Getting On

Why they hired me I’ll never know.
I hadn’t done too well in school. 
There were no grades for being cool. 
Probably nobody cared. So
I was hired. They couldn’t know I knew 
The GI skill of looking like you’re 
Working when you’re not. The only cure 
For that is work you really want to do.

Hungover, I punched in at eight 
When I was due at seven and tried 
To tell the timeclock that it lied. 
Once there, I pickled. And I hate 
To say that now I can for fun.
My basement’s filled with jarred and brined 
Okra, cukes, whatever I can find
To salt and save. And I’ve done
Little since those summer days that can’t 
Be tied in some way to the pickle plant.

Nalley’s Pickle Plant, 1950

In the Tubs

Sitting on steel siding close behind
The plant were flatcars. On each rusty car
Stood wooden tubs that stank of salt and tar,
Ten feet across and tall and full of brined 
Cucumbers. I must take my net, handle
Hard in hand, I must climb atop a tub
And bang a trapdoor open. I must grub
Among the shoals of shining green, dandle
Gleaming green cured pickles as if they wished
To be my darlings, drain them, throw them to
The picklebox that lay below, rescue
Hundreds till the vat was overfished.
Then I must pull on gum boots, venture down
Into the tank, drained to eighteen inches,
Into the brine whose pungent salt pinches
Nipped my nostrils. I must strain strays from drown. 
I must fetch from slime and scum and wet, 
Salt-cured cucumbers with my nylon net.

A worker netting pickles at Nalley’s, 1949

The Onion Grinder

Each morning for an hour I wept
Over my grinder. I would fill
Its stainless steel bowl. I kept
It brimming to its curled bill
With golden globe and paper-skin.
Round rings spun round and down to meet 
Steel teeth that chewed and spewed a thin 
Stream full of stink and sting, a sleet
Of slivered silver. Eight hours there, 
Open onions and their odor,
Filling clothing, skin and hair, 
Sharp and acrid. Then the loader 
Of the pallets, Jitney George, roared 
By on forklift, shouting, “Don’t cry, 
Snydal, I still love you.” Toward 
His voice, engine noise, I threw my 
Last whole onion hard away,
Wiped my eyes, blew my streaming nose. 
When I see relish to this day
I smell the onion on my clothes.

Unloading cucumbers, 1945

Pickle Stuffers

Pickles up! And the forklift brought a vat
Of cuke chips, washed and cured and sliced and mixed 
With onion, sugar, brine. I, the line chief, fixed 
Conveyor speed to suit the gals who sat
Around the pickle wheel. I checked for glass,
Made sure the sterilizer had its heat.
Then I, the line chief, pushed the button. Cleat 
Follows cleat, belts shiver, shimmy, wheels pass 
Wheels, one turns clockwise full of sterile jars,
One counterclockwise where the chips fall where
They may. Line ladies poke the pickle there
Through holes into the glass held up by bars
That channel filled containers to a jet
Of sugar brine that tops them up and spins
A lid in place. They slide in canning bins
That travel through the cooker where they’re set
In steam for half an hour and sealed. The line
Clanks, rattles, clangs, bangs. I, the line chief, load 
The belts, check chips and glass and lids. I goad 
Pickle stuffers but they know I don’t sign
Their time cards so they laugh. They and their friends 
Realize their line stops when their shift ends.

Women on the pickle assembly line pack cucumbers into glass jars for processing, capping and labeling as Nalley’s “Treasure Pickles,” 1946

A Gift of Mayonnaise

We were all drunk on beer, the kind of beer 
You get at Safeway and I took my friends 
Down to the pickle party with no clear 
Conception of a party or of ends
Of evenings. (I still feel this loose-lipped lack 
Of leadership within my life. I seem
To start things well and let them drift. I pack 
Beginnings full of surge and urge, mainstream, 
And let the endings congregate in eddy.)
At any rate none of us danced or not
As I remember. None of us were ready
For anything but jeers and parking lot.
Walking through the warehouse, cardboard cases 
Mountain high in dim light, rusty steel siding, 
Dusty concrete aisles, the sweating faces
Of the dancers doors behind, deciding
All of us at once we must have a gift.
So we pulled a case of gallon jars
Out of the palleted stacks, to lift
And laugh with, back to our teenage cars.
And if I wish, I can let my life be haunted
By a case of mayonnaise that no one wanted.

Nalley’s merchandise in a grocery store, 1950s

The Pickle Slicer

I quit the pickle plant that warm September,
Told everyone: I saw a poor guy fired
Who went home, told his wife, “Since I was hired 
Years ago, I’ve longed to put my member
In the pickle-slicer.” And his wife
Started to scream, “Migod, how did it feel?
Did you do it, right up by the wheel
That sorts and measures pickles, that sharp knife 
That metes out pickle portions?” (None the wiser) 
He says, “Yes.” She asks, “Are you all right?”
And he says, “Yes, I am,” and she asks, “Might
I ask what happened to the pickle-slicer?”
“She got fired too.” Story and scene
Seldom fit so well when you are seventeen.