There used to be a TV program called “Dirty Jobs.” I never saw it because I didn’t have cable, so I don’t know how the job I had for a few days, 45 years ago, compares with those. See what you think.
It all started with Greg, my high school buddy. When Greg’s older brother graduated, he headed for Alaska to seek his fortune. He didn’t find it, but the way Greg lit up when he spun his brother’s tales of adventure left no doubt he was going up north too. Within a couple of days of our graduation he was on the road, and for years he went up every summer to work in a seafood freezing plant. I went with him a couple of times.
The place where we worked had a nice little side business. When the fishing boats tied up to sell their catch, we’d turn around and sell them ice and frozen bait for their next trip.
One kind of bait used a lot by halibut fishermen was the tails of salmon, cut off at the cannery. To make sure we had a good supply, the company had an arrangement with one of the canneries. All we had to do was collect what we needed.
“We” turned out to be “me.”
On the first morning of my new assignment, the owner of the company personally drove me to the cannery to show me what to do. From the dock, a conveyor brought the salmon to the fish house and down chutes to the packing lines. Workers would slide each fish into a slot on another conveyor and into a machine that whacked off their heads. More workers would pluck out any salmon eggs as they went by. Then came a cleaning machine where the fish rode a rotating drum past an arsenal of whirring saws, brushes and water jets that cleaned and trimmed them before they dropped to another conveyor and the next stage of the process.
All the innards and trimmings came out the bottom of the machine and through a grate on the floor for disposal. The boss had a whole stack of cheap plastic laundry baskets that fit between the machine and the floor grate. The idea was to catch most of the solid stuff before it went down the drain. Every couple of minutes I’d pull the basket out and replace it with an empty one. Then I’d take the baskets to an out-of-the-way corner and pick through them by hand. The tails got tossed into buckets. Everything else got returned and dumped down the grate. Three cleaning machines were running so I was jumping to keep up.
But that’s not the dirtiest part. All those whirring saws, brushes and water jets created a mist of pureed fish parts surrounding each machine. The cannery workers, lined up along the conveyor on one side of the machine, were somewhat protected by carefully positioned sheet-metal guards that blocked the spray. But I worked on the other side and didn’t have anything to protect me. I wore rain gear, the heavy-duty old-school stuff, with my hood up and the drawstrings pulled tight around my face, plus rubber gloves and boots. When I looked down at my arms and legs I saw fish goo dripping off me. When the cannery took a break, I could take off my coat and gloves for a minute and take a break too. That was the only time I could wipe my glasses clean. And that’s how I spent my day.
In midafternoon, Greg would show up with the company truck. We’d move my buckets of treasure to the loading dock and he’d put them on the truck while I went back to the fish house to hose off the laundry baskets and stack them against the wall. Before we could leave, there was one more task to do: Greg took the hose while I stood with my legs spread and my arms outstretched, a little bit like the pose you take inside those screening machines at airport security. He’d hose me down, and when he thought he was done I looked down, saw what was left, and told him to keep going. Then I could finally take my rain gear off and we’d head back to the freezer plant.
We got the buckets unloaded and I helped Johnny, one of the year-round old timers, weigh the salmon tails into five-pound bags before they went to the freezer. He said to me, “I know that’s a crummy job.” (Although I’m sure he used a stronger word than “crummy.”) He continued, “But you ought to take it as a compliment that the boss picked you to do it.”
“Oh?” It didn’t seem like a compliment. “What makes you say that?”
Johnny explained, “He knows you’ll do the work even when nobody’s around to keep an eye on you.” I thanked him for saying that and couldn’t help but feel a little pride over a crummy job, well done.
After three or four days of salmon-tail-picking duty, we’d had enough to last a while and I went back to our normal work. When the halibut boats unloaded, I never wondered if “my” salmon tails caught those fish. I didn’t have that much pride in the job.
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