13 minute read
SUMMER OF HAM by Mickey Dubrow
Summer of Ham by Mickey Dubrow
In the summer of 1979, I was fired from my job at Selecto Meats. It was my first job after graduating from college and the only time I was ever outright fired from a job. They offered to give me another chance, but I turned it down. I told them they were doing the right thing by firing me. I hated my job and couldn’t stomach the thought of being there one more day.
Before I went to work there, my only knowledge of Selecto Meats was seeing their logo on the bologna and hot dogs I bought at the grocery store. I found out about employment opportunities at the meat packing company from my roommate, Evan. He had scored a position in the hot dog room. He loved working there and suggested I apply. I did, hoping to get into the hot dog room with him. Instead, I was assigned the smoked ham room.
The first thing I noticed when I began the job was the crying. Trucks loaded with cows and pigs were parked in the courtyard. The animals’ moos and oinks were filled with fear. Somebody commented that they were crying because they could smell burning hair. Selecto Meats was proud that they didn’t waste a single part of the animal, but since there was no use for hair it was burned off. The incoming cows and pigs knew they were next. This creeped me out for a while, but I got over it. After a few weeks, I was so inured to their fate that when I arrived in the morning, I would shout, “See you at lunch time” to the unfortunate livestock.
Selecto Meats’ main building was a long red brick rectangle with the cows and pigs going in one end and the trucks carrying the packaged meat to the grocery stores out the other. Inside, the temperature was always 45 degrees to keep the meat from spoiling. Workers wore safety helmets, long coats, and thigh high black rubber boots. The air had that stale stink you get from old freezers that are never defrosted.
Most of my co-workers looked like they had ridden in from the country with the livestock. I remember one guy in particular whom everyone called “Dolly”. He made the mistake of mentioning that he was related to Dolly Parton, thus the nickname. He was short and stocky with blue eyes and curly light blonde hair. I never did find out his real name.
Dolly worked with me in the smoked ham room. There were twelve of us in all, working in a room covered wall to ceiling with stainless steel. The floor was black and white checkered tile. We were men and women ranging in age from early twenties to late fifties. Everybody had a different task along a conveyor belt that snaked through the room. When the belt started up (it was not started by any of us) smoked hams would roll into the room. We did our assigned tasks, standing, for two hours at a time, followed by a fifteen-minute bathroom break. My job was to yank off a mesh girdle on the plump hams. I never found out how the girdle got on the hams before they were put on the conveyor belt and never thought to ask.
At first, I thought our supervisor was Otis, a large man with red hair and Elvis style mutton chop sideburns. Then our real supervisor, Dan, arrived. It seemed Otis only acted like he was supervisor when in reality he was just another stop on the conveyor belt.
Dan took a liking to me because I worked fast and steady. Even though I grew up in the bosom of suburbia, my parents instilled in me a solid work ethic.
The only time during the day I saw Evan was at lunchtime. Evan’s hot dog room buddies ate lunch with us. I didn’t have any smoked ham room friends. Not even Otis or Dolly.
While we ate, Evan and his hot dog room buddies would tell me about the great time they were having in the hot dog room. Everybody there was in their early twenties. They made it sound as if the hot dog room was a non-stop party. The smoked ham room was an endless conveyor belt of hams wearing girdles.
Every day, four men ate by themselves at a table in the middle of the lunchroom. There was plenty of room at the table for more people, but nobody ever joined them. The men sat in stony silence and never smiled. The bottoms of their coats and their black rubber boots were covered with brown stains.
I asked one of Evan’s hot dog room buddies what was the deal with these four men. He said nobody socialized with them because they worked in the “kill room”.
The description of the kill room’s operation was passed on from worker to worker like a ghost story, but I never witnessed it for myself. I don’t think anyone other than the kill room men went inside the kill room.
I suspect what ruined my potential career at Selecto Meats was jealousy. Otis was smitten by a fellow smoked ham room employee. Her name was Crystal, a sweet-faced girl with long blonde hair. Crystal was short, plump, and had enormous breasts.
Otis kept asking her when she was going to invite him over to her place for dinner. He wanted her to make him his favorite dish, macaroni and cheese with tomatoes. Both the dish and Otis made Crystal wrinkle her nose in disgust.
Crystal didn’t want anything to do with Otis. She was aiming for something higher. I can only guess it was my college degree that made her decide that I was a better catch. She apparently didn’t know how useless a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) degree was in the real world. You’d think the fact that I was working in a meat packing company would have been her first clue.
While Otis flirted with Crystal, she flirted with me. Who knows how long this love triangle could have lasted. One day a manager came into the smoked ham room looking for a warm body to fill in a temporary vacancy in another department. Our supervisor was out doing who knows what, so the manager asked Otis who the smoked room could spare. Otis pointed at me.
The manager took me to the bacon room. For the rest of the day, I pulled slabs of pig meat off metal hooks and laid them on a conveyor belt. From there, the slabs were sliced into thin strips. Portions of the strips were put in plastic pouches, then shrink-wrapped and labeled.
From then on, I would start my day in the smoked ham room, but at any moment, the manager would show up to take me to another room. I was never taken to the same room twice. One day I pulled slabs of pig meat out of an ice water trough and hung them on metal hooks. The slabs were then taken by conveyor belt into a room to be cured and smoked. The sleeves of my shirt were soaked by the end of the day from the water dripping off the slabs.
On another day, I stood by a scale in a room the size of a concert hall, surrounded by dumpster-size plastic bins. Smoked hams rolled down a metal chute to where I was standing. I weighed the ham and then tossed it like a football into the bin with hams of similar weight. I only missed the bin a few times. I was alone, so I just scooped those hams off the floor and flung them into the appropriate bin.
I can’t explain why, but doing these different jobs began to bother me. Maybe it was the uncertainty. I knew what to expect from the smoked ham room. When the manager came for me, I never knew what kind of labor I was in, only that it was consistently harder work than yanking mesh girdles off smoked hams. Since I never knew when the manager would show up, or if he would show up at all, a sense of dread filled my days.
Meanwhile, the party continued for Evan and his hot dog room buddies. In fact, Evan’s good times extended beyond Selecto Meats. He started having sex with a woman who also worked in the hot dog room. They met after work, which was a ballsy thing to do considering Evan was using his girlfriend’s car to get to and from work and his co-worker was married.
Selecto had a company store where employees could buy packaged meat for half price. Evan and I took full advantage of the cheap meat and soon our freezer was overstocked with frozen steaks. The refrigerator always had a steady supply of baloney and hot dogs.
The only thing I never bought was pork. I’m Jewish and my mother kept a kosher home. Pig was not part of our diet. Yet, I worked with some kind of pig meat all day. I became curious about how a ham sandwich might taste, so I went to the company store and bought a package of sliced ham. Then I got a loaf of white bread and a jar of mayonnaise.
That night, for the first time in my life, I ate a ham sandwich. The texture of the meat and bread wasn’t much different from a bologna sandwich but compared to a corned beef sandwich on rye bread, the difference as night and day. I liked the ham sandwich okay, but not enough to keep eating them on a regular basis.
If you ever run into my mother, please don’t tell her that I ate ham. She still doesn’t know about it.
The dread I felt working at Selecto Meats grew as the weeks dragged by. The cold, the stink, the uncertainty of what my job would be from day to day, and handling hunks of meat was wearing me down. I didn’t have another job lined up and I really needed the money. Selecto paid well and if you made it past a three-month grace period, you were paid even better. I only had a couple of weeks to go before I’d start seeing that good money.
I never had an excuse to skip work. I was never sick enough and there were only so many times I could get away with faking illness. I knew the strain was getting bad when I had this weird dream. In the dream, I was in my bedroom getting ready for work and I heard a loud noise outside. Looking out the window, I saw a hurricane, a tidal wave, and an earthquake rumbling together toward my house. I laughed with joy. Finally, the weather was so bad I couldn’t make it to work.
My resolve to stick it out finally broke when my supervisor asked the smoked ham room employees to work a half day on a Saturday. He promised us that we’d be out by noon. He asked us nicely though it was clear the request was an order. Working on Saturday meant overtime pay, so I didn’t feel too bad about it. However, around ten, the manager came by and took me to another room. I was assigned to help this surly guy hoist long sides of beef onto the metal hooks of a conveyor belt.
Once we were alone, I asked surly guy how late he was going to be working today. He replied that we were going to be there until 6:00 p.m.
During lunch break, I waved goodbye to my supervisor and smoked ham room co-workers drove away. I felt like they deserted me. It wasn’t fair that they got to go home, and I had to stay. I was only supposed to work a half day.
I decided to leave anyway. I knew the manager expected me to spend the afternoon lugging beef with surly guy, but I just couldn’t do it. I didn’t have a car and my ride had already left, so I walked the four miles home. Along the way, I berated myself for leaving. I was a quitter. I was a loser from Loserville. I was a spoiled college boy who couldn’t handle a real job in the real world. No matter how much I kicked myself, I didn’t turn back.
The following Monday, I showed up for work like nothing happened. The manager asked me why I left work early on Saturday. I explained that I was told that I would only be working a half day, so I assumed that I could leave after lunch. I pretended that I truly didn’t realize that Selecto Meats expected me to stay any longer. The manager looked at me like I was the stupidest man who ever walked the earth, but he didn’t fire me. Later that day, I ran into the surly guy. He couldn’t believe the manager didn’t fire me for deserting him. I was equally baffled.
Word got around about my leaving early. My smoked ham co-workers avoided me. Crystal wouldn’t look at me and made sure I was watching when she told Otis that she would make him macaroni and cheese with tomatoes.
I got it. I had shown contempt for my job at Selecto Meats. For my co-workers, this was the best job they ever had. It might be the best job they’ll ever have, and I treated it like dirt.
I found out during lunch that Evan was also having a bad Monday. His affair with the woman in the hot dog room ended. She no longer felt right about going to a hotel room with him after work knowing her husband was waiting for her at home wondering why she was late.
After lunch, I was yanking mesh girdles off smoked hams when a manager I’d never seen before took me to his office and fired me. I just stared at the floor. I couldn’t decide if I was ashamed, thrilled, or disappointed I didn’t make it to the end of the three-month grace period.
He must have felt bad for me because he offered to keep me in the smoked ham room and not let the other manager move me around. As much as I needed a job, I knew at that moment that I couldn’t go back there. The smoked ham room was no party for me. I told him he’d made the right decision to fire me. I walked the four miles home and within a week I had another job.
Despite my experience with Selecto Meats, my work ethic didn’t die in a meat freezer. When I agreed to do a job, I worked as hard as I could. The difference was, I didn’t accept jobs I didn't want to do. I also stopped eating ham. Like Selecto Meats, it wasn’t for me.
