Jobs
Over the course of a life, most folks perform several different jobs. Generally during school, odd jobs that make money for tuition, books and living expenses. Most folks go through several jobs before landing in their career path. This is a story about those jobs. The ones you laugh about having on the way to the next job. The job that is a little embarrassing to think back on. Jobs with stories.
The topic came up at a meeting of the “Men’s Book Club.” A gathering of like minded guys. The wives have their own book club, you know the kind. The one where they all read the same book, then get together once a month to discuss it. Us guys also get together once a month, on the same day the ladies meet in fact, not coincidentally, for our “book club.” Now mind you, we don’t read books. We gather at whatever dive bar someone might suggest, and eat and drink and spew forth BS on sports, work, women, the economy and once in awhile politics. We do read the menu, which we justify as sufficient reading to qualify our name.
The stories the guys had to tell at our last “book club” about some of the jobs they had done in their lives were hilarious, even without the several pints of beer, and an Old Fashioned or two. It got me thinking about all the jobs I have held in my life, some pretty incredible. My favorite glove story, took the prize at that meeting for the worst job in history, but more on that later.
I grew up in the 1950’s. It was a different time. Kids were expected to work. In my hometown of Dayton, a fine agricultural area, there was lots of work for kids to do. In the early summer right after school got out, local strawberry farmers would run a school bus they rented from the school district into town and pick up any kid who wanted to go “picking” for the day. It left from the park downtown at 6:00 in the morning. Mom would pack me a lunch, and I would walk up the hill to the park and join all the local kids, “townies” we were called, for a ride out to the strawberry field. I was 9 years old.
Berry picking was a chore, but also fun. We made a little money. Ate an abundance of delicious strawberries, and flung a few at friends when the “Row Boss” wasn’t looking. The strawberry season only lasted a month or so, then on came the green beans. More picking!
Back in those days, green beans were grown vertically on poles. Row after row several hundred feet long of 6 foot tall vines, growing up strings that were attached to top and bottom wires strung between posts every 10 feet or so along the row. The beans grew up and down those vines. Some down low, many up the middle and some way up high. Luckily, I was a tall kid and could reach the upper most beans, but some shorter pickers would need me to help with the tops. Up and down the rows we would go, filling 2 gallon buckets with beans. When the buckets were full we would race to the end of the row where a burlap bag was waiting for a deposit. It would take 20 or more buckets of beans to fill the bag, and you couldn’t “weigh in” until you had a full bag.
Every picker was issued a punch card with the number of bags pre-printed, and a blank to side for the Row Boss to write on the weight of the bag. We got paid by the pound, so that punch card was our picking currency. We rode the bus, often the same bus as we did for strawberries, going to the same farmer’s land, only this time to the bean field.
In the mornings, not all mornings, but many, the vines were wet. It made picking harder on the hands, but the beans weighed more wet than dry, so I would work fast and hard for the first couple of hours to fill the first bag of the day with wet beans so I would get a higher poundage. More pounds, more money.
There wasn’t as much fun bean picking because you were isolated between tall green walls of vines. If you knew the picker in the row next to you, you could talk through the vines without seeing them, but it was not very stimulating for a bored young boy. I wasn’t here by choice mind you. It was what kids did back in the day.
By the age of 12 for the boys, and 13 or 14 for the girls, the work changed. For the girls, they would continue to pick strawberries, but then they would become “stringers.” Their job was to help the boys set up the bean fields. The boys didn’t pick anymore, we moved to field preparation, setting up the bean fields, and then irrigation.
The crew I was assigned to was guided in our work by “Fanny” our Foreman, a huge man, mostly balding under a worn baseball hat in dirty bib overalls, with a cheek constantly full of “chaw.” We never knew what Fanny’s real name was. He never said. “Jest call me Fanny, that’s all boys. Not Boss, ner Mister. Just Fanny. Been Fanny all my life. Mom gave it to not long after I was born. Said I had the biggest butt she had ever seen for a baby. She figured she couldn’t call me Butt, so Fanny it was.” He told us that first day.
We all learned to love Fanny as that first summer progressed. We were careful to stay safely out of the way when he spit a load of chaw. I swear he could hurl that load of brown spit 20 feet or more. Some said he was so accurate with it that he could hit a fly at 15 paces. Over the several years us boys worked the fields with Fanny, we all had occasion to accept Fanny’s offer of a hunk of chaw. A dark brown mass of matted tobacco, the hand that gave it to us was as dirty and nasty looking as the chaw itself. But we all tried it, and almost all failed. Some hurled immediately, others only after swallowing the chaw scum that was made from the mixing of the tobacco with saliva.
“Ya got to spit boys!” Fanny proclaimed. “Spit, don’t swallow. Swallowing, now that’s for girls.” Fanny said, the boys snickering at the reference, not having a clue what he really meant by that. Fanny was that way. Treated us boys like men.
Most of us learned how to drive from Fanny. In the old farm pickup, out in some field we were about to work, where no one, or no thing, could get hurt.
Fanny was a lifer with the farm. Been there since he was a kid, before the war. Worked the farm through the war. Couldn’t qualify, he told us, although no one asked. Besides the Army thought he was better off working the farm than fighting the Japs. He didn’t think he would be much good at that Army stuff anyway he told us.
Fanny was a bachelor, a life long avocation he explained. Not that he didn’t like women he said, but that he couldn’t find one to put up with him and his farming, so he just quit looking. He lived in a small shack behind the barn, that just recently had indoor plumbing installed. Fanny still used the outhouse though he said. Just habit he thought, but he liked the fresh air, and the feel of that old oak plank he sat on while doing his business.
Our job was to help Fanny prepare the fields, plant the crops and then to irrigate them. The work was long, and sometimes hard, but Fanny made it fun. Always joking and teasing the boys. You felt good if Fanny targeted you for ridicule, because that meant he liked you.
Setting up the bean fields would take several weeks, as our employer was one of the largest green bean producers in the United States. After we got the fields prepared and planted, we would then come back and dig in the posts. Every 10 feet or so along the edge of the sprout. The posts were dug in 2 feet and were supposed to stand straight up. The poles at the end of each row had to go down 3 feet and at an angle away from the row to allow the wires to remain taut during the entire season. Once the posts were in, the boys would affix a heavy gauge wire to one of the end poles, about 6 inches up from the ground, and start off down the row. Two interlocking wraps of the wire around each post, keeping the wire as tight as we could until we got to the other end of the row where we would tie off the wire. We would then repeat this process back down the row with another wire, this one about 6 inches from the top of the posts.
It was repetitive work, and hard on the legs and back, even for a stout young man. The boys were broken into three crews of six, each with a foreman, and each assigned to a different field to set up.
The only good part of setting up a bean field was the girls. In all the other farming activity, there were no girls working with the boys. To finish the bean field set up, a heavy string had to be wrapped between the upper wire and the lower wire all along the row for the vines to cling to as they grew toward the sky. The idea was to create a wave pattern, like you would see on a heart monitor. They would tie off the string at the top of the first post, then up and down they would go, moving sideways along the row. Up and down. Up and down. All day.
We didn’t think too much about the hard work the girls were doing, just that they would come in not long after we started running the wire, and begin their work. We worked in close proximity as the field began to take shape.
Most days were warm, and sometimes hot. The boys wore cut off jeans, and never a shirt. The girls had to keep their shirts on, but many wore short shorts, popular among the girls of that time, and practical doing the work they did. The boys work slowed down a little once the girls arrived to string, or so Fanny complained. The short shorts warranted considerable ogling by boys just becoming men, especially as the girls bent down to wrap the lower wire, which they did almost constantly. But Fanny didn’t mind. We all suspected he did his fair share of gawking too.
When the bean fields were set up, our boy crews became “irrigators.” Being an “irrigator” was the best job on the farm. Two or three of us would be assigned to a particular field, and told what the time cycle was for applying water to the beans. In the beginning, we set a pump in whatever body of water would be used for the irrigation. Then we had to go to the pipe yard and pick up load after load of pipe, and haul it to our field.
From the pump we would run a “main line” up to the field, and along the edge of the rows the full distance of the field, which would sometimes be up to a 400 feet. The main lines were 6 inch diameter aluminum pipe in 40 foot lengths. There was a male end and a female end. One boy on each end of the pipe, as we moved the pipe into place and latched it tight, making sure the rubber on the female end made a good seal. A riser was placed between every other main line pipe to provide a hook up for the irrigation lines that would actually apply the water to the beans.
Once the main was set, then two adjacent “lines” would be strung. These were 3 inch diameter pipes that came in 20 and 30 foot lengths so that you could fit the lines on the top of the wires and not have a pipe hanging off the end of the field. Each pipe in the line had a sprinkler head, spaced in such a way that the entire ground would be watered without much overlap. For most fields setting up the irrigation system would take several days.
With the system in place, we would engage the pump, or sometimes we had a gate valve to allow the water to fill the main, and the lines and eventually the sprinklers would begin squirting out water to feed the new bean sprouts. When the set up was done, all we had to do was move the lines on a set schedule. For beans, until the vines were about half way up the string, the set time was 4 hours. That is to say that once you had the lines set and the water turned on, you did nothing for 4 hours until it was time to move the lines down the field.
Moving the lines was simple. An experienced irrigator could grab the line in the middle of the pipe and give it a strong twist, which would unlatch it. The pipe was then lifted off the wire, and you walked down the row 40 feet to the next riser. When you got the hang of it, and moved it to the next set line, you could slip the pipe into the previously set pipe, twist it into place and move on to the next pipe.
Our game was to see how fast we could move the lines. The faster we moved the lines, the sooner we got back to “camp.” That place we established to hang out while we waited for the next turn. Boys can get into lots of trouble when they have time on their hands, and are out in the middle of nowhere in a deserted field.
We would arrive at the time shack, that place near the barn where you punched in and out, and got paid for the hours worked, at a little before 6 in the morning. It was generally 6:30 or so before Fanny drove us to our field and dumped us off. For a 4 hour turn, we would change the lines four times. It would take us about an hour to do the change, in order to get 4 hours off. We would get picked up around 8pm after the last change was complete. Seven days a week for the months of July and August. Once the beans were over half way up the string, the change time was cut to every 3 hours. By the time the beans were mature, we would only irrigate in alternating fields that weren’t being picked, and then only on 2 hour turns.
If was the life. Farming. My first job.
I farmed every year until I graduated from high school. That summer my Dad and Uncle had been awarded contracts, first to do timber thinning, then to build hiking trails for the Bureau of Land Management. This was the agency’s attempt to complete the Pacific Crest Trail that eventually would allow a hiker to go from the Mexican border to the Canadian border. The work was hard, but also intermittent. A week would go by when we couldn’t work for whatever reason. The weather might be too hot, Dad might have to do meetings before doing a job, or there would be equipment break downs. It was during those work lulls that I had two of my most interesting jobs.
Mom had a friend who was a supervisor at a glove factory outside of Carlton, a town about like Dayton, 15 miles or so away. They had a need for workers. I needed the money, and it looked like I wouldn’t get back to the woods to work for a week or more. Mom called for me, and arranged the job. I didn’t have an interview. Didn’t know what a resume was. Didn’t have a clue what I would be doing. But I went. How bad could it be?
The glove factory was smaller than I thought a factory would be. About the size of our high school gym, but the place buzzed with activity. Sewing machines sang. Ladies, all ladies I discovered, chatting above the hum of the machines. The lights were bright, and there didn’t seem to be a logical flow to the operation.
I introduced myself to Jean, the supervisor, and Mom’s friend. She was nice, but busy without much time, or desire, to get acquainted. “Over there.” Jean said pointing to a machine that on first glance seem to be giving me the finger. “That’s your station.” Jean said curtly.
“Sounds good, so what do I do?” I asked as we walked over to the uninviting machine.
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“You turn the gloves. Simple. Pull a glove from this box, and turn it right side out, then put the finished glove in this box here.” Jean said pulling one glove from the nearly full box on the left, and pressing each finger of the glove over the middle finger of the machine to turn it inside out, or right side out, as she put it. “That’s it.” She said as she turned and walked away. My training over.
I stared at the machine for a minute. It was nothing more than a steel pedestal about waist height. It had a round convex surface about 3 feet across that was polished and shiny from years of leather material being moved across it. In the middle of the surface stood what appeared to be an elongated middle finger. As I stared at this machine, I may have given it the finger in return before starting my job as a glove turner.
Gloves are made inside out. The gloves made here were leather, from deer hides hunters had brought to the factory and traded for a finished pair of gloves. The glove pattern was cut out by machine, one size fits all, and the cut leather was moved to the ladies who did the sewing. The finished sides of the leather were placed facing each other, and the outside edges of the glove and fingers were sewn together and thrown in a bin. One bin for the right glove, another for the left. When the bins were filled, they were brought to my station to have the inside out gloves turned right side out.
As I stood there turning gloves, my mind wandered. Why are the gloves sewn inside out, thereby creating this horrible job of turning the gloves? After turning about a hundred gloves, it occurred to me that they wanted the seams hidden inside the glove. A reason for my job. It didn’t help knowing.
For hours I stood at that machine, picking gloves out of one bin, turning them inside out with the assistance of the “finger”. Throwing the finished glove in the other bin. I emptied the first bin pretty quickly as I developed a rhyme, but no one came for the bin on the other side I had now filled. I wandered around to find where the finished bin was supposed to go, only to be barked at by Jean to get back to work.
By the middle of the afternoon, after turning what seemed like a million gloves, all while that horrible machine was giving me the finger, I had enough. I had decided this would be my first and last day as the official glove turner of Carlton. I made up a story to tell Jean why I wouldn’t be back the next day, and just left. No goodbyes, and no regrets. Turning gloves inside out was not what I aspired to be, and it was one of the worst jobs I ever had.
The Men’s Book Club agreed!
The next summer I worked the woods with Dad, but I wasn’t needed after Labor Day. I didn’t start school again until late September, so I needed to fill in about three weeks of full time work. I needed the money, as usual, and was willing to do most anything to put a few dollars in my pocket. That is except turning gloves. I had to draw the line somewhere.
Mom came to the rescue again. Another friend worked at the cherry grower cannery, and they always needed workers this time of year. Mom wouldn’t call for me this time, apparently still stinging a little from the glove job referral. I called the number Mom gave me, and after a short conversation I was told to report to the cannery office the next morning.
I didn’t have a clue what I would be doing when I arrived at the cannery office the next morning. After filling out a few papers, I was issued a heavy rubber apron and was escorted through the main part of the cannery to a lean to area that connected two parts of the cannery and was predominated by a conveyor track. The lady pointed to a guy named Bill, and told me Bill would get me started.
Bill was a year or two older than I was, and had been working at the cannery every summer since he turned 16. He was tall and slender, and a little goofy. “This job is fun and easy.” He told me pointing to a line of 50 gallon oak barrels that were perched on a conveyor belt and slowly moving along this breezeway from the main building, through out area, and into the next building.
Bill had on big rubber gloves, the kind that make it hard to work your fingers right, and that reached all the way up to your elbow. Silently, with one hand he grabbed a mallet, about the size of a large hatchet, but with an oversized rubber head and hitting surface. In the other hand he grabbed a large cork stopper. He showed them both to me as if we were in kindergarten show and tell. He didn’t say a word, but had a huge smile. He pointed to the first barrel heading down the conveyor, and walked up to it. He placed the cork stopper in the open hole on the top of the barrel, then slammed it hard with the mallet. He turned to me, almost laughing with joy, and said, “That’s it. You bong stoppers in barrels all day. Nothing to it. Now you try.”
I didn’t have the gloves, but there were several mallets to choose from. The next barrel was coming along quickly so I didn’t have a chance to properly select just the right mallet for me. That would come later. With my bare hands on the mallet I slammed the cork in the hole and gave it a whack.
“Not hard enough!” Exclaimed Bill. “Hit it again, harder.”
So I hit it again, and this time I could see the stopper seat into the barrel. “Good job. Just hit it harder the first time and you won’t have to waste energy hitting it the second time.” Bill said.
I wondered if Bill was just there to train me, and he would soon go away, or if this job required two bonkers. The barrel line didn’t seem to move fast enough to warrant two bonkers. The question was soon answered when a second conveyor, behind the first started to move. Barrels came out together now. “Which line you want?” Bill asked.
“I don’t care.” I said, not having a clue if one line was easier than the other. I suspected not, or else I figured Bill would have just assigned me the harder line. I certainly would not have known the difference, at least not at first.
“Take the front line, I’ll take the back line.” Bill proclaimed, and we attacked those barrels like they were our worst enemy. The goal — a one bonk seal. How many one bonkers could we get in a row? The bonking games began. Two late teen, early twenties men in aprons slinging mallets at barrels all day, what could be better, or worse?
Bill was a good sport. Funny, and without inhibition or ambition. He wasn’t going to college. He just bummed around when the cannery wasn’t running. Sometimes he said he worked corn and beans at a different cannery, if he needed the “scratch” as he called money.
About mid-morning of that first day Bill said, “You got to get some boots for this job.” Pointing to his rubber knee high boots, with his pants tucked inside. “Those Tennys aren’t going to do it.” Bill said motioning toward my old low top tennis shoes. “The acid will eat those up and your feet too!” He said smiling at the prospect of my shoes melting around me as I bonked a barrel.
“Acid? What the hell?” I asked.
“Don’t you know what’s in those barrels?” Bill asked.
“Cherries.” I said, figuring there was no other answer, this being the cherry growers cannery after all.
“Cherries, yes, packed in acid. Well it is not really acid, I just call it that. It is a brine they use to cure the cherries.” Bill explained.
“Why are they brining cherries, that doesn’t make any sense.” I said, not having a clue as to what was actually in those barrels.
“Have you ever eaten Maraschino Cherries?” Bill asked.
“Sure, I love those things. Especially on top of a banana split.” I replied.
“That’s what is being made in those barrels. Maraschino Cherries. The brine is a part of the process that gives the cherries that bright florescent red color. They sweeten them after the brining in one of the other buildings, then package them in that small building out back where the loading dock is.” Bill explained.
“I’ll be damned. Maraschino Cherries huh? So what is so bad about that brine that I have to wear those clunky rubber boots?” I asked again, naively.
Bill explained that the brine was very acidic, and that it was so strong that prolonged contact would eat up a tennis shoe right away. “ The acid can’t affect the rubber boot because there are no seams. In those shoes of yours, that acid will eat away the glue, and they will come apart for sure. Believe me, I learned the hard way. Somebody will bring you a pair of these lovely gloves sometime later today, but you are on your own for the boots.” Bill reported.
Being young, and not particularly bright, I elected to forego buying the rubber boots. They were $9 a pair, and I had better use for that money than a pair of boots I would only wear for a couple of weeks until the cherry season was over. Besides, the old Converse basketball shoes were comfortable, and this job was standing all day.
It turns out that the conveyor is not very steady, and for many barrels that meant the brine spilled out of the bonk hole. This happened so often that the floor of the belt area was constantly wet. I didn’t think much about it for the first several days of work. The job was sort of fun. Dance up and down the barrel line, smashing stoppers with a certain movie star panache. Laughing almost all day with Bill, who turned out to be a hoot, and a good friend long after the cherry season ended.
On the first Sunday after starting work, a total of five days in, I was starting to get cleaned up after my shift ended to meet some friends to drag the gut in Mac, not an eventful plan for a Sunday, but when you work 7 days a week, you take what you can get. When I gabbed my left Chuck Taylor to pull it off, only the sole of the shoe came. The rest of the shoe, the canvas part, stayed on my foot. There I was holding only the sole of my shoe. “Shit.” I said to no one but me.
My right shoe was still in tact, but upon examination I could see the separation beginning. It didn’t matter anyway, what could I do with only one shoe. “Shit.” I said, this time in my head.
When I got the tattered shoes off, and removed my socks, the bottoms of my feet were beginning to turn a weird shade of orange. I rubbed the soles of my feet. While a little tender, they didn’t hurt. “Shit.” So it was off to Montgomery Wards, which I knew was still open, and bought myself those $9 rubber boots.
Monday morning I arrived at the conveyor. Bill had not yet arrived, which was not unusual. Bill liked to party, sometimes a little too much, he was often late, and it took him the first hour or so in the morning to really get going. I donned my apron, put on my rubber gloves, and tucked my pants into the new rubber boots. Mallet in hand I hit the conveyor button to start the line, just as Bill arrived. “Nice boots.” was all he said as we began bonking cherry barrel stoppers.
