Skip to main content

Canned


We all wear ear plugs. Thousands of empty tin cans rattling above and in front and all around will eventually wear away anyone's sanity. Those who don't wear plugs have some sort of ear phone plugged in to a radio. It's 1972, only small radios have ear plugs. Some take drugs. Lots of speed in your co-worker's systems because after this shift gets off at 10:00p.m. they barely have enough time to grab a bite, or a another dose of something and head down to the Hunt's cannery in Hayward. Tomatoes are in now and the Ketchup brigade in in full swing.
But we're in Emeryville, the little industrial town between W. Berkeley and W. Oakland, and the cannery belongs to Del-Monte. I'm in pears. Literally. From 1 p.m. till 10 I empty big steel wheelbarrows full of rotten pears, or spilled fruit into large fruit dumpsters on a loading dock that rivals any for activity, noise, muck, and large trucks moving in and out all day and all night.
I have just completed my graduate work at the big U and need to support myself while I wait for my first teaching job. Until then I belong to the cannery workers union. I'm paid a fair wage for this shift that requires much more of my physical strength than anything else.
But I have a job. I can stay in Berkeley all summer and wait for the call that completes my first step to a goal. I await my first teaching contract in the dark, dank, shattering sounds of Cannery #35.
When my shift starts I change into a classic bright yellow rain suit complete with hat. Before the top jacket goes on, I go into the locker room and rub a special lanolin creme on my arms and hands. It's more like warm taffy, sticky and buckskin colored and protective. The lye bath that dirty fruit takes upon entering the cannery can splash up from time to time and injure the skin.
At the mid-point of my shift I have a special task to do. The women who work the stainless steel tray like conveyer belts with peeled, cored pears streamlining by take their dinner break. The belts stop and the pears are temporarily in hiding. I am to hose off the equipment. It is no ordinary hose I use. It's about the size of a fire hose and there are two large valves to turn on first. One valve is for hot water, the other is for hot steam. I need to be careful.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

To a Tee

 I'm a sucker for a good t-shirt.  They are the foundational garment of my life.  My day starts with selecting a t-shirt and it ends with sleeping in one.  Once thought of as under garments, t-shirts are now original art and no doubt, a billion dollar business.   You can get a t-shirt with anybody's picture displayed.  You can commemorate an event, a birthday, a death, even a specular play in any sport.  Family reunions usually have a commemorative t-shirt.  Also, any organization that solicits your support in the form of a donation is likely to offer you a t-shirt. Where once I only had the basic white t-shirt, my drawers are filled with all manner of colorful choices.  Some recognize major events in my life, some, spectacular performances or plays I have witnessed, and some unforgettable places I have been.   I say I'm a sucker for a good t-shirt because I have taken the bait on what I perceived as a must-have only to be disappointed. ...

Body Language

I'm sitting there in a hospital gown, waiting for my doctor to complete my yearly physical.  This is when I look at everything on the walls, read the medical posters, the instructions on any equipment in the room, look in every corner and behind every chair.  I study the paper on the examination table, laugh out loud at the picture of a smiling child holding a bouquet of broccoli, and the note the placement of the computer in the room. Finally, wondering if the gown I'm wearing is on correctly, I focus on myself.  At this point in my life I'm fairly comfortable in a doctor's office.  But it always seems to take so long when waiting for the doc to enter.  So I fidget.  Then I begin a tour of myself.  Scars are tattoos.  I look at the one on my knee and see myself at 12.  Whittling a piece of wood with my Boy Scout jack knife.  The blade slips and I cut a crescent slash through my jeans and into my flesh for life.  50 years later ...

Sex, Religion, and Politics

Watching TV to keep up with the news is like going to a party.  Sex, religion and politics, in any order.  Those are the topics of choice.  We hear about "twerking," and are confronted with all manner of exhibitionism in local news.  Should women be wearing yoga pants in non-yoga areas.  The office, the workplace, school, church...and that's just the teachers! Religion encroaches in all the right places.  Christian Mingle, the online dating service pops up on the screen during the grisliest of crime shows, the politician's speeches and the sit-coms so full of sexual innuendo that every second of canned laughter barely hides the grins, the gasps, the outcries, or the mindless guffaws. So what's the message?  Are we a society and culture in decline or just rapidly changing?  Probably both.  I recall a student once coming to school with a most offensive tee shirt.  Offensive in that the cartoon image on the front made it impossible for hi...