Summer Bottles
J. Quinn Brisben
Feeding the Washer
I learned the machine at the age of fourteen
In the summer of nineteen forty-nine, at first on
The section feeding bottles to the slots, seven-ounce
Dr. Pepper clear glass and green for Seven-Up,
Slightly larger nubbly bottles for Barq's root beer;
Every clank inching the rows of bottles up, every
Third clank exposing a new row of sixteen that
Had to be filled four at a time in one clean move,
Bottles grasped with both hands between pinky and ring,
Pointer and tall man, four moves filling a row,
Six moves emptying a case, eighty cases on a sled
In two stacks of five, alternating the twos and threes,
With time, once you mastered the complex meter,
To take a wash room break, pull up a new sled, fish
With a hook for straws in the bottles, or sometimes
Something really serious like a mouse that could get
Us all sued if it went out in a full bottle, once a
Condom, which gave us all a good laugh, but easy.
Once you got used to it you could do it nine hours
And not ache seriously but be consciously proud
Of new muscle and a real job competently done.
The Foreman
The foreman smoked three packs a day,
Two Chesterfield, one Kool, and his stomach
Could not stand water, so he drank beer.
No one knew the machine the way he did;
He would rush to the master switch hearing
A wrong sound the rest of us missed, and he
Would be right every time. He would connect
The syrup barrels or precious jugs of extract,
The carbonation tanks and the pure water,
Adjust the capper and shaker which turned
In front of the big clean street-facing window
Where the steam-cleaned bottles would march,
Get their squirt of syrup, their fill of bubbles,
Then get crowned and thoroughly mixed before
The conveyer turned the corner toward candler
And stacker and the sleds stacked seven high
That would fill the trucks and be sold to taverns,
Lunch rooms, groceries, filling stations with coolers,
Wherever trucks could go that was our
Exclusive territory, the foreman watching
Every bottle at the moment of creation.
If we had a late run of Seven-Up on Saturday
And the foreman was feeling generous, he would
Take a bootleg pint of Seven Crown and pour
A shot in a bottle for everyone and take them
Off the line when the highballs were mixed,
The best highballs in the world when I was fourteen.
But once he missed and the candler missed it, too,
And some farm hand at the elevator in Hillsdale or
At the Cozy Dine Café in Pond Creek received a
Totally improbable but very real miracle that he
Was wise enough not to trace to our foreman.
Candling and Scars
Once during my third summer there, I had
A driver's license by then, I took the pick-up
To the Coke plant to exchange bottles picked up
In error by our drivers for bottles picked up
By theirs and saw their operation, much bigger
Than ours with a machine that filled cases and
An old woman with a crutch next to her seat
Who stared at bottles moving past a bright light,
Taking out the ones not quite filled or colored
A slightly wrong shade or with a foreign object.
She had relief when she needed it, but boredom
And the temptation to let the mind fade out
To waking sleep must have been terrible; but
There were not many jobs for a crippled woman,
And she had done it many days for many years.
At our plant the candler and stacker were one;
The bottles moved onto a slowly spinning
Table, and you grabbed four, put them in a
Candling box, then cased the bottles, stacked
Them, seventy cases to a sled, got a new sled
When you had to, easy moves, if you were
Young and strong, and the mind did not go
Quite blank, for it took a knack to place
The cases with their capped bottles squarely;
And there were dangers, especially from
New bottles, about two percent of which
Would shatter under pressure, often in the
Candling box or being cased. I recall
A stitch in my little finger once; the scar
Is still there after more than fifty years,
And another scar that only required taping,
And others recalled but faded entirely.
Workmen's comp covered these injuries,
And the old woman with a crutch got
A pension if she lived long enough, but,
If the body works to rhythms of machines,
Both body and mind break down in time.
The Bookkeeper's Lesson
The bookkeeper asked for me my second summer
Because I could add figures and transfer them
From one sheet to another and read well enough
To master the task of getting drivers' receipts
Transferred to sales cards. It was easy but dull,
And I was ready by late afternoon to help drivers
Unload empties and reload fulls for the next day,
But the bookkeeper pointed out that all of us who
Did the heavy work were under forty and that
Doing figures could be done as long as the mind
Lasted and that minds lasted longer than legs.
I was urged to stay in school, but I needed no urging.
I loved books and old lore and equations.
I even read the trade magazines in the office and
Knew that thick glass bottles were obsolescent,
Far too small, and that huge supermarkets and
Huge trucks with automatic lifts were coming,
But I did not mind. This summer job would last
My high school years and maybe longer. I took
No family man's job, for bottlers hired extra boys
For summer. The minimum wage had gone up
To seventy-five cents an hour, enough to buy
My clothes and save a bit for college, and not
Depend entirely on my father who expected
A perfection that was not in me. Wages
Were good here and the bookkeeper warned me
Never to ask for more. All the boss had to do
Was wall off the beer warehouse from the
Bottling plant and us bottlers no longer
Would be interstate commerce and thus
No longer covered by minimum wage. The Coke
People got fifteen cents an hour less than
Us and at Pepsi thirty cents less. Of course
Pepsi hired colored people and they could live
On less, but they were hungry enough to take
Our jobs if the boss did not value the race
Enough to keep us working. I thought
About that a long time and maybe
Learned more from the bookkeeper than he
Intended for me to learn, a guide to how
Things work and even how to fight them.
Memories in the Fingers
The three summers at the bottling plant and two
More as driver-salesman for Hires and Squirt
In Madison and North Chicago were good
Despite the scarred hands and the leg that
Made a funny pop when I jumped off a truck,
Which turned out to be the first of many
Traumas. All my bosses were fair men
And good investors who scrapped the old
Shelved trucks and the machines that
Would not handle plastic liters and
Branched out and merged with big-time
Operators in plenty of time, and lots of
The drivers and bottlers like me moved
Onward and upward and did not end up
Ruptured and gimping in alcoholic wards.
It is pleasant to remember stacking
Beer cases fifteen high close to a tin roof
And the hot, sour-smelling freight cars
With once a month kegs of Bud on ice
That we broke among a case of cans from
The other end of the car, charged to
The Frisco Road as freight damaged in transit.
Even at night when fingers ache and I
Dream of rolling kegs from the hot truck
To the cold storage locker I mostly
Recall a good job done early on.
