The Importance of Feeling in Synch

At the tail end of my Keene State College years, after having worked at the Ellis Hotel on Elm Street, and the C. L. Lane Bucket factory in West Swanzey -- but just before I set the record for monkey bars produced in an 8 hour shift at Whitney Brothers in Marlborough -- I took a job at a tannery in Winchendon, Massachusetts.

I carpooled in with a bunch of regulars. The foreman, a big guy named Zwolinsky whose daughter was a college classmate, led me up some scaffolding to a place where a bird's eye view of the parking lot might be had if one chose to look -- which we did not as the footing was precarious and the task was to dump 80 lb. bags of sugar into a feeder vat before (or perhaps after) opening petcocks to release steam and sulfuric acid into the mix.

Having gotten that tea brewing Mr. Zwolinsky escorted me to the bowels of the factory where a series of ten coal fired ovens required constant raking with a long handled shovel because a shipment of bad coal was clogging the ovens, reducing the heat output. I did that for the rest of the morning.

At lunch six burly men all named Moose, whose lives were spent hoisting heavy hides from the dipping tanks, silently crammed sandwiches into their mouths as fast as they could go, their hands and forearms multicolored like those of children run amuck in Easter egg design. A man not named Moose and not much older than me, though already a veteran, leaned forward to offer advice: "This here's not bad work for me, but once you get through college don't come back here." I nodded as Zwolinsky beckoned for me to follow. I was relieved to see that I was to work outside.

But not relieved for long. A whole railroad car of bad coal awaited. Normally a chute would be opened in the center of the floor of the car and the coal would slide out. This coal had no slide, so my job for the next four hours was to encourage the coal to vacate the car.

At the end of the day I scrunched into the back seat of a Chevy and was dropped off at the corner of Elm and West streets. Someone said "same time tomorrow", but I had the presence of mind to advise them not to wait too long. Off to my left was Court Street where I had an apartment. The campus lay half a mile in the other direction. Feeling a need for the distraction of a few hands of whist at the Student Center I turned right -- only to glimpse the reflection in a display window of someone from a minstrel show.

Prior to insurance sales this was the worst job I'd ever had. But even just two days of selling end of life benefits to indigent seniors, with a scripted approach that felt less like sales than coercion, proved entirely too dispiriting to continue. So . . . short career.