The Eating Job

Dad worked at some really hard jobs, but the story below was more eating than working. I’m sure the only hardship of the job was being away from his family. Judy

I went to work for a company that made peach canning machines. My boss, three other men and I were sent to Stockton, California. Stockton had three peach canneries. Each cannery had a lot of peach canning machines. At the time we were sent to the canneries, they were empty and closed down because the canning season was over. Our job was to open each machine up and change all the gears in the gear boxes, so that the machines would go faster. In order to do that, we had to change the old gears for different size gears.

It was a new experience for me to work away from home. The company paid all our expenses. We lived in a motel. Each morning we would go to a restaurant to eat breakfast. We could order whatever we wanted and it was all paid for. Work started at eight each morning. At ten o’clock the boss would say, “Okay, let’s go for our break.” We would head for the donut shop for coffee and donuts. We went back to work until noon. “Lunch time,” back to the restaurant we all went to eat some more. After lunch, we went back to work until five o’clock. It was then time to go to the motel, clean up and head back to the restaurant for dinner. While doing that job, it seemed that we did more eating than we worked.

We would go home over the weekends and head back to Stockton to start another work week. My gas and mileage was paid for by the company.