manpower athletes in temporary employment. The country faced a terrible shortage of farm workers because the Brapero program, which has been having cheap legal labor from Mexico for decades, ended a year ago.

Sports legends such as Sandy Koufax, Rafer Johnson and Jim Brown called young athletes to join A-TEAM because “Farm Works are doing men!” As an ad indicates. However, only about 3,000 people reached the fields. One of them was a 17 -year -old Carter.

He and San Diego University High’d about 18 classmates of Blythe’de selecting melon and spent six weeks. Fine hairs in the fruits were torn through their gloves for hours. It was so hot that Bologna sandwiches fed young workers for lunch, fried in the shade. They slept in crazy huts, used common bathrooms and took a shower in the water with a very beautiful brown tone, and remembered with a smile.

They were stuck outside rare crew. Young people went to a country -wide strike or went to protest the sparing conditions. A-Takim was such a disaster that the federal government never tried it again and the program was so ridiculous that it was rarely transformed into history books.

Then the maga came.

Now, in some red -prone states, legislators are thinking of facilitating young people to work in agricultural affairs with the expectation of the deportation of Trump’s deportation.

“I was kidding for writing a story for the ages, because we will never solve the problem of labor, Cart said Carter. “I could die and my big grandchildren could easily shop.”

I wrote about Carter’s experience in 2018 For an NPR article This was viral. When a politician argues that farm workers are easily replaced, as last month, the agricultural secretary Brooke Rollins says that “talented adults in Medicaid” can choose crops instead of immigrants.

From journalists to teachers, people reach Carter to hear Picaresque stories 50 years ago – he and his friends Blythe made a wrong turn and “Everyone looked at us as we are an example”, but it was good about it.

“They’re dying to see what white children are tortured,” Carter cracked, when I asked why the epic fascinated the people. “They want to see that these privileged young people have eliminated their ass. Isn’t it?”

But he does not see the A-aspect as a giant joke-one of the descriptive moments of his life.

An old photo of Randy Carter, sitting at the bottom right, then his boss Francis Ford Coppola. “Everyone in this photo won an academy award outside of me, Cart said Carter.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

Born in NY, Brooklyn, Carter moved to San Diego in the second year of high school. He always took the summer work in the insistence of the working class Irish mother. When the Feds went on the field in the spring of 1965, Carter remembered, “He did not hurry to the registration table, Cart Carter remembered. Moreover, coaches at the school known at the university High banned the participation of athletes. However, he and his friends thought that this would be the local version of the Peace Force.

“You are a young man and ‘What will we do this summer?’ Think of it, “then. If it’s nothing else, we’ll go to the city every night. We’il meet some girls. We will make the cowboys take us beer. ‘”” “

Carter stopped for dramatic effect. “NO.”

The university high crew was trained by a Mexican foreman who should hate us for having our family’s work ”when we look at the past. They worked for six days a week for the minimum wage – $ 1.40 per hour – and they won a nickel for every crate full of about 30 to 36 melons.

“In two days, we thought ‘this is crazy’. “We wanted to leave the third day. But we stayed, because it has become an honor.”

Almost everyone returned to San Diego after a period of six weeks, but a few men went to Fresno and said, “They were legendary because they could do a little more. We did this for the rest and never promised to do such a thing. Somehow the beach looked a little more beautiful.”

Carter’s wife Janice came in. A-I asked how important his team was for his husband.

He rolled his eyes so that only a 53 -year -old wife could do.

“Almost every week he talks about it, Rand Randy Beam said. “Like an infinite cycle.”

The University of the University High’s A-TEAM team continued successful careers as doctors, lawyers and businessmen. They regularly meet for re -merger and talk about the hard times in Blythe, which Carter describes as “the intersection of hell and the world ..

As the problem of immigration work in American politics more, the children accidentally realized a significant course of alticks accidentally.

Before A-Carter, the idea of how the products were selected, “It was done in some way and they [Mexican farmworkers] somehow disappeared. “

“But now when we think of the Mexicans, we realized that we had to do it only for six weeks,” he continued. “These guys do this every day and support a family. We are sympathetic to a man. When people say bad things about Mexicans, we always say ‘don’t even go there, because you don’t know why you are talking.’

Carter’s experience of melon collection strengthened his liberal tendencies. The operation, a Nixon management attempt that requires almost every car of the border patrol, tried to cross the US-Mexico border in 1969 during Intercept.

The aim was to destroy the smuggling of cannabis. Instead, Carter said that he created an hour -long wait and said, ücü The businesses on both sides of the border are angry, ”he said.

At the university, Carter cheered the efforts of the United Farm Workers and held tabs in the struggle for banning El CortitoIn 1975, a state bill is short -handed anchors that wear out the bodies of California farm workers until generations until they banned them.

Until then, he worked as Francis Ford Coppola’s “Junior, Junior, Junior” assistant. After building enough resumes in Hollywood – among many credit, “Seinfeld will be the first director for a long time – Carter wrote the script of the“ Boy Wonders ”script, which he described as Dead Paets Society ‘Meets’ cool El Luke’.

Selected twice. Henry Winkler’s production company was a bit interested. Rhino Records’ film section explains why film music contains boomer classics from Byrds, Bob Dylan and Motown. However, no one thought that the audience would buy Carter’s simple pioneer.

One manager suggested that high school students to be a crop selector to pass over someone on the ball night and to be hiding from the police. Another exploding toilet suggested to make the action funny.

“The mantra in Hollywood said, ‘Do something you know,’ ‘he said.

The Colorado River water waters a farm space in Blythe in 2021.

(Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times)

Carter continues to share his experience, because as a weakly knotted progressive, I have always dreamed that we can change the situation … And that the sense of fair game can explode.

A few weeks ago, Federal immigration agents raided car wash, which was often, where it was often.

“You don’t even need to rewrite stories years ago,” he said. “You can rewrite them, because nothing changes.”

I asked what Maga was thinking about changing immigrant farm workers with American citizens.

“This is like I’m going to go to Dodger Stadium, I will take one of the third place of the vine floor, and they can play violin in the Dorothy Chandler pavilion. “I don’t understand why they don’t try to solve the fair conditions and inadequate wage problems – why Never an option? “

A-What will be the restart of the team?

“It may work, Cart Carter replied. “I was with a group of men who did this!”

Then he thought about how he could play today.

“If Taylor Swift said it was great, you’ll take people. Will they drive? If they had good accommodation and they paid.

He laughed again.

“Here is a crazy program that was not out of the map in 2025 from the 1960s. We are still discussing the problem. Am I crazy, or the world is crazy?”