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| McCain Plant much as it looked in my day |
The year was 1966 and I needed a summer job. I had already worked at McCain Foods for over a year. The summer of 1965 had been a treat, I worked straight nights in cold storage and we were on shut down for at least two hours every night. The plant was being rewired, all employees would be called to the lunch room, electricity switched off and we would wait.
There were perhaps twenty young people, We were prepared with pillows and blankets and it was easy to catch a nap. It was a summer of magical nights and adventures. But that was then.
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| myself that summer |
McCain paid real wages whether you were student or adult and there was lots of competition for jobs. Add that to the fact that the potato line was down for the summer. But I had a secret weapon, my friend Nancy Black. Her Mother Effie was a floor lady and somehow managed to hear when there was an opening. Soon I received a call to come in on green crops.
I followed my floor lady out to the back, and there in an open-air shed was the bean line. A young man would empty a tote of beans into the hopper, making sure he routed out all mice, snakes and other varmits. The beans would them be washed, blanched and make their way down a conveyor belt. Twenty employees were at weight stations on either side of the belt. The theory was that you would remove every twentieth box, ensure it contained the correct weight of beans and replace that box on the conveyor. Sounds simple?
I started out okay, took off a box, filled it, put it back. Then the floor lady came along and told me I was too slow and I should be taking off every twentieth. So I did, soon you could not see me for boxes. I was sobbing my heart out. Think of I love Lucy in that infamous scene in the chocolate factory. The floor lady came back. “I don’t think this is the job for you” she said. Understatement. She thought a bit. “How would you like to be the poker?” I would have agreed to anything. The rest of bean season saw me seated on a stool at the corner of the building where the conveyor makes a turn to go from processing over to cold storage. I had a fine stick and when the packages jammed up, I poked them. I think I may have had a small book secreted on my person.
All in all it was not a bad job. Never again did I apply to work on green crops.
