Rewrite the passage using a different tone It was that time of year again. Ito, the strawberry sharecropper, did not smile. It was
workers, most of them braceros, were not picking as many boxes as they had during the months of
June and July.
As the last days of August disappeared, so did the number of braceros. Sunday, only one –
the best picker – came to work. I liked him. Sometimes we talked during our half-hour lunch break.
That is how I found out he was from Jalisco, the same state in Mexico my family was from. That
Sunday was the last time I saw him.
When the sun had tired and sunk behind the mountains, Ito signaled us that it was time to
go home. "Ya esora," he yelled in his broken Spanish. Those were the words I waited for twelve
hours a day, every day, seven days a week, week after week. And the thought of not hearing them
again saddened me.