Deep thoughts
Hello there!!
You know a song is good when it puts you right back to where you were when it really meant something to you.
I don't even like Bruce Springsteen. I never did. Not much anyway. But this morning I heard the song "Born To Run" on the radio on my way to work. Talk about summing up how I feel about being chained to an ordinary life.
But, it had the effect too of reminding me how lucky I am that my job, at least, is something I like to do.
When that song was newer, I was one year into college. My college years were marked by summers during which jobs ... even menial jobs ... were hard to come by. So when my brother suggested Cindy and I join him at a fruit processing plant for the midnight to 8 A-M shift, we said, what the hell.
We lasted four days. Cindy and I, that is. But my brother worked there the whole summer. I guess because he didn't care about wearing a hairnet. I didn't either. But I simply could NOT handle standing for eight hours straight in the inspection line picking out slugs, dirt and other grossness in mushed up strawberries destined for the can.
Dude. Do NOT eat canned strawberries. The conveyor belt goes way too fast to get all the slug parts.
So for four nights, Cindy, Joe and I rode out to the cannery in our old beater, Joe driving, blasting Bruce songs. And Bruce was talking to us. Well, okay. Not really us. We didn't HAVE to work at the cannery. But everyone else who worked at that cannery did. Middle aged people earning $3.35 per hour to pick slugs out of speeding fruit in order to put food on the table. Imagine that. They had NO CHOICE. So the hopelessness and despair Bruce manages to convey in his songs were quite apt for those nights. Glory Days indeed. If working in a cannery was my future, I'd think my not at all glorious high school days were the best part of my life too.
Perhaps we could have dealt with it if we had been of legal drinking age. At least we could have had a beer after our shifts to numb the pain.
On a happier note, I'm having frozen steel cut oatmeal for breakfast today.
Slugs don't live in Oat fields, do they?
Sayid, you can torture me anytime. But please, leave the pliers outside.
xoxoxo love and kisses xoxoxo
You know a song is good when it puts you right back to where you were when it really meant something to you.
I don't even like Bruce Springsteen. I never did. Not much anyway. But this morning I heard the song "Born To Run" on the radio on my way to work. Talk about summing up how I feel about being chained to an ordinary life.
But, it had the effect too of reminding me how lucky I am that my job, at least, is something I like to do.
When that song was newer, I was one year into college. My college years were marked by summers during which jobs ... even menial jobs ... were hard to come by. So when my brother suggested Cindy and I join him at a fruit processing plant for the midnight to 8 A-M shift, we said, what the hell.
We lasted four days. Cindy and I, that is. But my brother worked there the whole summer. I guess because he didn't care about wearing a hairnet. I didn't either. But I simply could NOT handle standing for eight hours straight in the inspection line picking out slugs, dirt and other grossness in mushed up strawberries destined for the can.
Dude. Do NOT eat canned strawberries. The conveyor belt goes way too fast to get all the slug parts.
So for four nights, Cindy, Joe and I rode out to the cannery in our old beater, Joe driving, blasting Bruce songs. And Bruce was talking to us. Well, okay. Not really us. We didn't HAVE to work at the cannery. But everyone else who worked at that cannery did. Middle aged people earning $3.35 per hour to pick slugs out of speeding fruit in order to put food on the table. Imagine that. They had NO CHOICE. So the hopelessness and despair Bruce manages to convey in his songs were quite apt for those nights. Glory Days indeed. If working in a cannery was my future, I'd think my not at all glorious high school days were the best part of my life too.
Perhaps we could have dealt with it if we had been of legal drinking age. At least we could have had a beer after our shifts to numb the pain.
On a happier note, I'm having frozen steel cut oatmeal for breakfast today.
Slugs don't live in Oat fields, do they?
Sayid, you can torture me anytime. But please, leave the pliers outside.
xoxoxo love and kisses xoxoxo
posted by Queen of Cheese | 6:32 AM
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