Living the Light Life

Lightlife

"18 and life you got it...18 and life you know..."

Got a job working in a vegetarian factory

Couple bucks better than minimum

They were local then, Corporate giant eventually bought them up

At the Temp Agency they said dress nice on your first day – make a good impression

I wore dress pants and a button up collared shirt

I walked into a room where the first woman I saw had a kitchen sponge rubberbanded to her forehead

She had a hairnet and ragged street clothes

She was spraying iodine and water out of a hose over a room-sized conveyor belt oven pumping out tempeh cakes

They had a good laugh at my expense

At first we lived too far to walk or bike to work - very pregnant 19 Emily would drop me off for 6am and be back to pick me up whenever overtime got out. We were at her parent’s house –20 minute drive each way.

Eventually we saved enough and moved into an apartment 4 miles away and I bought a bicycle

In my three years there I made two friends that I will love until I die

I haven’t seen or heard from one in decades and the other is lost to time

We also made tofu pups and fakin’ bacon and things they called MAP – Meat Analog Products

We would skateboard in the parking lot on lunch breaks

Jeremy showed me where two buildings were combined and that there was a narrow 18” alley you could sneak between and a small hideout to escape work

Pete rode a giant grey food bin down a 2-story belt shirtless while pretending to scrub a dub on his last day

The owners were purported to be hippies who smoked weed in the office, but I never did see the office, owners, or weed.

I took every hour of overtime offered

I took every shift differential proposed

I also used the scrap-bin to feed us – gallon buckets of Institutional Vegetarian Chili perpetually in my freezer

Seitan pouches never sealed correctly because of the marinade – lots of rice and seitan dinners

Climbed the racks in the freezer to send down cases – so much easier and more dangerous and fun than having someone use the forklift and have to move pallets and pallets of the wrong stuff

Easier to just monkey up and one-handed fling down 5 or 10 cases

There was a very kind small woman who was a Food Scientist on staff – didn’t believe it was a real job

My boss was a woman in her 50’s who had an adult son who also worked there

He is deaf

She told me the story one day of taking him as a toddler, maybe 2, to a Parade

All of the noise made the other kids cover their ears or cry but he just smiled on

She cried in his place

He had hearing aids and talked oddly, but very understandably and was strong and sweet

I did not wonder why she stayed or he for they had each other

I did wonder why I was staying

One day an intercom call – for me

I picked up to a dead line

Reception tried again

A dead line

Instead of a voice, I get a message

Your wife is in the hospital

There is no more message

I walk out the front door to drive to the hospital (3 miles)

I remember that I don’t own a car

I don’t think to go back inside and ask for a ride

Instead I started to run

I am bad with directions

I am chubby and do not run

At about mile 5 I make it to the front of the hospital

They say “No record” could she be in ER, they have separate admissions

I have to leave the building to run to the other side of the same building and enter there

“No record”

Any reason she might be on the 3rd floor – maternity?
Sure, I guess, but she’s still 5 weeks early – an elevator door opens on a hall and across is her ready to push with all her might

I learned that to love a job and to survive aren’t the same thing after that

I looked and found another labor that paid $12.63/hour – a wage we might survive on so I left