Blog Archives - Page 16 of 26 - From a Rocky Hillside

July 16, 2021February 10, 2022

Saying Goodbye and Time Away

*View of Lake Huron from the top of the 40 Mile Lighthouse*

I am spending the next two weeks in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I’m staying in DeTour, which is at the far eastern end of the UP’s mainland. It’s where you catch the ferry from Drummond Island. I have a wonderful view of the St. Mary’s River, where the freighters make their way from the lower lakes up to the locks at Sault St. Marie (the Soo Locks). During this time, I will be reading books, maybe doing some writing, some hiking and spending a few days with a friend on his sailboat. I will also preach two Sundays at DeTour Union Presbyterian Church (in exchange for staying in their manse, the church is seasonal and brings in ministers to preach in exchange for a week in a very comfortable home).

Also, I have very limited internet, so don’t expect to see me too much on the WWW for the next two weeks. But I’ll be back in August.

Driving up, I took US 23, which runs around Saginaw Bay and the shoreline of Lake Huron, through the towns of Tawas City, Alpena, Roger City, and Cheboygan. Even though I lived in Michigan for over a decade, this was the first time to take this drive or to be beside Lake Huron. I have driven MI 22 (which runs from the Leelanau Peninsula down the west side of Michigan) many times (and I highly recommend that drive). But this time, taking US 23, I was in for a new treat.

I spent Wednesday night in Standish, heading out in a new direction on Thursday morning. Sadly, it rained most of the way, but by late morning, it had stopped. So I stopped and spent an hour or two exploring the 40 mile lighthouse.

The view from the front porch… The island across the water is Drummond.

One of the hardest things for a pastor is to say goodbye as someone moves away. A few years ago, I started writing blessings for those moving away. This past Sunday at Bluemont, we said goodbye to Charles and Diane. Here’s my blessing and a photo of the three of us. Bluemont is currently meeting outdoors so this was done under our picnic shelter.

A Blessing for Charles and Diane Sullivan

For the past twelve years,
you have lived on the mountain,
bringing joy to your neighbors
and to our little rock church.
Charles played Santa at Christmas
while Diane faithfully attended the Women’s Bible Study
and, with her sister Bev, began “Hanging of the Greens.”

You’ve enjoyed the seasons,
the warm summer days,
the cool fall ablaze in color,
the winters with whisps of smoke from chimneys
indicating a warm home,
and the rebirth in the spring,
when the birds fill their air with their songs
and dogwoods line the Parkway.

But like the seasons,
our lives and our needs change,
and health reasons call you back to the flatlands,
to be closer to your children.

So go forth with our blessings,
trusting in God as you enter this new season.
Continue to “have a ball”
and to be “the life of the party.”

And when the weather is good,
and you have a few hours to spare,
we’d love to have you drop in,
we’re not that far away.

Until then, go with God
whose unbounded love connects us
in this life and the one to come.

Jeff Garrison
July 11, 2021

July 9, 2021February 10, 2022

Highway 58 and some recent photos

Aaron McAlexander, Greasy Bend: Ode to a Mountain Road (Stonebridge Press, 2016), 224 pages, a few black and white photographs.

Highway 58 cuts across Southern Virginia, from Cumberland Gap (Along the Tennessee/Kentucky border) to the Tidewater. The highway crosses swamps, fields of peanuts and tobacco, old industrial towns like Danville and Martinsville, then climbs the Blue Ridge and the Grayson Highlands before it enters Kentucky. Highway 58 used to be the Main Street in Meadows of Dan, near the Blue Ridge summit, where the author grew up. Just to the east, near “Lover’s Leap,” were several especially dangerous hairpin curves. When the fog rolled in, these curves were even more deadly. Each had a name: Midkiff Curve, Green Martin Curve, Greasy Bend, the Bob Fain Curve, and the Harley Hopkin Curve. McAlexander tells of accidents that occurred along this stretch. Today, there are still curves and steep drop-offs, but the road has been improved and modified so that it’s not as dangerous as before.

Using this ribbon of highway as a backdrop, McAlexander tells of stories of growing up in the 40s and 50s along Highway 58. Many of these stories are of himself, but there are other legendry stories of outlaws and bootleggers that fill the pages of this book. We learn of country stores, AM radio stations that brought farm reports every morning, raising and inseminating dairy cattle, cutting hay, the secrets of good cornbread, and the reliability of the old Ford 8N tractors.

Today, many of these stories are only known when they’re on paper, the rest of such stories are as lost as are the towns that Highway 58 now bypass (even Meadows of Dan is bypassed, with the four lane running just north of town). This book is a delight to read. I kept it on my nightstand, reading a story each evening before bed.

I only have one bone to pick with McAlexander. He cited on the back cover that US 58 at 508 miles in length, is the longest US highway in a single state. Being from North Carolina, I immediately became suspicious. I knew it wasn’t as long as US 64 is between Manteo and Murphy (that’s 545 miles in length). US 64 in North Carolina is the same mileage as US 1 is in Florida, which runs to Key West. I got to thinking about other long roads. US 90, from El Paso to Orange Texas is 774 miles in length. But the longest I found (and I stuck to roads I’ve driven at least a portion of) is US 101, which runs along the Pacific Coast with 801 miles of asphalt in California.

This is the 3^rd book by McAlexander that I’ve read since moving to SW Virginia. I’ve also reviewed Shine on Mayberry Moon and The Last One Leaving Mayberry. Each book is a treat!

Some photos I’ve recently taken (all within a mile of US 58)

The hayfield outback was cut by a local farmer last week

The “backyard.” You can see my grapes are reaching up toward the wire and behind the barn (and hickory tree) is my garden)

My green cabbage has been eaten up (but it should be okay for sauerkraut). My red cabbage is beautiful!

In another week or two, I’ll be feasting on tomato sandwiches

I enjoy walking the backroads in the evenings

The sunrises and sunsets are so wonderful (this was a 15 minutes before sunrise)

July 1, 2021February 10, 2022

Another Bakery Story: The Perils of Working on the Christian Sabbath

I have already told you about becoming the oven operator about a year after starting in the bakery. It was a good move. The position was at the top of the hourly pay scale, and I had almost a quarter of the plant to myself. I monitored the proof box, oven, depanner, and cooler. The oven, cooler and proofer were each the size of a house, the oven could hold nearly 1500 loaves while the proofer and cooler could hold over 4000 loaves at one time. This whole complex was automatic with lots of lights and bells to indicate something was wrong. I mostly walked around, making sure the electric eyes were working, checking the temperature in the various zones of the oven, the humidity in the proof box, and the temperature of the bread coming out of the cooler. If everything ran well, it was the best job in the plant. I could keep an eye on things while I reviewed formulas for chemistry or dates and names for a history class. But when things didn’t go well, it was a headache.

Thunderstorm havoc

One Sunday afternoon (we baked on Sunday for Monday sales), a thunderstorm seemed to sit on top of the plant. The lightning popped close, and each strike caused us to momentarily lose power. Since electricity ignited the oven burners, any loss of power automatically shut the gas off. When that happened, I went to work. The oven had around 50 burners. A manual knob had to be turned off for each burner. Then the dampers were opened so the oven could be purged with air. Then you could relight the oven safely. This was a safety feature to reduce the risk of explosion. Once the gas was back on, I’d light the burners, close the dampers, and continue.

Having this happen once wasn’t a problem. Working fast, I could shut the oven down and re-ignited in about five minutes. Even having to go through the cycle twice in a row wasn’t too bad as I could slow the oven down and allow bread to bake longer to compensate for the loss of heat. But this day, we had several storms and they seemed to sit on top of us. I’d barely get the oven back baking before we’d lost power for a few seconds. Then I’d have to start over.

Soon, the temperature in the oven was down 50, then 100, then 150 degrees. With an internal temperature of barely 200 degrees, there was no way I could slow the speed down enough to bake the bread. Slowing it too much caused the dough in the proofer to rise too high. Half baked bread had to be tossed. The mechanic on duty finally called his supervisor, the plant engineer, who told him how to rewire the panel, jumping over the safety switch. He did this and I was finally able to keep the oven going long enough to get the heat back up. However, the thought of a bypassed safety was scary. I’d heard of ovens that had exploded. But we had to do something had to be done if we were going to get back into production.

Crippling the most bread in the plant’s history

We lost a couple thousand loaves of bread with the thunderstorms, but it wasn’t anything compared to an incident that also occurred on a Sunday afternoon a few years later. At this point in my bakery career, I was a new supervisor. Things had been humming along as we were making the pound and a half squared off white bread, the type that has no taste but was so popular back in the late 70s and early 80s. We’d often make 45,000 loaves of this bread a day. John, my oven operator called over the intercom this Sunday Afternoon to say that something was wrong. The dough rose nicely in the proof book. But when the pans came onto the conveyor between the proofer and the oven, where lids were placed on the pans, the dough suddenly dropped. Yep, we had a problem.

The white spongy squared-off bread wasn’t mixed in a traditional manner. A machine called a dough-maker created this bread. This machine mixed the dough at high pressure and speed in just a few minutes. Traditional mixers had cooling jackets and the dough mixed slowly at cool temperatures). This machine not only mixed, but also cut the dough into shapes and dropped it into pans. It was fed automatically with flour, corn syrup, shortening and a brew that smelled like bad beer. The brew contained a bit of flour, the fermented yeast, salt and all kinds of additives and each batch. Large stainless-steel tanks mixed the brew. Each tank made enough to make approximately 3000 loaves of bread. That meant if we had a bad brew, I had at least 3000 loaves of bad bread in the proof box, about forty minutes of production. It was a frightening thought. I went back to the mixing area and with my mixing operator we checked everything repeatedly. I had him checking and recording the dough’s ph. and temperature continuously. We checked the temperature of the brews. Everything seemed fine. I assumed something had been left out of the brew.

As this “fallen bread” started to come out of the oven, I had to pull some employees from the wrapping department to dump the pans of bread because it was too small for the depanner to pull out of the pan. Soon, back beside the cooler, there was a large pile of hot bread on the floor. Our production goal was to keep cripples under half a percent a day. There was no way I’d make my goal for the day, I probably wouldn’t make my goal for the week and maybe not for the year. When it got time for the next batch to start coming out of the proofer, I was hopefully that the problem would be over. It wasn’t; the bread continued to fall. I then had my mixing operator to shut down, dump the brews and to start over with fresh ingredients. I watched carefully. I made sure everything was measured just right. It put a large gap in production, but we had to find the problem. By this point, we already had a few thousand loaves of bread on the floor, and with another 6000 in the system, I was about to panic.

I called the plant manager, who called the general manager and the maintenance supervisor, and they all came in. Soon, even the owners were on site. It was a mystery and even with all the top brass, no one knew what the problem might be. Making things even more mysterious, the roll line wasn’t having a problem, it was just the bread. I watched with anticipation as this new batch, made with new brew, made it way through the proofer. The bread rose nicely, but so had the early bread. I was there, along with the plant manager and general manager, when that dough came out of the proof box. But again, once it got between the proofer and oven, it fell.

At this point, the plant manager suggested even more drastic actions. We stopped production and got all new ingredients from a different shipment. This meant that we had to send people to a warehouse to get ingredients that came from different shipments. We also changed the silo we were drawing the flour from just in case something was wrong with the flour.

While we were scurrying around trying to pinpoint the problem, a crisis was building back behind the cooler. Crippled bread piled up. Generally, we packed crippled bread in 55-gallon barrels. The barrels brought in a couple bucks when we sold then to small time hog farmers for feed. The farmers brought back the empty barrels for refilling. Another way to get rid of crippled bread was to bag it without slicing and selling it to a seafood place that made crab cakes. We called the crab company, and they took a thousand loaves. We called our hog farmers and told them that if they could bring trucks, we’d give them all they could carry. We had to get the bread out of the plant. Having that much warm bread sitting around unwrapped could develop into a mold breeding ground. So as the farmers arrived, an employee would use a scoop on a forklift to fill up the back of his truck with bread. We still wasn’t able to rid ourselves of all the crippled bread. The rest was hauled to the landfill the next day.

When the dough once again started to come out of the proofer, everyone lined up by the conveyor to watch it come out of the proofer. When the bread didn’t fall, I let out a deep breath. Finally, we had bread we could sell. However, we still had no idea what caused our problem. We had thrown away nearly 24,000 loaves of bread and had wasted almost a whole shift. Since we were only running two shifts, everyone that day worked a lot of overtime. We even called the next shift in early so that no one had to work 16 hours.

It took a few days to pinpoint the problem. Our answer came from a chemistry lab where we sent samples of the bread and our ingredients. We discovered the enriched salt we used had three times more iron than it should. Enrichment is added back to the dough to replace the good vitamins that are loss as the wheat is milled and bleached into flour. At times, we would dissolve pills and add them to the brew to make up for this enrichment, but since most bakeries use one percent salt to the amount of flour, lots of salt companies started adding enrichment to their product. This was to be more convenient, and I suppose it was, until it wasn.t. The excess iron made the heavily machined bread weak and caused it to fall when it left the moist warm air of the proof box. We got rid of that salt and the supplier had to reimburse us for our losses. Thankfully, I didn’t lose my job. However, I became known as the supervisor who threw away more bread than anyone else in the history of the bakery.

There were perils for working on Sunday.

Mark Brown: Another Williston Memory

I still have Mark’s photo and my “Sugar Bear Ecology Club” card.

The Christmas break from school was just beginning. My church youth group celebrated with a progressive dinner. We travelled around to different homes, one for appetizers, another for a salad, another for the main dish, then the last home for dessert. If we were adults, there might have been a stop for drinks, but being a 10^th grader, I knew little of such a world.

We were at the manse, where the preacher and his family lived, for dinner. In the kitchen, the television aired the local news. Although we could hear it, we pay no attention, as Mrs. Jennings, the pastor’s wife prepared the main dish. Suddenly she came into the room. She was quite upset and shaking as she asked if any of us knew a Mark Brown, a student at Hoggard High School, where most of us attended. Everyone turned to me as she told us he’d been killed that afternoon. While Mark and I no longer shared classes and had gone in different directions at Hoggard, everyone knew we had hung out a lot at Williston, the year before.

Mark reminded me of John Lennon with his long stringy brown hair. He wore tinted wire glasses and often an army fatigue jacket upon which he’d drawn pictures in ink. He looked like a hippie. Mark was a year older than me, having lost a year in elementary school. A car had hit him one day, leaving him with weeks in the hospital and even more time in recovery. By the time he returned to school, he was so far behind that he had to repeat the grade.

Although Mark was old enough to drive, I don’t remember Mark doing so. Instead, he rode his ten-speed everywhere. Once he received a warning ticket on his bike. If I recall, he was riding on Arlie Road. With no other cars in sight, Mark wove in and out of the dotted center lane. A police officer, sitting in a parked car in a driveway, observed this. He pulled Mark, in his bike, over and issued the ticket. Mark didn’t make a big deal out of it, but it was funny to hear him tell the story.

Mark was quiet and mostly a loner. We’d become good friends the year before at Williston’s Ninth Grade Center. Every day before school, Mark could be found at the top of the north stairwell. He would squat between the two bars of the railing, his feet on the bottom bar and his thighs pressed up against the top. He’d then lean forward and hug his knees, perched over the stairs like a gargoyle. Sometimes he’d read; mostly he’d stare. He was often alone. The north stairwell, along with the adjacent boy’s bathroom and breezeway was the domain of those of us who had attended Roland Grice the year before. Although Mark had recently moved to Wilmington from up north (New Jersey, I think) and never really ran around with the pack, his presence in the stairwell provided me the opportunity to get to know him.

Mark’s philosophy was to bother no one. If someone taunted him, he’d ignore them and walk away. He was the gentlest guy I knew, and I respected him for it. At a time when everyone was running around in gangs and the school and city were in turmoil, Mark refused to join in. Instead, he began his own little counter-cultural gang, inviting folks to join his Sugar Bear Ecology Club. Those accepting his offer received membership cards harvested from cereal boxes. We had to pledge to the “Clean Code.”

–Clean up our world
–Liter hurts everyone
–Each member must do his share
–Animals are our friends
–Nature belongs to all of us

As far as I know, there were only three members of the club: Mark, a guy named Joe, and me.

Later in our ninth-grade year, after watching a man climb and hang in slings on the flagpole while painting it, Mark had an idea. His lunch was 4th period, the same time I was in Ms. Gooden’s class. He told me to keep an eye on the flag that day when he was at lunch. I did. Looking out the window wasn’t anything unusual for me, although probably less so in Ms. Gooden’s class as I, along with most of the other boys in the class, had a crush on her. Our class was on the second floor, over the offices with the flagpole right out in front.

Sure enough, Mark climbed the pole that day. On the top, he was eye level with me. He held onto the top like a monkey and swung around the pole, the flag flapping around him. Students flocked to the windows and to the front of the school to witness the spectacle. Mr. Howie and Mr. Barrett, the principal and one of the assistants, ran to the scene. They demanded him to come down immediately. I thought for sure he’d be suspended, but they let him off with a stern warning. At a time of turmoil, climbing a flagpole seemed to be a relatively minor offense.

My dad took me to Mark’s funeral. It was a day or two before Christmas 1972 and held at the Catholic Church on Wrightsville Beach. It was stormy and the tide high. When we crossed the causeway, the waves lapped at the few boats still in the water that late in December. This was my first time in a Catholic Church. Much of what happened seemed strange, except for the crying. Everyone cried. Even my father, who’d only met Mark once or maybe twice, seemed visibly moved.

Mark’s death didn’t seem fair. Mark had been riding on the back of his brother’s motorcycle. Someone ran a red light at the intersection of Oleander Drive and Independence Boulevard, hitting the bike. His brother was able to hold onto the bike and ride it down. Mark was thrown off the back and across two lanes of traffic. He’d beat death once before, but not this time.

June 17, 2021July 21, 2022

Recent readings

Four book reviews: The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses, That Time of the Year: A Minnesota Life, and It Can’t Happen Here.

Richard Flanagan, The Narrow Road to the Deep North.

(2013, Audible, 2014), 14 hours 59 minutes

What a complex book. At times I loved it and other times I wondered what I was doing immersing myself within these words. The Narrow Road to the Deep North, a title taken from Basho, a famous Japanese haiku poet from the 17^th Century, centers on the life of Dorrigo Evans. An Australian physician and surgeon, Evans reads the great literature of the world and serves in the Army. Captured on Java by the Japanese early in the Second World War, he and his fellow prisoners are sent to Western Thailand to build a railroad to Burma. While the story of the war unifies the novel, this is not just a book about war. Dorrigo carries with him a dark secret, but one of hope. Just prior to the war, he had an affair with Amy, his uncle’s young wife. Her memory haunts him in the jungles of Thailand and even after the war as he continues his career in medicine and begins his own family.

Evans is a complicated character who is thrown into a horrible situation. As the highest-ranking officer among the POWs, he must make decisions to meet the Japanese quota of daily workers along his section of the railroad. These are life and death decisions, but he has no control. All the men are starving and disease prone. At one point, he must pick men for a march into the jungle to another camp. He makes the decision by picking out those with the best shoes. He fights with the Japanese for better food and medical supplies and rest for his men. He establishes a rough surgical hospital. He is tormented when he cannot save a man’s life because he lacks medicines and equipment. Yet, he is loved by the POWs and performs remarkably well despite the situation.

His personal life before and after the war was a mess and continues this way after the war. While he marries and provides well for his family, he is distant. He feels inadequate and guilty. He drowns his pain in numerous affairs. But, when his family is threatened by a fire in the bush, he arises to the occasion. His wife and children are amazed at this. For the first time, the children see his compassion, as well as the risks he takes to save his family.

The story isn’t just about Dorrigo. We are given mini biographies of others who were at the POW camps. Some died there and their ghost remain with Dorrigo and his fellow survivors. Others live on, but their lives have all be affected by the terrible treatment they received as POWs. We also learn about some of the camps guards and Japanese officials during the war and afterwards.

One of the cruelest guards is a Korean, the “Goanna.” Extremely brutal and sadistic in his treatment of prisoners, he is hanged for war crimes. Yet, I felt sorry for him. He was not Japanese. He joined the Japanese army (Japan had annexed Korea in the early 20^th Century) for the money. But Koreans were always seen as second-class citizens and instead of being in the real army, they were assigned duty as guards and such. His sister, lured also by money and the promise to help wounded soldiers, became a “Comfort Woman,” essentially a prostitute for the Japanese army. He bore the burden of learning what she had become. He also felt he was just doing his duty for a promise of 50 yen a month (A yen must have been worth a lot more back then!).

Major Nakamura was the camp’s commander. He returns to Japan and hides his identity at first. He finds a job working with the Japanese blood bank. Years later, Nakamura has a conversation with a Japanese doctor who tells of the medical experiences he conducted on American POWs. The doctor confides that they did their duty and are safe as the allied armies want to put the war behind them. The doctor suggests that only the foolish and those from Korea and Taiwan were punished for war crimes.

Flanagan shows the complexity of individuals, who can be compassionate and cruel, capable of appreciation of beauty and able to create what is ugly. Evans shows great compassion and leadership during the war and not so much before or afterwards. For Nakamura, it’s the opposite. He’s savage in the war and mellows afterwards. Not only do we see this through the characters but also through literature (both Western and Japanese). I am going to think about this book for some time to come!

I recommend this book with a warning. The descriptions of the POW experience are very realistic. Parts of the book read like a horror tale. Furthermore, at times, when discussing Evan’s relationships with women, I found myself thinking I could use a little description. Some of these parts seem like I was reading an “adult” romance novel. But when blended, this book left me pondering the human condition.

I listened to the unabridged version of this book on Audible. I have been on the Burma-Thai railroad and to a few of the many huge cemeteries from those who died there: British, Australian, New Zealanders, Dutch, and Indian. These plots remain a sobering place.

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses

(2003, Audible release 2018). Read by the author. 7 hours 46 minutes

I found this a delightful book that opened windows of understandings for often overlooked plants. Mosses are some of the simplest plants but are also very complex and important for the wellbeing of our planet. Drawing from her experience as a scientist, who studies moss, as well as her Native American heritage, Kimmerer weaves stories of her family and heritage into the larger story of moss. I enjoyed listening to her lyrical style of composition and since listening to this book, I have been looking at moss everywhere, on shady ground, rocks, on trees, and on rotting wood. I need to purchase and reread this book in print to capture all the names of the types of moss. The book is essentially a natural history of moss. In telling the story of moss, the plant becomes a metaphor for our lives.

“But the world is still unpredictable and still we survive by the grace of chance and the strength of our choices.” (at the end of chapter 12).

Garrison Keillor, That Time of the Year: A Minnesota Life

(New York: Arcade Publishing, 2020), 360 pages including a few photos.

I received this book as a Christmas present and thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Having listened to Keillor and the Prairie Home Companion since the 80s, much of the book felt like I was visiting old friends whom I’d met over the radio. This book gives us insight into Keillor’s life and the decisions that led him into radio and to becoming a well-known author. Throughout the book, one has the feeling that Keillor feels blessed with the ability to have done what he did through a radio show. He is gracious in giving thanks to those who have helped him along the way, from teachers and aunts, parents and friends, and to those in the business. He also writes graciously about those who performed on the show and the friends he made along the way. I was shocked to learn he had become friends of Michigan’s author, Jim Harrison. Harrison, best known from his novella that became the movie Legends of the Fall, listened to Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion and the two began a correspondence. Keillor ends the book with a beautiful “sermon” on Psalm 100, which he summarizes as “In other words, lighten up. It isn’t about you. Improve the Hour.”

I am sure there are parts of the book in which Keillor avoided topics and left things out (this is a memoir and not a autobiography, after all). However, he acknowledges the pain he caused to this first wife and the situation which led to him being removed from Public Radio during the rise of the “Me, Too” movement. With the latter, Keillor avoids making his accuser out to be evil, while maintaining his general innocence. He agreed that some of what he said to the woman may have been taken the wrong way but insists there was never anything to their email exchanges that rose to the level of the complaints. His bitterness is at how quickly Minnesota Public Radio decided that he was expendable.

A few quotes:

“Satire is perishable like lettuce.”

“I wanted to have a long retirement and disappear into the sunset and outlive everyone qualified to give my eulogy.”

Sinclair Lewis, It Can’t Happen Here

(1935, Audible 2016), 14 hours 28 minutes.

I read this book in college or just afterwards, but decided to listen to it again (which I mostly did while driving or walking). The book begins at a civic function in a small town in Vermont in the run up to the 1936 election. While the book moves from character to character, the unifying stream is about a Vermont newspaper editor, Doremus Jessup. Written before the election of 1936, the book creates an alternative to history. FDR doesn’t even win his party’s nomination in 1936. Instead, a rogue candidate, Buzz Windrip, rises to power on the promise of giving everyone $6000 a year. He also has an army of supporters who, soon after taking over as President, goes into action. Quickly, the country descends into fascism. Jessup, who had always played it safe as a newspaper editor, writes an editorial that gets him into trouble. He becomes politically involved with an underground movement. Arrested, Jessup finds himself in a concentration camp. After his escape, he makes his way to Canada to join exiled Americans working for an overthrow of the government.

Surprisingly, although of a serious yet fictional subject matter, there is a lot of humor in this book. These words drip with satire.

This book was written during the era of Huey Long and at the time of the rise of fascism in Europe. While dated, there is much to ponder. Demagogues are dangerous. This would be a good book for America to reread.

June 11, 2021February 10, 2022

Williston’s 1971 Snowfall

I have been reviewing some old writings about my days at Williston 9th Grade Center. Click here to read an earlier story about Ms. Gooden.
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I always dreaded going back to school after a long break, but the morning of January 2, 1972 was the worst. Heading to the bus stop, I shuffled my feet like a man going to the gallows. A pall had hung over the entire break. I boarded bus #23 and sat silently in the back as we traveled up South College Road to Roland Grice. Everyone got off. The seventh and eighth graders headed out to play while those of us who were ninth graders climbed into another bus for the shuttle downtown to Williston. This was the first year of cross-town (actually cross-county) busing, which for me meant that the first hour and a half of each school day was devoted to riding in or waiting on buses. The same was true for the afternoon, another hour and a half of waiting and riding. This was the price we paid to be a part of a court-ordered social experience. On January 2nd, the ride took even longer.

I don’t remember who made the first dare. Right before the fourth period bell, standing in the back of Ms. Gooden’s room, Abraham, Mike and I dared and doubled-dared each other to toss out the window some of the old outdated books stored in the shelves along the back wall. As it was with the first bite into Eve’s apple, after the first book flew out the window, the rest became easier. We each tossed a couple out into the bushes below by the time the bell rang. Ms. Gooden came in from the hall and began to teach. It was the last day of school before the Christmas break.

Our indiscretions should have ended then. But it didn’t. As fate would have it, Ms. Gooden left the room for a few minutes during the class. We came up with another dare. In the back of the room was a filing cabinet where the former teacher, now an assistant principal, had stored years of test papers. I don’t remember which one of us was the natural litterer, but soon a file folder of papers sailed across the front yard. Someone joked about snow. We all got into the act. Wilmington hadn’t had a white Christmas in a hundred years and we were out to change that. A brief snow flurry ensued, blanketing Williston’s front lawn. The flurries died down as soon as we heard Ms. Gooden’s high-heels clicking down the hall. We jumped in our seats, covered our smirks with our hands, and tried to act like nothing had happened. A few moments later, the principal, Mr. Howie, stormed into the room. He didn’t bother to knock or ask permission. I’d never seen a black man so red.

“Who threw those papers out the windows?” he shouted.

Our smirks retreated in the face of his anger. The three of us, an unholy trinity, sat there praying that no one would rat us out.

“You’d better have their names in my office by the end of the period,” he warned his young teacher before stomping out the door.

Ms. Gooden walked back to our corner, her heels clicking with each step. Then she just stood there. There’s nothing worst than having a gorgeous woman look at you with big, sad, disappointed eyes. We immediately forgot that she was on the other side, a teacher, and confessed to our misdemeanors. After class we headed to lunch while Ms. Gooden went down to the principal’s office.

Our final two classes of the day were dreadfully long. The three of us walked around, looking rejected, kind of like the Pakistani soldiers who’d just been defeated in by the Indians in what is now Bangladesh. We kept waiting for that dreaded speaker above the chalkboard to call out our names and tell us to report to the office. Our prayers must have been effective or, more likely, Mr. Howie and company were looking forward to their holiday every bit as much as us. The summons never came.

Having safely made it through the last day of school, I assumed our actions would catch up with us the first day back after the holidays. I headed back to school, fully expecting to be sent back home, suspended for at least a week. But to my surprise, nothing more was said about the strange snowfall that December day. I often wondered what kind of conversation had gone on between Ms. Gooden and Mr. Howie, but I never inquired. It was best to let that sleeping dog lie.

May 29, 2021February 10, 2022

Frank and Roosevelt and the making of bread

I am currently taking a week off and spending it at my dads. It’s hot here, but we have been out paddling kayaks in the morning. The wind has been too strong for us to go out into the ocean fishing, so we’ve been paddling kayaks over to Masonboro Island in the morning before the wind rises. There will be no sermon this week as someone is preaching for me. Below is another of my bakery memories:

Former Bakery Stories:

Linda and my beginning at the Bakery

A College Boy in the Bakery

Harvey and Ernest (Oven Operator and Pan Stacker)

Frank and Roosevelt (Bakery, Part 4)

Like Ernest and Harvey, I also inherited Frank and Roosevelt when I began my stint as the night shift supervisor at the bakery. For nearly a year, I came in first at night. I had about thirty minutes to review the day’s orders and set the schedule. Then Roosevelt reported. He took my schedule, we discussed it a few minutes, then he headed back to the mixing room.

Roosevelt’s work

Roosevelt’s first task was to weigh up buckets of ingredients for the various breads we would make in the morning. As the mixer held nearly 3000 pounds of dough, the ingredients he measured were small in quantity and generally fit into a five-gallon pail. This included salt, whey (a milk substitute), enrichment, and preservatives. Sometimes another bucket contained alternative sweetener such as brown sugar, honey, or molasses. After shifting, white flour blew into hopper on top of the mixer, which had a scale to weigh the flour. Gravity then fed the flour to the mixer. Whole wheat, cracked wheat, and rye flour came in 100-pound sacks. Corn syrup, shortening, and fermentation brew (the yeast) were also added mechanically.

Huge 65 horsepower motors turned the mixer. Water cooling sleeves formed a metal jacket around the bowl which kept the dough cool From what I remember, it took about 10 minutes to mix a batch of dough. Time varied slightly basked on the the strength of the flour and the ingredients used. When ready, Roosevelt tilted the giant bowl, dumping the dough into a trough.

Frank’s work

From the bottom of the trough in front of the mixer, a pump pulled the dough to the make-up area. There, Frank oversaw the operation. A divider cut the dough into six portions of the proper weight. Then it dropped into the rounder, a spinning pot that formed the dough into a ball. After that, the dough balls rose a bit before running through the sheeter that flatted them (like a pizza dough). A machine rolled these flat portions into the shape of the bread. At the end of the process, they dropped into a pan. When things ran smoothly, it was a marvel to watch. For things to smoothly operate, the machines had to be properly set and the dough the right consistency.

Roosevelt’s background

A seaman earlier in his life, Roosevelt had served as a cook on an oil tanker. He once talked about working on a ship hauling oil from North Sea to Philadelphia. In a storm, the ship’s hull split. The ship was in danger of sinking. Two ocean going tugs reached the ship and helped it limp into Jacksonville, Florida. This took eight weeks instead of their normal week-long crossing. During this time, Roosevelt slept with his life vest. Reaching port, the captain told Roosevelt the ship would be ready to sail in about ten weeks, but he decided that his days on the sea were over. Although he still had his seaman papers, he came back home and took a job at the bakery. Roosevelt proclaimed himself to be a Black Muslim, but he wasn’t a radical. He certainly didn’t appear to mind having a white supervisor. Since he also smoked pot and drank alcohol, I wondered how devoted he was to his proclaimed faith.

Frank’s problems

A dependable worker, Roosevelt made my job easier. Frank wasn’t so dependable and sometimes made my job a living hell. He often came in late. Several times he reported in a condition in which he wasn’t capable of working. This became a problem as it’s hard to find a last-minute replacement at 2 AM. I often had to do his job, too. One night he didn’t show up. When Bobby, who ran the slicers and wrappers, reported three hours later, he found Frank passed out in his car. I sent him home. He cried to the personal manager later that day, who reinstated him. I could only place another written warning in his personal file.

A few months later, the personal manager regretted his actions. Frank, while on break one morning, had gone over to the slicing and wrapping area. When the bread entered the slicing area, the outside was firm and crust. This allowed it to be sliced easier. It also allowed the loaf to be carved upon. Joking around, Frank scratched with a knife on the bottom of a loaf, “Fuck You.” After showing it around as if it was a joke, he placed the loaf back onto the conveyor. Normally, this wouldn’t have been a problem. Our regular bags were red on the bottom. Unfortunately, at the time, we were bagging the bread in a special “private label” bag that had a clear bottom. This bag found itself on a shelf of a store in South Carolina and then in a family’s home. The family didn’t appreciate Frank’s handiwork. A day later, our General Manager received an angry call from the head of the grocery chain. They dropped their contract with us. We lost several thousand dollars a day in sales. The chain reaction began. The personnel manger and I were informed to find out who did it and to fire them on the spot. As Frank had shown this loaf to several employees, it only took a few questions to pin it on him. We called Frank into the office. When confronted by the General Manager, the Plant Manager, the Personal Manager and me, he admitted he had done done the “deed” as “a joke.” Frank was fired. I had the task of walking him to his locker to see that it was cleaned out and to escort him to the door.

Sad endings

I ran into Frank a few years later. Bitter, he complained that we “couldn’t take a joke.” I shook my head and said “whatever,” realizing he hadn’t learned anything from the consequences of his actions.

I never saw Roosevelt after I left the bakery, but a decade later, I ran into another supervisor from the plant told me the sobering news. Roosevelt had returned to the sea. Sometime later, Roosevelt’s body was found floating next to his ship. He had been stabbed, The assumption was that a drug deal went bad. My heart grieved over his demise. I had enjoyed working with Roosevelt. I can still see him laugh, with a prominent gold tooth in the front of his mouth.

May 18, 2021February 10, 2022

Williston Ninth Grade Center: Ms. Gooden

Background

2021 marks fifty years since cross-town busing began in Wilmington, NC. That spring, those of us in the eighth grade at Roland Grice Junior High, left school thinking about the fall. Having paid our dues as seventh and eighth graders, were ready to be “king of the hill” as ninth graders. However, due to court rulings that few of us understood, things changed that summer. Instead of staying at Roland Grice, we were bused across town to the former African American high school, Williston. Each school, instead of drawing on the neighborhood makeup, was to be 70% white, 30% black, which was the county make-up at the time. Racial tensions were high that fall as 9^th graders from three formerly Junior High Schools (Williston—which had become a Jr. High after it stopped being a High School, along with Sunset Park and Roland Grice) were merged into one school. While I am not sure I learned much in class that year, I learned a lot about life. This is one of my stories (which I wrote many years ago and have edited it for this blog post).

Photo take in 2010 (the blinds in the 2nd story classes look in better shape than they were in 1971).

4th Period

Walking into my fourth period class at Williston Ninth Grade Center, I couldn’t believe my eyes. A new girl sat in a desk to right of me, in the back corner by the window. A blonde, nicely dressed as if trying to impress her classmates on her first day at school, she smiled. Stumbling for words, I introduced myself and welcomed her to my corner. I attempted to impress her by telling a few things that went on in the back of the class. Then Mike, who also sat in the corner, took his place, and joined the conversation. We were in competition, each vying for the new girl’s attention. We tried to outdo the other with our stories. She smiled, even blushed a bit. So intent we were to impress, we didn’t give her time to say anything. The bell rang, the teacher stepped up to the front, class began, and reality sat in.

Our latest test was returned. I quickly took mine and put it under some other papers, shielding it from the new girl. “She looks smart and wouldn’t be impressed with my grade,” I thought. We reviewed the test, and I saw where I’d made my mistakes in calculations. Then she handed out our report cards. Again, I snatched the card quickly and stuck it in a book. The new girl was the one person other than my parents that I didn’t want to see my grades. I promised myself I’d study harder and do all my homework this next term. She deserved such sacrifices.

As the class wound down, I tried to think of a good line to use after the bell, as we herded down the hall to the cafeteria. But a few minutes before the bell, the principal, Mr. Howie, stepped in. He’d never been in this class, and I thought this was strange as we’d been well behaved that day. Politely, our teacher yielded to the floor to Mr. Howie. He informed us that our teacher was being promoted to an assistant principal. At his clue, we clapped. None of us were sure what this meant. By this point in my academic career, assistant principals weren’t on my radar. I was the type of kid who bypassed the assistant’s office and head straight to the big guy’s door. After only six weeks at Williston, Howie and I were on a first name bases.

A new teacher

After giving accolades to our teacher, the principal, as if he was introducing a political candidate, said it gave him great pleasure to introduce our new teacher. Then turning to the back corner, he said, “Ms. Gooden, will you stand.”

The new girl in the class stood and stepped forward. Mike and I slid under our respective desks. I swear, as she introduced herself to the class, she smirked every time she looked over our way. This was going to be a long year.

Like most schoolboys, there had been a few teachers who, because of their looks or kindness, had encouraged my fantasies. Miss Freeman, my fourth-grade teacher once brought me a Coke. I was a cheap date and impressed. And then there was a seventh-grade math teacher who had ten dresses and I could tell the day of the week by her dress. Of course, two of these dresses were quite short and showed lots of leg. Yet, fantasies about these teachers remained where they belonged, deep in my psyche. I never said anything inappropriate. But now I found myself with a new teacher who was beautiful, and I’d already played my cards to impress her to be mine.

Ms. Gooden was fresh from college. She was probably twenty-two but could have easily passed for fifteen. I’m sure if she went out for a drink, the waitress would have carded her. And now she knew who, in her class, to keep an eye on.

Her fiancé

Perhaps to make the point that she was no “Mrs. Robinson,” Ms Gooden fiancé drop by one day. A Marine officer, he stood at attention in the front of the class, decked out in his dress uniform. On his side was an engraved sword that said to me, “hands off my girl.” As he greeted us, he kept looking over at my corner. I’m sure he knew all about us.

More to come…

I should say that nothing ever happened, but that wouldn’t be quite true. Certainly nothing romantically happened, but there were adventures to come in this fourth period class. I’m sure nothing in Ms. Gooden’s teacher training prepared her to have a class like ours at such a time in history.

May 4, 2021February 10, 2022

Harvey and Ernest in the Bakery

Series introduction

In the summer of 1976, I began working at Fox Holsum Bakery in Wilmington, NC. I had just finished my first year of college. For the summer, I had a job traying bread. At the end of the summer, as I wrote about last week, the plant manager asked if I would be interested in continuing to work on second shift. This allowed me to work full time, while also attending college. During my senior year of college, they promoted me to supervision. I continued with the banker for almost two years after graduation, when I decided to take a major pay cut and go to work for the Boy Scouts of America.

The bakery no longer exists even though the building and the flour silos along the railroad tracks were still standing a few years ago when I rode by the plant. I hope to rework a number of essays I’ve written about some of the characters I knew during this period of time. Over the next few months, as I work on them, I will post them here.

Story 1: Coming of age in the bakery
Story 2: A college boy in the bakery

Harvey and Ernest

I inherited Harvey and Ernest a few days after I graduated from college. With four years of college under my belt and a philosophy degree to hang on the wall, I decided not to even look for other employment. Of course, now that I’d graduated from college, my schedule was more flexible. When they recruited me to stay on after that first summer, they promised to keep me on second shift so that I’d be able to attend school in the mornings. This worked well, but once I’d graduated, they wanted me on the night shift. I had to pay my dues. Harvey was my oven operator and Ernest ran the pan-stackers. Although they were as different as night and day, I liked both of them.

Ernest also went by “Rerun” This was based on the character played by Fred Berry on the popular 70s TV show, “What’s Happening.” Both Ernest and Berry were comical, overweight, and Africa-American. Harvey was a skinny, aging, white-guy, clueless about the world. As their 22-year-old supervisor, I was almost as clueless as Harvey.

A night in the bakery

My day began around mid-night, when I came in the plant and spent the first hour developing schedules. Then the first part of my shift reported. In the mixing room was Roosevelt on the mixers and Frank running the make-up equipment that took the dough, shaped it, and placed it into pans. Ernest and Harvey worked in the background, which comprised about half the plant with just the two of them. Ernest ran the panstackers, while Harvey oversaw the operation of the oven and proof box, each the size of a house.

The machinery Ernest managed placed the pans on the conveyor that transported them into the mixing area. Havery’s first hour was more laidback. He turned on the steam into the proof box and lighted the oven’s burners (the oven had about forty burners in it).

For the next three hours, it was just the five of us. Roosevelt would start mixing the dough while Frank set up the equipment. In the back room, Ernest kept count of the number of pans needed for each size and type of bread. When the first dough dumped from the mixer (which had a capacity of 2400 pounds), the operation started. The plant was mostly automatic. A pump drew the dough out of the trough and into the divider, that cut the dough into loaf sizes. From there, the rounder snapped the dough into a ball. Then, running through sheeters and moulders, to create a loaf. The dough dropped into a pan and conveyed over to the proof box.

This automation continued as a conveyor ran the pans from the proof box to the oven, then out of the oven and through a depanner. From there the bread went through a cooler, while the pans returned to the mixing area for more dough.

At four in the morning, Bobby and his crew came in to run the slicers and baggers. Timing was everything. A few minutes after four, bread that had been cooled enough to be sliced, marched on the conveyors out of the cooler and toward the slicers. Afterwards, the bread was stuffed into bags. If all ran well, the first-time human hands touched the product was when the wrapped loaves were placed on trays and sent to the shipping department. We could produce 5000+ pound loaves or 4200-pound-and-a-half loaves of bread an hour.

Ernest sleeping on the job

The one similarity Ernest and Harvey shared was solitude. For the most part, they wanted to do their job and be left alone except for an occasional break to smoke a cigarette. They were both good at what they did. Once Ernest had things running smoothly, he’d lean against the machinery and rest. From then on, his role was to clear jams and troubleshoot problems. I knew he’d developed the skill of sleeping upright against the machines. Any change in vibration would immediately wake him. He’d fix the problem and then return to his nap.

Of course, Ernest insisted he never slept. I wasn’t troubled by it for I knew Ernest always got his job done. But for some reason, I also felt I had a point to prove. One morning, while he was napping and the machines humming smoothly, I found a piece of twine and some fabric and fashioned a tail, much like you make for a kite. I tied it to a belt loop on the back of his pants. Ernest snoozed. Once he woke, he couldn’t see it; he was too big. Over the next several hours, quite folks in the plant all made a trip back to his area to see his “tail.”

Ernest wasn’t too happy with me when I asked if he grew the tail while sleeping on the job. Thinking back, it wasn’t a very nice joke. It was also dangerous considering the equipment we worked with. In time he forgave me, and I stopped hounding him about sleeping.

The education of Harvey

Harvey worked in the most isolated part of the plant. Ernest was located near the receiving docks, so he’d often see people walking by. Few people walked by Harvey’s workstation. Except for the supervisor or a mechanic, one either wanted to see him, were lost, or were trying to hide. Harvey oversaw the most automotive section in the plant. As I wrote in the last piece, when things worked properly, it was a breeze. When something went wrong, such as a jam in the oven, Harvey just didn’t call for help. He hit a button. This set off a horn heard throughout the bakery, summoning mechanics, and me to drop whatever we were doing and run back to the oven. A major malfunction at that point in production meant we had only a couple of minutes to get things going before losing thousands of loaves of bread. Luckily, things kept humming most of the time.

The mechanics often spent time with Harvey, making minor adjustments, watching to make sure things were running okay, and at times, avoiding other work. A couple mechanics took it upon themselves to educate Harvey, something that nearly six decades of life had failed to do. Pornographic magazines, often very graphic, were utilized as textbooks. I was spared their instruction, being in management, but I always knew when Harvey had received a lesson. He’d be beside himself and would start babbling to me about it. “You wouldn’t believe what that girl was doing,” he’d say. “Why would someone do that,” he asked? Although I don’t think he was a religious man, the general depravity of the human race greatly troubled Harvey.

Working on Ernest’s Cadillac

Another memory I have of Harvey and Ernest happened early one morning. We’d been having trouble with people breaking into cars parked outside the plant, especially older vehicles which didn’t have hood latches inside the car. On these vehicles, the thieves didn’t have to get into the car to pop the hood and steal the battery. Ernest drove a big old dark-green Cadillac. To keep it safe, he’d park on the street, right next to the loading dock and under a streetlight. This morning, about 1 AM, as I was going over the schedule with Ernest, telling him how many of what type of pans we’d need, Harvey went out on the loading dock for a smoke. When he returned, he asked Ernest, without sensing anything wrong, “Who’s working on your car this time of night?” Ernest took off out the door like a locomotive, cussing and screaming. The guys stealing his battery dropped their tools and took off. Harvey had no clue; Ernest gained a pair of pliers and a wrench.

I talked to the police. They told me to mark the batteries. A battery with identifying mark indicating its owner made it difficult to be sold. Salvage yards had police to check such batteries. I purchased an engraver and offered to write the license plate numbers on top of my employees’ car batteries. Word about this quickly spread around the neighborhood. I don’t remember any more batteries stolen afterwards.

Thinking back, 40 years later

I worked the night shift for a year and would stay at the bakery for another year after that. I still think about those guys and wonder whatever happened to Ernest and Harvey.

April 29, 2021February 10, 2022

A College Boy in the Bakery

This is the second story in my bakery saga. Unlike the first story about Linda, which I wrote years earlier and revised, this is a new story. While the bakery was always hot, this post isn’t nearly as steamy as the first one. It also has more technical detail that’s required to fully understand what I’m talking about.

Summer’s End

As the summer of 1976 wrapped up, I called into the plant manager’s office. That morning I’d given my two-week notice. My plan was to leave the bakery as I returned to college. I would also work in the fall part-time at a Wilson’s Supermarket on Oleander Drive, where I had worked for several years. Even during this summer at the bakery, I still put in six or eight hours a week there, mainly ordering and tending the cigarette aisle. It’d been a busy summer, and I had no idea why the plant manager wanted to see me.

“I’d like you continue working here,” he said. “In a few months, I think you’ll be a supervisor. And I promise to keep you on second shift, if you can arrange your schedule to take morning classes.”

He also noted that for the time being, I would be the second shift operator for the bread slicers and baggers. I had already spent some time that summer learning and running this equipment due to an accident earlier in the summer.

Roy’s accident with the wrapping machine

One hot day, a major breakdown occurred in the proof box. This meant we didn’t have bread to package for several hours. After cleaning up our workstations, there was little for us to do until they got the operation back running,. We hid out on the loading deck. Roy was the second shift operator for the slicers and wrappers. He proceeded to smoke a couple of joints. By the time the bread production resumed, he was feeling pretty good. But his thinking wasn’t very clear, nor his reflexes fast.

In other that your thinking will be clearer, let me explain the process. As a loaf of bread approached the bagger, a shot of compressed air blew up a bag. This signaled an arm to shoot, out, catching the loaf of bread and sliding into the bag. As the arm retreated, the bread was inside the bag and dropped onto another conveyor. It then moved through a machine that sealed the open end of the bag with a twist tie. The arm that caught to bag was sharp and shiny, made of stainless steel. This was so it could easily slide into and out of the bag. If the bag didn’t open, there was a switch that would stop the machine. There was also a metal lattice grate that protected the operator from the arm. If the grate wasn’t fully extended, there was another switch that kept the machine from operating.

On this day, the wrapping machines were having problems. This often happened on really hot days as the bag would stick, or when the bags were old. Roy was constantly having remove stuck bags. To expedite things, he tapped down the switch that kept the machine from operating when one’s hands were inside the grate. Then, when cleaning up some bad bags that had jammed the machine, he accidently tripped the switch that indicated the bag had blown open. The metal arm shot out to catch the loaf and sliced into the flesh on Roy’s forearm. Blood went everywhere. He required 20 or so stitches.

That evening, Paul, the supervisor began teaching me how to operate the machinery. The next day, instead of traying off bread, I ran the machines. They kept Bobby, the first shift operator over to help train me and until we had no more change overs. I worked for a few days as an operator, but then went back to bagging when Roy returned.

Roy would only work another week or so before he quit. I never completely understood him. He had left the army after 10 years, which he had worked primarily as a cook. He learned the baking trade in Vietnam, where he worked in an American built field bakery supplying troops in the country. I never knew why he left the bakery and I never saw him again. From this point on, I was operating the equipment, even though I was still making the wage of a bread trayer. But my summer was almost over and It was a week or so later I was in the plant managers office.

Two job offers

I asked time to think about the offer. The grocery store I was working for had also offered me a similar position. They were opening a new store near Monkey Junction. Bert, the manager who had hired me, was being moved to the new store and offered me to come along as the “third man,” essentially the second manager, who main job would be to close the store several nights during the week. It was tempting, but in the end decided I would stick to the bakery. Having worked in the grocery store through high school, I’d done most of the jobs throughout the store except for in the meat department. The bakery was still a mystery, so I accepted the offer. When classed resumed, I left the grocery store and began to work fulltime on second shift at the bakery.

Operating the slicers and baggers

About a month later, the plant manager left. I was never sure if he quit on his own or if he was fired, but I would not be a supervisor for nearly three more years (and two plant managers later).

While I was not a supervisor, I was the lead on a four-person operation. This was especially true after some remodeling of the plant. When I was hired, the bread traying operation occurred in the shipping area (and faced Linda’s work station). There, two conveyors from the wrapping machines brought the bread through a wall. This was the position was just behind the roll wrapping area, providing me with Linda. At the end of the summer, they cut out the wall and moved the bread trayers next to the wrapping machines. This allowed for the wrapping operator to be able to interact more easily with the trayers.

The process

The bread came into the wrapping area from the cooler, where it had spent approximately an hour cooling to where the outside was crusty, but the inside was still warm. This was necessary for the bread not to mash up in the slicers. This bread came out on a single conveyor, which split into two before going through the slicers. A woman generally worked at this position, making sure the operations ran smoothly. Whenever one of the machines were down, she would take off the excess bread and place it on waiting trays. Then, she would feed it back in when things ran well.

The slicers were large bandsaws, but instead of a single blade, there were sixteen or so blades. Each blade was circular and five feet or so in diameter. Inside the machine, the blades twisted in a figure eight around two drums. This allowed the cutting surface of each blade to face the incoming bread and resulted in two slices per blade. A few extra blades were stored on the drums of each slicer. This allowed for the operator or a mechanic to quickly move blades over to replace a broken one. The razor sharp blades were dangerous. The equipment remained closed, except for where the bread entered and departed. If one of the doors on the machine opened, a switch shut the saw down down. A broken blade flying free would be deadly.

From the slicers, the bread traveled by a conveyor, maybe ten feet long, to the bagger. This conveyor had sides that were set to the bread to keep the slices from falling. After bagging and tying the loaves, they were placed on to trays and racks, which the shipping department then handled. In some ways, this was an easy job, when things went well. This was especially true after all the changes that came with morning variety bread. Once we started with the pound and a half white bread, which was so popular back in the 70s, we only changed the bags. During the summer busy season, we’d often bag 60 or 70 thousand loaves of white pound and a half bread at a rate of 4200 loaves and hour.

I became friends with Bobby, who was the morning operator. He’d often punch out and then come back over and talk. On a few occasions, on our days off, we went out rabbit and squirrel hunting. He had several uncles and cousins with beagles who lived on farms just inside Pender County. At the time I didn’t think about it, but I now wonder what some people would have thought to see a white guy running around several African Americans, all of us armed with shotguns or rifles.

While everyone in management remained silent about me becoming a supervisor, I was honored during this time as the company’s outstanding employee for the first quarter of 1977-78. In addition to a nice plaque, the management treated outstanding employees and spouses to wonderful dinner at the Hilton on the Cape Fear River. (Looks like I should clean up my plaque!).

My minor injury

I did have one injury while running the bakery machines. As a promotion, we were placing game cards inside each of the loaves of bread. This required a separate machine to sat next to the conveyor between the slicer and bagger. It was always creating problems when the placement of the card wasn’t perfect. At one point, a card was near the bag opening, which jammed up the tying machine. In trying to free the bags, I pulled out a pocketknife. Leaning over the equipment, I supported my weight on my left hand as I cut out the bag and card with my right hand. When the knife slipped, and the blade went into my left hand, requiring a couple of stitches. The scar is still visible.

My learning from this event happened in the emergency room. I joked that I’d been stabbed. They followed their procedure and called the police. I attempted to clarify. It was truthful, I had stabbed myself. But it was an accident. The hospital visit would be filed on a workers compensation claim. And, to make me look innocent, I wore a white bakery uniform sprinkled with bits of crust from the bread.

Oven operator

After about a year as an operator of the wrapping and bagging machinery, I was asked if I would like to move over to the bread oven. This was a solo job, but it came with another pay raise and a lot more responsibility. Mainly I oversaw the operations of about a 1/3 of the production area. One main task involved continually monitoring the temperature in the oven and the humidity in the proofer. This was in addition to making sure everything ran smoothly. The size to the equipment in my area was similar to a house. Since there were three major pieces of equipment, my work area represented the size of a small neighborhood.

Oven operations

The bread came back to my area on a long conveyor from the make-up room. There, the dough was placed into strapped together pans that held four loaves. The bread first entered a proof box. The temperature in the box was kept around 110 degrees with nearly 100% humidity. Automatic arms pushed the bread pans, ten four loaves pans at a time) onto racks. Windows into the proofer provided a glimpse at how the bread was rising. When the dough rose to the top of the pan, another arm pushed the pans onto a conveyor. From there, the bread travelled to the oven.

Between the proofer and the oven, a machine placed lids onto the bread if we were making square top loaves. The operator had to place the lids onto the conveyors at the beginning. That was easy as the lids were cool. After that, the lids recycled until the end of the day. As second shift ended the workday, I had to pull off the lids. These were hot and more than a few times I burned my forearms.

The oven worked liked the proof box with arms pushing and pulling the pans onto and off of racks. The oven consisted of seventy-some burners, which needed to occasionally be checked. Sometimes burners had to be scraped out to get them to relight. In addition there were 6 temperature zones. If the bread wasn’t tall enough, I’d reduce the temperature in the first zone to allow it to rise a bit more. If it was too tall, I could increase the heat to kill the yeast faster. Each zone had gauges that checked continually.

Leaving the oven, the pans went through a machine that first removed the lids (if used). Then, by suction cups, the loaves were lifted from the pan and placed on a conveyor for the cooler. The loaves would remain in the cooler until it was time for them to go to the slicers. The entire process, from arriving at the proof box till leaving the proofer, took approximately 2 1/2 hours.

The pleasure and perils of being an oven operator

I had the horn if case there was a problem. It could be heard throughout the plant. If I blew it, the supervisor and the mechanics on duty immediately ran to my aid. Even a break down of a few minutes could cause us to lose upwards of 6000 loaves of bread. In later stories, I’ll share some horror stories.

But running smoothly, I was left alone with my thoughts, as I continually checked on things. When taking classes at the university in which I had to memorize lots of stuff, I would keep index cards in my pocket. Then I would run the cards occasionally throughout my shift.

I would continue working as the oven operator until my last semester in college, which was when I was moved into supervision. While it seemed long, I had just turned 22 years old. I had been at the bakery less than three years.