Yesterday I went to our church cannery to help can peaches. Several times a year sign up sheets are passed around our church meetings seeking volunteers to work 4 hour shifts processing a variety of food from peaches to ground beef to raspberry jam. (In 2008 the church worldwide recorded more than a million man hours....and the volunteers aren't just stay at home moms with nothing better to do....I have seen doctors and lawyers and successful business people in lovely blue hair nets & white aprons working on the assembly line at the cannery) I always sign up and then when the day of my assignment actually arrives I find myself having fantasies that the peaches will be done or that the machinery will malfunction and they'll send us all home.
When I arrived yesterday at the cannery I sat in the waiting room and realized that the peaches are still plentiful and that the sound I heard from the work area was the sound of perfectly functioning machinery. So I passed to a phase of realizing what a wonderful opportunity it is to help provide food to, not only people who are in need right here in Boise, but also food for people all around the world. In the last years the LDS church provided relief to China after the earthquake, SE Asia after the tsunami, to Peru & Ethiopia as well as to the Midwestern US & to New Orleans after the floods there. So I began to really feel altruistic being one little cog in this giant wheel which is the church welfare program.
I donned my white plastic apron and blue hairnet, washed my hands thoroughly and went into the processing room to get my assignment. This time I was in luck because a new person was making assignments and he assigned me to the relatively quiet and totally clean labeling room. Happy day....then the main guy saw me and said, "No we need her experience in the processing room." Now really I come maybe twice a year so there is no way in the world he actually remembers me but he assigned me to the same place he always assigns me! I am in the noisy room at the point where the peaches come scooting off the belt into cans with peach juice and peach pieces flying. I have to check about every 10th can to see if the weight is between 16 & 18 oz. Luckily my partner at this job is very good and we manage to get into a rhythm and the cans usually are right at the correct weight. We work like one of the well oiled machines in the room and we even occasionally manage to yell an interesting tidbit of conversation at each other.
About an hour in, all my altruistic feelings disappear and I become a clock watcher. Can it really be only 2:00? I sing songs in my head. I go up and down the streets of our Ward trying to think who would be a fantastic Girl's Camp Director for next year. I think about trips I want to take when George gets a job. I go over my lists of worries for each of the children. Then I look at the clock again & discover that it is now 2:15. Can that even be right?
Now I start to think that maybe I need to go to the bathroom. Maybe I'm not feeling well. Could my blood sugar be off? Am I pre diabetic? Isn't there some reason why I should go home early? My partner tells me that she has to leave at 3:00 instead of 4:30. Why didn't I ride with her? Then I could have left early too!
One of the things I always think about at the cannery is the classic "I Love Lucy" show when she and Ethel get jobs at the candy factory. If you haven't seen it you should. It is hilarious. The conveyor belt speeds up and the girls start stuffing candy in their mouths and in the their pockets and in their hats. Thinking about it can even make me smile at the cannery! Yesterday I had a similar experience but I didn't start stuffing peaches in my mouth and under my hair net and in my pockets.
Just as my lucky partner was about to leave the cans stopped coming. One was stuck. Now the cans stopped but the peaches just kept on coming! Peaches were piling up and piling up. We tried to get someone's attention but no one noticed our problem. We looked at the control panel that was right by us with its 5 unlabeled buttons. Keep in mind that this control panel has a warning label prominently displayed that shows bloody severed fingers so we were reluctant to just start pushing buttons. Finally before the peaches reached critical mass and started falling on the floor, she turned a knob and the cans started coming again. Feeling very satisfied she left and as she walked away I noticed that not only were the cans coming, they were flying by at breakneck speed. Actually the knob she turned had nothing to do with the cans starting to come again. They were coming again because someone unstuck one can. The knob she adjusted controlled the speed that the cans came and they were coming at an amazing pace. I tried stopping the cans by hand but they were too fast. I tried filling them with peaches but I was too slow. I tried yelling but it was too noisy. I tried fiddling with the knobs and I managed to make the cans shake violently and the whole conveyor belt tilt to the extreme but I couldn't get them to slow. So I left my station and got the manager guy (the one who wanted me in the processing room because of my experience) and he got it all under control before more than maybe 60 cans were processed with only 1 or 2 peaches or empty! He assigned me a new partner and after a while we got into a rhythm. The little adventure sure made the time pass quicker! Peach juice covered my legs and was up to my arm pits but it was soon the magic hour of 4:30! Hooray!
Just as the new people started to come, when my partner had been replaced, the manager came over and said to me, "Your replacement didn't come so we need to have you stay for the next shift. I'll double your pay and promise you 'out of this world benefits'. What a comedian!
Maybe next time he'll think twice about my experience and assign me to the relatively safe labeling room!!!!
