th<\/sup>, all our family\u2019s paranoia pays off.\u00a0 At approximately 9:30 in the morning the assembly line Anne is working on comes to an abrupt stop.\u00a0 I look up at Vinny and ask; \u201cDo you think somebody else is going to get a gold pen?\u201d\u00a0 He shakes his head, \u201cI don\u2019t think anyone on that line has been here twenty years.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s true; all the girls on the line are summer help.\u00a0 They\u2019ve all been here about a month and a half like me.<\/p>\nJane arrives and I see her motion to them to gather up their stuff.\u00a0 Anne turns and glances at me quickly.\u00a0 Her eyes are bulging with confusion, then she shrugs her shoulders and picks up her sandwich bag and joins the others walking single-file behind Jane.\u00a0 I wonder where they are being taken?\u00a0 Other people on the lines start asking out loud about this to no one in particular.\u00a0 We try to comfort ourselves with such questions as, \u201cAre they packing prize boxes in the back of the factory or are they being taken outside to wash Mr. Tampoon\u2019s Lincoln Continental?<\/p>\n
I ask Vinny, \u201cWhere do ya think they are?\u201d<\/p>\n
He just looks at me and sighs, \u201cI\u2019ve got no idea.\u201d\u00a0 By the fourth time I ask him this he grits his teeth and says, \u201cI don\u2019t know anymore than you do.\u00a0 You need to calm down; there\u2019s nothing we can do about it.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure they\u2019re probably cleaning up some mess in the back of the factory somewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
By the first break when we don\u2019t see them panic starts to bubble up.\u00a0 It dawns on our glitter-hazed minds that quite possibly they can\u2019t find their way back from where they\u2019ve been taken in the factory, or they really were outside washing Mr. Tampoon\u2019s car and they didn\u2019t hear the break time bell.\u00a0 By lunchtime the word is out: FIRED!\u00a0 I find out right in the middle of biting into my Snickers candy bar.\u00a0 A large nutty lump of it sticks in my throat, scraping all the way down, making my eyes water.\u00a0 Paul witnessed the firing while sneaking a smoke on the loading dock.<\/p>\n
He tells us, \u201cYeah, it was like a massacre!\u00a0 Jane took \u2018em outside, told \u2018em productivity was down on their assembly line and told \u2018em to go home!\u201d\u00a0 For a second I can\u2019t even think of Anne.\u00a0 All I can think is I hope they don\u2019t know I\u2019m her sister, cause then I\u2019ll be fired next.<\/p>\n
When I get home from work I see Anne sitting on our family room couch with her slackened mouth dropped open and a Reader\u2019s Digest on her lap.\u00a0 The 5 O\u2019clock News is on TV.\u00a0 There is not one mention by John Quill on Channel 22 news about the terrible firing of 10 employees from Sunshine Greeting Card Factory.\u00a0 I ask my sister as gently as possible, what it feels like to finally face our family\u2019s greatest fear.<\/p>\n
She turns her red-rimmed eyes to me.\u00a0 \u201cIt was awful! \u00a0I walked all the way home!\u201d\u00a0 I want more details on exactly how it was done.\u00a0 Did Jane yell?\u00a0 Was there a threat of violence?\u00a0 I need these details otherwise I\u2019ll just play it over and over in my head how I imagined it.\u00a0 I have already envisioned where Jane cackles, rubbing her two-tone hands together right before she dispenses with them with two words, \u201cGet out!\u201d\u00a0 Or the other scenario where I imagine Jane noiselessly pointing one of her speckled fingers to the exit sign at the end of the parking lot much like the Ghost of Christmas Yet-To-Come points to Scrooge\u2019s grave in \u201cThe Christmas Carol\u201d.\u00a0 I had even had a chance to fantasize during second break that when the firing was happening I left my spot on the assembly line, ran out and defended my sister and the others.\u00a0 Instead, in reality I did nothing.\u00a0\u00a0 Not knowing what was really happening I\u2019d done what everyone else had \u2013looked at the forlorn line leaving out of the corner of my eye, grateful it wasn\u2019t me.<\/p>\n
At first, Anne won\u2019t leave the house, so deep is her shame.\u00a0 My parents actually allow her to wallow in her lost job stupor for three days.\u00a0 She eats all the food in the house that contains sugar and lies on the couch watching daytime TV.\u00a0 My younger sister Shannon and I play our part in helping her recover.\u00a0 We don\u2019t fight over who gets the last ice cream bar or cookie; we just let her have everything.\u00a0 Remarkably, this makes her cry more.\u00a0 Does she miss the competition over food, hate our pity, or is it because she\u2019s putting on weight during bathing suit season?<\/p>\n
The following Monday my father takes a hard line.\u00a0 I am actually surprised it didn\u2019t come sooner.\u00a0 Usually, he makes us \u201cwalk it off\u201d, or \u201cbuck up\u201d during any hardships we encounter, like our period cramps, the boy who doesn\u2019t call back or bad hair days.\u00a0 I guess being fired is something so terrifying, even to him, his usual temperament is thrown off balance.\u00a0 Having shaken this off, he now reclaims the man he was three days ago before the incident.\u00a0 He reminds her that she is paying for every penny of college so unless she gets back out to hustle up some money she can\u2019t look to him since he is poor due to his low-paying job.\u00a0\u00a0 To make matters worse, Anne has really gained a few pounds.\u00a0 My father has a not-so-secret loathing for fat people.\u00a0 Our family does know some fat people and we have a bunch of chubby cousins on my mother\u2019s side.<\/p>\n
My father will be teeth-grittingly nice to their face, but the minute they\u2019re out of earshot he\u2019ll say things like, \u201cIf they weren\u2019t so Goddamn lazy they could lose some of that Goddamn weight!\u00a0 It\u2019s laziness you know, that makes a person fat!\u201d\u00a0 He then uses himself as a good example.\u00a0 \u201cSee, if you get up early, exercise every day and eat wheat germ, then you won\u2019t get fat, like some people.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Now Anne is dangerously close to becoming lazy with the side effect of becoming fat.\u00a0 My father takes charge by pointing out a dent in the couch where Anne has been spending a lot of time.\u00a0 I know it was there long before Anne had her troubles.\u00a0 In fact my father really is the culprit.\u00a0 After all, at 200 pounds he is the biggest and brawniest one in our family and he sits there a lot when he\u2019s in the mood for TV.<\/p>\n
My mother comes to Anne\u2019s rescue.\u00a0 She hooks her up with a minimum wage job that will last for the rest of the summer.\u00a0 On a tip from a patient at the dentist\u2019s office where my mother works, she finds out they are hiring kitchen staff at the East Longmeadow Nursing home.<\/p>\n
Back at Sunshine I find myself missing eating my lunch with Anne.\u00a0 In school she would never let me sit with her in the cafeteria.\u00a0 She was a senior and I was a sophomore.\u00a0 Having to eat lunch with another family member at school means you aren\u2019t popular enough to gain acceptance from outsiders.\u00a0 We had dropped this pretense of disdain at Sunshine, since we are all losers here.<\/p>\n
At the factory, they replace my sister\u2019s line with fresh, new people.\u00a0 It appears they all come from the same Portuguese family.\u00a0 After only a few minutes of working, I can see they argue a lot and from time to time actually slap each other.\u00a0 It\u2019s like watching the Three Stooges as a foreign film.\u00a0 Jane watches them with her cold fish eye stare.\u00a0 They\u2019re making so much noise yelling and slapping each other that they don\u2019t even notice her.\u00a0 They start pushing cards off the belt on to the floor.\u00a0 Jane hovers by our conveyor belt behind theirs, like she\u2019s a leopard ready to pounce on this hapless family of goats.\u00a0 She eyes these doomed people until she can take it no more.\u00a0 She pulls a key out of her smock pocket and switches off the assembly line.\u00a0 The belt chugs to a whining halt.\u00a0 This does not faze the family.\u00a0 They chatter in Portuguese more loudly and manually push the cards down the belt, between slaps.\u00a0 They must think that if they keep the cards moving, no one will notice their conveyor belt has stopped.\u00a0 Jane walks up behind the youngest, weakest of the clan and puts a two-tone hand on the girl\u2019s arm.\u00a0 This must be the first time they\u2019ve seen Jane.\u00a0 A few visibly shudder.\u00a0 Jane motions for them to pick up their lunches.\u00a0 It\u2019s silent, except for the whir of cross-eyed Jim\u2019s forklift in the distance.\u00a0 Jane guides these recent immigrants towards the back of the factory.\u00a0 I wonder if they\u2019ll be fired after only 15 minutes of work?\u00a0 We stare at the mess left on the assembly line in front of ours.\u00a0 After today, I\u2019m sure they\u2019ll want to go right back to Portugal, thinking that all of America must be like a nineteenth century sweatshop.<\/p>\n
A little while later, Jane is back.\u00a0 She\u2019s got Carol Kennedy and all the other prize box packers from the back of the factory with her.\u00a0 Apparently, they\u2019ve been switched with the Portuguese family, which now has all the prime jobs in the factory, working off the assembly lines.\u00a0 Carol and her fellow workers first have to clean up the mess left by the family.\u00a0 Watching slow, uncoordinated Carol trying to keep up as she chases the cards down the assembly line is one of the more painful sights I\u2019ve witnessed at Sunshine.\u00a0 I have learned something very important today.\u00a0 The lesson I\u2019ve learned is that even if you do your job well, like my sister Anne, you can lose it in a heartbeat.\u00a0 But you can screw up royally, right in front of the supervisor, like the Portuguese family did, and actually be promoted to a better job.<\/p>\n
Though Anne is possibly scarred for life, she manages to get on with her new job.\u00a0 Instead of spending her days with cheap, corny greeting cards, she now spends her time with very old and broken people.\u00a0 Ancient people who are so near death scare me, but somehow Anne has made the best of it.\u00a0 It has also given her some very interesting stories to tell around the dinner table every night.\u00a0 According to my father, her tales are so disgusting she is almost banned from the table.\u00a0 So far, he has never actually sent her packing.\u00a0 Instead he feigns horror, bangs his fist on the table, and then leans in closer like he\u2019s got a front row seat at the theater.\u00a0 Anne\u2019s job is in the kitchen, preparing meal trays for the patients.\u00a0 This nursing home prides itself on catering to what\u2019s left of the taste buds of its clients.<\/p>\n
Anne makes the most of her big moment while the rest of us hang on to every word spilling from her mouth.\u00a0 \u201cSeeeeee, I\u2019ve gotta memorize what the favorite juices and warm cereals each person likes to eat.\u00a0 I think they wanna keep the oldsters in a food coma, cause they won\u2019t let us put much flavor or color into their meals.\u00a0 I guess if we gave \u2018em salty french-fries or a bright red apple then they\u2019d become more demanding, insisting on all day bingo games, or staying up late to see Johnny Carson.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve never been interested in old people before, but suddenly I find myself asking, \u201cSo what do they do all day?\u201d<\/p>\n
Anne makes me wait while she licks mashed potatoes off her fork.\u00a0 \u201cWeeeeelllll, they mostly wander the hallways or sit propped up in the TV room, or sometimes they just lie all glassy-eyed in their beds.\u00a0 Sometimes I think they might be dead, you know, but then their food is gone when I go back and get their tray. I mean just when I get all their favorite diluted juices memorized, someone dies, or ya know, just stops eating.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo have you seen a dead person yet?\u201d\u00a0 I ask her.<\/p>\n
My father clears his throat and gives me a look, but yet again he waits for her answer with the rest of us. Not wanting to disappoint us she says, \u201cWeeelll, I think I have, I\u2019m not sure if this one guy was dead.\u201d\u00a0 Then she adds, \u201c But I saw the nurse change his bedpan twice this afternoon.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nothing at Sunshine is ever this interesting, not even a blackout or a gold pen ceremony.<\/p>\n
After two weeks at her new job Anne is still holding court at the supper table with her latest story.<\/p>\n
\u201cWeeeeell, today was Pizza Day at the nursing home.\u00a0 See, four large pizzas were delivered from Bruno\u2019s.\u00a0 Then you know what we did with them?\u201d\u00a0 Anne stops, mid-story and lowers her mouth to her plate and slurps spaghetti.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat?\u2026What?\u201d I beg.\u00a0 \u201cWhat did you do with the pizza?\u201d<\/p>\n
Anne slowly looks around the table, and wipes her mouth while making sure we are all paying attention.\u00a0 \u201cWeeeeell, we put all the slices of pizza in this blender and pulverized them!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWha..\u201d I start to say, but my father\u2019s hand swings past Anne and barely misses my face.\u00a0 I\u2019m used to this happening so I\u2019ve gauged how long his arm is and can, in a split second, pull my head back just out of his reach.<\/p>\n
He yells, \u201cDon\u2019t interrupt!\u201d<\/p>\n
Anne can hardly control the smirk on her face.\u00a0 \u201cSoooo, then I put the pepperoni pizza shake into a pitcher, then I wheeled it into the TV room where a lotta old people were hooked up to earpieces coming out of the huge TV set.\u00a0 Then I poured the pizza into Dixie cups and I put the cups in their hands.\u00a0 Some of them were shaking cause I guess its big excitement for them.\u00a0 A lot of the pizza shake ends up all over their bathrobes, and a couple of them fall asleep with the cup still in their hands.\u201d\u00a0 While I try to imagine old folks drinking pizza out of a cup, my mother interrupts my vision with a lesson to be learned from all this.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust remember girls, you need to take good care of your teeth, unless you want to look forward to drinking your pizza through a straw when you get older.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, back at Sunshine, it\u2019s getting towards the end of August, so a lot of the summer help is slowly quitting.\u00a0 Some teenagers just don\u2019t bother to show up for work.\u00a0 No one even gives notice.\u00a0 A few kids just walk off the assembly lines, and clock out like they\u2019ve glittered their last card, and now its time to spend their days at Masquamacut beach getting a catch-up tan before school starts.\u00a0 Every time I see someone leave, my brain screams, \u201cFollow them! Get out now! You want to swim in the ocean too!\u201d\u00a0 But my feet remain rooted onto the cardboard pile I stand on and my arm, like a long, dead weight, slogs on with the glue and glitter.<\/p>\n
I guess I\u2019m not ready to say goodbye to some of the people here, like Dolly with her candy, Sherrie singing sunshine songs and Vinny, the only guy who\u2019s ever shown interest in me, outside of old men who need me to help them cross the street.\u00a0 This morning Vinny is moved to another assembly line.\u00a0 When Jane comes over, she grabs his arm like he\u2019s her prom date.<\/p>\n
He sighs, picks up his knapsack and says to me, \u201cSee ya Corky!\u201d\u00a0 Jane leans in to Vinny as she so obviously enjoys her moment with a man on her arm.\u00a0 She deposits him on another assembly line to pack mailbags.\u00a0 I can still see him, though.\u00a0 He\u2019s near Mary Lowens now.\u00a0 She\u2019s a year older than me and she\u2019s really pretty, almost too pretty to be working here.\u00a0 Later at lunch I see him sit with Mary against the wall outside the factory instead of going off with the other guys to Bruno\u2019s Pizzeria.\u00a0 So far I haven\u2019t seen him offer her juice from his thermos as he did for me.\u00a0 I guess Vinny and I will always have our Hawaiian Punch moment.\u00a0 As I sneak peeks at them while shading my eyes from the glare of the sun, I figure it doesn\u2019t matter though, cause I\u2019ll meet all new boys when I go to college.<\/p>\n
I finish my peanut butter and jelly sandwich and think of how I\u2019m gonna miss all my Portuguese ladies, whom I\u2019ve spent the summer communicating with using only facial expressions and hand gestures.\u00a0 I\u2019ll even miss Jane and I don\u2019t even know why.\u00a0 Most of all I\u2019ll miss my paycheck.\u00a0 I\u2019ve become addicted to getting this piece of paper at the end of every week.\u00a0 I\u2019ve saved almost every penny I\u2019ve earned at Sunshine.\u00a0 My sisters and I have been reminded for years now that our parents have no money for college. We\u2019ll have to pay for everything.\u00a0 Despite this huge financial responsibility my mother still pokes fun at me when I practically rub Washington\u2019s face off my nickel before I hand it over to the guy at Teehan’s deli for a large Sugar Daddy pop.\u00a0 All the while as I suck on the caramel Sugar Daddy I think that someday a year or so from now I might need that nickel to help pay for my dorm room or as part of a down payment on books for my first semester of college.<\/p>\n
The Kennedy girls and I start plotting our escape from Sunshine Factory.\u00a0 This conversation consumes us during our lunch and break times.\u00a0 We decide we\u2019ll escape this Friday, which is a week and a half before Labor Day.\u00a0 The plan is that for lunch on Friday we\u2019ll hitch a ride with other workers to the East Longmeadow Deli.\u00a0 We\u2019ll have a blowout lunch, \u201cThe Works\u201d: cheese sandwiches, coleslaw and large pieces of German chocolate cake\u00a0 – followed by the piece de resistance: Not going back to Sunshine!<\/p>\n
I look at the lifers working around me.\u00a0 I wonder if they have any suspicion about our plan to leave.\u00a0 Earlier this morning some girl begged Jane to take her place on the assembly line so she could use the bathroom.\u00a0 I watch her clock out, wave goodbye to Mr. Tampoon up in his glass office, and then walk out of Sunshine.<\/p>\n
Twenty minutes later Jane is snapping her neck looking for the girl.\u00a0 She grits her teeth, squints her eyes and shouts to us, \u201cWhere is she?\u201d\u00a0 Several of us had seen her leave but we all shrug our shoulders and say absolutely nothing.\u00a0\u00a0 In a \u201cdoomed to fail from the beginning\u201d experiment, Jane puts cross-eyed Jim on the assembly line for the rest of the day.\u00a0 He had just crashed his forklift into a wall earlier in the day, so he is now available to work elsewhere until his forklift is fixed.\u00a0 He\u2019s so awful that the conveyor belt on the line where he\u2019s working is slowed down to a pace where dead people would barely have a problem keeping up.\u00a0 All the middle-aged ladies on his line are enjoying themselves.\u00a0 They cover each other for lengthy water and bathroom breaks.\u00a0 They take turns sitting on their cardboard piles; they clean out their pocket books and comb each other\u2019s hair.\u00a0 Meanwhile sweat beads up above Jim\u2019s upper lip and his safety goggles fog up.\u00a0 His neck is so twisted he must stand sideways to see the cards inching their way slowly down the belt.\u00a0 He misses half of them and covers the conveyor belt with dribbles of glue. \u00a0He runs his glue-covered hands through his hair and down his overalls.\u00a0 After a while I have to look away. It\u2019s just too exhausting to watch him.<\/p>\n
Friday arrives and with it our glorious escape from Sunshine.\u00a0 The Kennedy girls talk about spending the next week-and-a-half before school starts in bed.\u00a0 That\u2019s their idea of a vacation – lying in a coma, oblivious to the passage of time.\u00a0 I don\u2019t tell them about the nightmare I had last night.\u00a0 In my dream Jane, Hal and Mr. Tampoon are scratching at my bedroom window and chanting, \u201cYou\u2019ll never get out of Sunshine alive!\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s like a remake of the movie, \u201cNight of the Living Dead\u201d, recast with the employees of Sunshine Factory.\u00a0 I see this nightmare as a sign that I must give adequate notice; otherwise those in charge at Sunshine will haunt me.\u00a0 I\u2019ll be caught in limbo between the living and the Sunshine undead.<\/p>\n
At work today, Jane is eyeing me.\u00a0 My face burns.\u00a0 She knows.\u00a0 When I look at her, she turns on her broken down orthopedic shoes, and walks to Mr. Tampoon\u2019s office.\u00a0 A few minutes later I look up to see Mr. Tampoon press his face against his office window while Jane points a speckled finger in my direction.\u00a0 As Jane makes her way back down the office steps, the lunch bell rings.\u00a0 I quickly weave through the conveyor belts, grab my timecard and cram it into the time box to clock out for lunch.\u00a0 I run to catch up with the Kennedy girls as we make it out of the loading dock exit just before Jane reaches me.<\/p>\n
We hitch a ride with Paul, along with two other girls.\u00a0 We all squeeze into his car by sitting on each other\u2019s laps.\u00a0 I develop a headache between my eyes as Paul drives us to the deli.\u00a0 Once we get there we all pile out of his car.\u00a0 I have a knotted feeling in my stomach and it\u2019s not the usual empty pit feeling I have at this time right before lunch.\u00a0 I\u2019m the last to pick up my tray as I slide it down the line in front of the glass covered deli cases of food.\u00a0 I order a cheese sandwich like we all planned.\u00a0 Mine has no flavor.\u00a0 It tastes like the plastic wrap is still on it.\u00a0 The Kennedy girls, who are sitting on either side of me, are licking their fingers, smacking their lips and I hear them both exclaim in stereo, \u201cMmmmmm\u2026Mmmmm\u201d from both sides of the table.<\/p>\n
\u201cCan I taste yours?\u201d I ask Lori Kennedy.\u00a0 She picks off the tiniest corner of her sandwich and drops it in my hand.\u00a0 I still taste nothing.\u00a0 I\u2019m cursed.\u00a0 I can\u2019t taste cheese anymore.<\/p>\n
Paul gets up from his stool at the counter and tells us, \u201cHey girls, the Sunshine taxi is leaving!\u00a0 Get a doggie bag!\u201d<\/p>\n
Carol and Lori dig into their German chocolate cake and squeal,<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not going back!\u201d\u00a0 The other two girls who came with us are inspired and on the spot decide not to go back either.\u00a0 Paul blows a kiss and heads for the door.\u00a0 I stand up suddenly, and grab my German chocolate cake in a napkin.\u00a0 I turn back and look at the Kennedys.\u00a0 Their mouths drop open and cake falls out, landing on the table.<\/p>\n
On the way back with Paul I tell him, \u201cSee, I gotta go back cause I\u2019ll need the extra $120.00 that I can make next week to help pay for college.\u00a0 It\u2019s expensive, ya know.\u201d<\/p>\n
Paul laughs, \u201cCollege?\u00a0 Man, isn\u2019t that a waste of money?\u00a0 I mean, I\u2019ll be making almost three dollars and seventy-five cents an hour next year.\u00a0 Pretty soon I\u2019ll have enough money for a down payment on a wicked Camaro!\u00a0 Can\u2019t have a car and college too!\u201d\u00a0 Paul is barking up the wrong tree.\u00a0 I hate driving cars.\u00a0 The one driving lesson that my mother has given me, I almost went through the plate glass window of a Lil\u2019 Peach convenience store.\u00a0 I would have taken out the magazine rack, The Pepperidge Farm cookie display and the Slurpee machine at the front entrance.<\/p>\n
When I get back to Sunshine, Jane drills me on the whereabouts of the Kennedys.\u00a0 She snorts at me when I tell her, \u201cI dunno what happened to them.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t find them after lunch.\u201d\u00a0 They have to shut down an entire assembly line this afternoon, since four others quit during lunch break along with the Kennedys.\u00a0 There\u2019s only one other summer help girl left in the factory, besides me.\u00a0 Jane keeps an extra good eye on us, as if we\u2019ll both sprout wings and fly out of Sunshine.\u00a0 I think of Carol and Lori Kennedy, probably in their bathing suits by now, lying on top of their beds -safe\u2014away from here.\u00a0 And by my own choice, I\u2019m leaning against a cold, metal conveyor belt, watching my right arm, grab, glue and glitter greeting cards.<\/p>\n
The following Monday the other remaining summer help girl doesn\u2019t show up.\u00a0 I\u2019m alone.\u00a0 I eat my lunch outside by myself.\u00a0 I stare at my peanut butter sandwich wishing it could talk.\u00a0 The only thing that keeps me going is the thought of that last $120.00.\u00a0 I don\u2019t need the company of friends if I\u2019m getting a paycheck.<\/p>\n
To prevent Jane, Hal and Mr. Tampoon from haunting me every night, I decide to give a week\u2019s notice.\u00a0 This morning when I tell Jane I\u2019m leaving, a film glazes over her gray eyes and her upper lip curls, revealing a few of her forlorn teeth.\u00a0 She walks away from me without saying a word. No \u201cthank you\u201d\u2026nothing.\u00a0 I want to run out of Sunshine Factory right now just to show her.\u00a0 But I walk up to my spot on the conveyor belt, drop my lunch bag on the floor and pick up a card to glue and glitter.<\/p>\n
Jane is busy breaking in twenty-three new people today.\u00a0 More Portuguese immigrants and local housewives shuffle into the factory.\u00a0 For a brief moment they glance at me on the assembly line looking as if they believe I\u2019ve been here forever.\u00a0 I remember looking at the lifers like this when I first came to Sunshine what seems like a million years ago in late June.\u00a0 The local housewives look like they accidentally arrived at Sunshine after stepping out of their house to pick up the morning paper.\u00a0 They wear housecoats and bathrobes.\u00a0 Some also have curlers in their hair as if they have a hot date on the town tonight after eight hours on the assembly line.\u00a0 They do add a touch of professionalism to this look by wearing a work smock over their bathrobes.<\/p>\n
An air of DOOM fills Sunshine as these new lifers enter the factory.\u00a0 Even Sherrie\u2019s luster is dulled as she watches these new recruits shuffle into the vacant spots on the lines.\u00a0 These women who are too exhausted from life to even put on street clothes anymore.\u00a0 Sherrie gives me another religious sympathy card, but this time to give to my father.\u00a0 It has a large cross on the front with beams of light emanating from it.\u00a0 The quote on the card says, \u201cThe Lord watches over those who need it most\u201d.\u00a0 The message Sherrie writes inside says, \u201cSorry Mr. Spencer, old pal, but I won\u2019t be able to hang with ya in English class this fall!\u00a0 PS – Your kids are cool! How\u2019d that happen?\u201d<\/p>\n
As I clock out for the last time on Friday, I expect that I\u2019ll feel free, that when I walk outside the factory the sun will shine brighter, the air will be cleaner.\u00a0 As in the now-banned Disney movie, \u201cSong of the South”, I expect a cartoon bluebird will land on my shoulder and sing, \u201cZippity\u2013doo-da, Zippity-day! My\u2013oh-my, what a wonderful day!\u201d\u00a0 Instead, as I walk out, I catch sight of Jane at the loading dock exit.\u00a0 We lock eyes.\u00a0 I feel like I should say goodbye, maybe pick up a greeting card that says \u201cMissing you across the miles\u2026\u201d and hand it to her.\u00a0 A moment passes and we both look away.\u00a0 No cartoon characters greet me outside, unless you count my mother, waiting to pick me up in our car.\u00a0 I announce to her that next summer, maybe I\u2019ll pick tobacco instead of working at Sunshine. At least there are more cute boys working in the tobacco fields.<\/p>\n
Once I begin the 11th<\/sup> grade I send away for college applications and attend college fairs.\u00a0 At the beginning of 12th<\/sup> grade I apply to and am accepted to the University of Georgia as a freshman art student.\u00a0 I\u2019ve never been down south, but I hear it\u2019s warm and sunny all the time.\u00a0 Also, it\u2019s not filled with so many industrial factories like here in Western Massachusetts.<\/p>\nAlas, my high school junior and senior summers I do spend working at Sunshine again.\u00a0 The Kennedy girls also join me.\u00a0 Anne does as well, but is fired again, but this time for talking too much.\u00a0 A policy at Sunshine is that even if you\u2019ve been fired, or quit with no notice, you\u2019re always welcome back after a short passage of time.\u00a0 It\u2019s just like family.\u00a0 Both summers it\u2019s like we never left.\u00a0 All the messes on the floor from the previous summer are still where they fell.\u00a0\u00a0 Vinny is gone.\u00a0 But Jane, Dolly, Jim, Hal, Sherrie and Mr. Tampoon, like characters from a long running soap opera, continue their dramas.\u00a0 Almost nothing has changed except for a few minor cast replacements.\u00a0 Somehow the next two summers are easier now that my future plans are solidly in place.\u00a0 I\u2019m still worried about being fired; yet when I see new teenagers come in I almost feel like an old-timer.\u00a0 My younger sister Shannon even works with me during my last summer, making it seem like Sunshine is a rite of passage for my family.\u00a0 I tell everyone at Sunshine of my plans for college.\u00a0 Sherrie finds this amusing.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, right, once you get hooked on the conveyor belt, ya never wanna leave!\u201d\u00a0 But she\u2019s wrong.<\/p>\n
For the last two weeks during my final summer at Sunshine I keep my one-way bus ticket to Georgia sitting on my desk at home, just waiting to be used September 3rd<\/sup>, 1982.<\/p>\nI make a vow on my thirty-six hour bus ride to Athens, Georgia that I will never, ever work on a conveyor belt again.\u00a0 My northern factory days are over.\u00a0 Only happy days of art classes, football games and real Georgia sunshine await me.<\/p>\n
By the time I\u2019ve paid tuition, bought books and put my money down for my dorm room, I\u2019m out of cash.\u00a0 For four months I donate blood plasma twice a week for food money.\u00a0 Along with other college students, junkies and alcoholics I\u2019m hooked up with needles in both arms. We receive eight dollars for each donation.\u00a0 This source of income grinds to a halt when AIDS is discovered in the winter of 1982.<\/p>\n
I sign up for the work-study program on campus.\u00a0 One thousand miles away from Sunshine factory, my first real job in Georgia is at Bolton Dining Hall.\u00a0 It is the largest cafeteria on campus.\u00a0 Food, glorious food!\u00a0 I\u2019ll get to work with hotdogs, ice cream, and chocolate milk all day long.\u00a0 My dream of dishing out all this food to my fellow students is crushed once they hear my Massachusetts accent.\u00a0 These people in Georgia consider me a \u201cforeign\u201d student.\u00a0 They claim that no one will understand my thick northern accent so they can\u2019t put me on the food serving lines.\u00a0 Instead, I\u2019m placed in the dish room with all the other foreign students from Nigeria, Bangladesh and Pakistan.\u00a0 I\u2019m handed a milk crate and told to sit on this at the end of a conveyor belt!\u00a0 I can\u2019t believe it!\u00a0 I thought college meant an end of my days on an assembly line.\u00a0 The trays come down the belt that starts in the dining room and end up here in the dish room where all us foreign students wait for them.\u00a0 Each of us has a job, to pull silverware, plates, or glasses off the trays as they fly past us on the line.\u00a0 I\u2019m the last person on the belt.\u00a0 My job is to pick up the emptied trays, knock off any uneaten food into the garbage bags, and place the trays into a pile to be washed.\u00a0 My shift starts at 6:00 in the morning.\u00a0 My fellow workers and I have devised a way to grab a quick snooze while working.\u00a0 We sit on our milk crates, place our heads on the metal bar that runs down the line, and then lay one arm across the moving conveyor belt to feel for when the trays come down.\u00a0 Sometimes, early in the shift we get ten minutes of uninterrupted sleep between trays,<\/p>\n
The last part of my job is to help bundle up the discarded food into garbage bags.\u00a0 This we suspect is then sent to feed the pigs at The University of Georgia agricultural department.\u00a0 These pigs are later slaughtered for pork chops and foot-log hotdogs for Bolton dining hall.\u00a0 So sooner or later these students could be facing the same food they discarded last month in the form of fatback and ham.\u00a0 This assembly line job is much better than Sunshine because I get $4.00 an hour, and all the food I can stuff myself with during my six hour shift.\u00a0 After a couple of months I\u2019m a fat foreign student.\u00a0 I do feel like I\u2019m part of the Wonderful World of Disney now, but not the movie, \u201cSong of the South\u201d.\u00a0 With all these students from other countries in the dish room, it looks like a parade float for the Disneyworld exhibit; It\u2019s a Small World After All!\u00a0 Instead of sunshine songs, I listen to Chitra from Nigeria sing a native folk song.\u00a0 After Chitra is finished singing, Manny teaches us the words to \u201cGuantanamera\u201d.\u00a0 When it is my turn, I lead them all in a chorus of, \u201cYou are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy when skies are gray.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer finally come to an end.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-memoirs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=818"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1299,"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818\/revisions\/1299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}