"God Willing, I'll be 54"
Embedded Files
Paul Stremple
Team Cliff & Vi
Story Summary
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Belinda “Bimp” Pulliam, 53, lives four blocks from the home where she grew up. Now, she works 12-hour shifts, seven days a week at the Delta Peanut processing plant, where a steady stream of semi-trailers head in from the farms outside Kennett, Mo. Each is filled to the brim with peanuts to be dumped, cleaned, sorted, shelled and shipped on to the next town. The long days can lead to arguments and flaring tempers, but disagreements fade quickly.
“She’s a bit of a mess,” Bimp’s boss, John Gamble, admits, but his paternal sighing over her boisterousness hides a deep appreciation. He’s known Bimp since she was 6 years old and is glad to have her on his crew — even if she is a Dallas Cowboys fan.
During harvest season, Bimp’s days run together into an unending cycle as she rises before dawn and returns home after dark. Exhausted, she barely has time to take off her safety vest before she’s cooking for the rotating cast of cousins, nephews and relatives who pass through her kitchen and crash on her couch each night.
The decades of hard jobs have left Bimp with myriad aches and chronic pain, which she treats using an array of pills each night. With diabetes to manage and no driver’s license after a DUI, Bimp relies heavily on her 17-year-old son, Parrish, for rides to and from work. A devoted and caring mother, she hopes her son’s baseball prowess will soon raise them out of the only town she’s ever known.
Belinda “Bimp” Pulliam, 53, works to offload semi trailers of freshly picked peanuts at the Delta Peanut processing plant in Kennett, Mo. Employees work seven days a week during the fall harvesting season.
Without a license after a DUI, Bimp relies on her 17-year-old son, Parrish, to drop her off at work on in the morning before he gets ready for school.
The day shift’s helmets hang outside the foreman’s office. Bimp is part of a crew that works a 12-hour day arriving at the Delta Peanut processing plant at 7 a.m. and not leaving until 7 p.m.
After three and a half decades of manual labor, house cleaning and various service-industry jobs, Bimp takes a regimen of daily medications to manage arthritis, swelling and chronic back and shoulder pain. She also takes diabetes pills each day.
Bimp clocks out as the sunset fades, heading home to prepare dinner in the dark. She lives just a few blocks from the processing plant, and her current house is a stone’s throw from the home where she was raised.
Bimp and her crew dump peanuts from a steady stream of semi-trailers into a holding pit during their shift. When peanuts pile up on the grates, they must be shoveled and swept down by hand.
Donna Weeden, who lives across the street, talks with her her sister, Bimp, in the evening at Pulliam’s house. Pulliam’s kitchen is filled with a constant stream of nephews, cousins and friends — all cooking, eating and arguing.
In the predawn glow of the refrigerator, Bimp grabs water, NeHi soda and last night’s leftovers to take to work for lunch. Pulliam won’t be home again until after dark, with just enough energy to shower, cook and watch a TV show before bed.
A bucket of discarded peanuts and a broom rest on the floor of the Delta Peanut processing plant's south shed. Between deliveries, workers swept up spilled peanuts.
After an argument within the crew that led to heated tempers — and required the bosses to resolve the situation with a reprimand over the radio — Bimp hugs Kade Smith, a younger member of the work crew who reported the dispute to the crew’s superiors. The next day, Bimp brought Kade leftover tacos for lunch.
Bimp stands in her kitchen after work. When asked her age, the 53-year-old replied, “God willing, I’ll be 54.”
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