Odd Jobs: Peas and Nelson Algren

I was reminded that I left one off. In Logan every year the crops come in and all the folks go work for the Del Monte cannery (or at least they did in 1972) Its seasonal work, you work until the crop is processed and then you don't work again until the next crop. No Union, no benefits, no nothing. It seems they did give you a meal if you worked an eight hour shift. I started on the loading dock for the hybrid carrots. I think it was evening shift or graveyard shift because it was dark. My job was to push all of the carrots dumped on the loading dock into a shoot that went to the cooker. Steam rose continually from the hole so all night long you worked in a thick carrot fog. I guess I did a good job. I then was put in the corn barn. There were all these women at husking and cutting the corn off the ear stations and I would do a big cycle through the area, moving on all the husks and cobs that didn't make it out through the mechanized things. I had to crawl in and around conveyor belts and big refuse screws that drew things outside. When it rained they passed out raincoats because the building leaked and you would get all wet from the rain coming in through the roof. I had a paperback copy of:

in my back pocket and it pretty much got ruined in the wet and watery corn processing. My foreman made a point of coming over to tell me that he better not catch me reading on the job, and I assured him it was only for lunch time. Then, Since I didn't get caught reading on the job and I did good, they moved me to the pea run. That was more hit and miss when you worked.

Pea Machine

You came in at the end of the pea run and put on a rubber suit and they handed you a high pressure hose and you were to clean up all the pea mush on the machines and the floor and the windows and everything within a twenty foot radius. After a particularly long hard pea run, the pea mush could be crusted and several inches thick. They called me to come in one day I wasn't scheduled and I said I could but that I had a class at school and had to leave at a certain time. They said fine. We weren't done but it was time for me to leave and the foreman who I had made the agreement with asked me where I was going. I said to class. He told me if I left then I would never work for Del Monte again. Guess what?

It took me months for to get back to where I could eat carrots and corn and peas. The smell would make me sick. In March, I gave up on school and my young wife and Utah and drove an old beat-up Studebaker back to Indiana.