Welcome to my world and beyond...

A collection of snippets of the books I write and, occasionally, my life and the things that inspire my writing...

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

A to Z "V" is for Void: voluntarily stepping into a vast one

I know this post is long for the A to Z...but the whole story had to be told for it to make sense.  So, if you are stopping by for a quick hello, don't worry about reading the whole thing. :-)  Just leave me a comment and I will stop and visit your blog!

The year was 1988.  I had spent most of the autumn hoping that the job came through. Interviews, physical, pee-test... all to pick mushrooms. It was a union job at the world's largest underground mushroom farm--employed over 1000 people.

I got the job.
                                 
October 26th, I donned a hard hat with a miner's lamp on it-- powered by the battery hanging off of my miner's belt. I carried my picking knife and my gloves on the belt too. Thirteen of us started that day.  All seemed like nice enough people.

I had made the jump from service industry jobs to the real deal.  I was big time.  And I was enthusiastic!

We boarded the "buggy" --electric and big enough to haul 17 pickers plus the driver and the crew leader.  We started out in the training crew, and that was pretty good. It was dark.  Dang. It was really dark.  And it was damp and sort of musty smelling.  All day we picked, picked, picked.  Hardly talking--we knew we had to pick a minimum pounds per hour to make the union.

 

Within a couple of weeks, the ranks had been thinned by three--and a new training crew of thirteen had started to work. That pushed all 10 of us newbies out onto the regular crews.  There were 20 of them, with up to 16 pickers each on any given day.

To say I was shocked is a grave understatement.  I wanted to run back to the training crew crying for sane people, crying for nice people.  But I shut my mouth and picked.

I lucked into being on my oldest sister's crew a couple of days.  She told me, "Don't run your mouth until you can run your knife."

The days stretched on, and my picking speed increased...but my inner conflict between needing the job for the money, and feeling I wasn't where I belonged, grew daily.  It was grueling--six days on, one day off--trial by fire meant to make or break.  We needed 60 working days to make the union..  The balls of my feet swelled up and met the swollen pads of my toes. But, I didn't tell a soul, because I knew I'd never make the union.

It was my 29th birthday. Two weeks to go to get my 60 days in.  The inner conflict was raging...and the need to work was losing momentum.  This can't be worth it. I was on a crew that had silent women and vulgar men on it.  By the end of the day, I was in the back of my row, picking a bottom tray with my back turned to the rest of the crew.  Several of the men on the crew were talking about raping women, cutting them up and putting the parts in garbage bags then tossing them over the hill.

I had done it. I had stepped into a vast void...not just voluntarily, but enthusiastically.  It was an empty place.  No joy dwelt there, no humanity, no goodness...

I was crying.  Quietly. Oh my god--I couldn't let anyone see that they had completely devastated my sensibilities. Because , then it would have really begun.  And even in a work force of a thousand, news spreads fast; I would  have been a target no matter where I went.  There was no one to tell and no way to stop it without making it worse.

Christmas week, I was on THE worst crew of all of the crews.  After being told by the buggy driver that he liked my braids and that they probably came in handy for my husband--saved wear and tear on my ears, I stayed as far away from any of them as I could. I could hear them laughing and snickering.


A week later, I made the union.  And as the months rolled forward, I began to let go of whatever it was that made me feel shock at the way people behaved...and worst of all, the way they treated each other.  It made it easier. 

Before I knew it, a year had gone by.  I was earning a good living, talking like a truck driver, and I knew I was as tough as any of them.   I could stand tall...I was a bonafide hard-ass with a mill-hunky attitude.  I was a survivor.  I never thought about at what cost, though. 

Another year rolled by.

One day, I was walking into a restroom at work, and an older woman, one of the sweetest ladies I have ever met, was walking out.  Several of us struck up a conversation and it turned to someone being particularly mean at work.  I can't recall what I said, but I know that when everyone else walked away--except for that sweet woman and me, she said, "I never thought that you would change. You were the nicest girl when you started here."

Her words cut me to the bone.

There was no malice, just honesty in her words.  And the way she looked at me...it wasn't pity.  It wasn't accusation.  I sensed it was more like she was trying to tell me, "You have changed, but you don't have to be like this."

I could blame the behavior of 99% of the people there on a lot of things.  Darkness, lack of inhibition created by darkness, a monotonous job--coupled with sensory deprivation that left absolutely nothing for entertainment but to pick on each other.  I could make excuses and blame it on a lot of things.  For them, I will. But not for me.   I knew better.  I had gone from a kind, caring person--to someone who just went with the flow.


There is a void waiting in everyone's life.  Some are big; some are small.  They are places that are pretty empty of all that is beautiful and precious to us human beings.  And they all present a choice.  We may not be able to control the situation around us, but we are able to control the way we react to it.

I made a choice.  I was going to be better than the situation. I was going to be better than the person who had gone down a slippery slope while  hiding behind excuses.  I saw a dark side of me while I was in that void.  And thank goodness for Carol P, who did the nearly unthinkable---and held a mirror up before my eyes, forcing me to see something ugly...something less than it could be.


15 comments:

  1. I don't think I've ever stepped into quite that kind of darkness, but there was a while in my life when I really had no idea who I was, and that was kinda scary.

    Deep and thought-provoking post.

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    1. Thanks you, Botanist. It is strange and scary when you g discover that you are quite sure who you are. It makes me wonder how humans can drift so far to the left or the right and not realize it until they are in the ditch :-) Thank you for taking the time to read it! :-)

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  2. I had to read the whole thing, because I've never heard of underground mushroom picking! fascinating post, but sounds like a truly horrible place to work. I can see the temptation in becoming 'tough', in refusing to let people's meanness bother you...but as you said, it came at a cost.

    I've had a lot of wacky jobs, but never worked with truly horrible, nasty people. Some serious bitches and bastards, yes, but nobody who would make me feel like a piece of meat like that.

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    1. Thanks for taking the time to read it, Trisha. You know, it really was fascinating to me. Even on dark days, I was in awe of the how the entire system was designed to flow, from compost to stub pile and steamed trays. A room full of mushrooms was a pretty sight. It might not have been so bad if we could have listened to music with ear-buds. But, mine-safety did not allow due to the risk of cave-ins and people not hearing the alarms. :-)

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  3. My goodness. I'll never look at a mushroom in the same way again! I had no idea. I remember I had to endure a horrid job for almost two years, but it was nothing like your experience. Not even close. Wow.

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    1. Most are grown above ground, now. This was an oddity--an old limestone mine. I sometimes can hardly believe that over a thousand people made their living there. It was not good work, but it paid the bills. It is no longer in business. I worked there for five years...five...long...years... :-) Thank you for stopping and reading this post. :-)

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  4. Teresa, this is such a touching post. Thank you so much for sharing your experience. I can't imagine what that must have been like for you!

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    1. Thanks, Johanna. One of the best things about time is that it takes the rough edges of things. It was bad...but I learned from the experience. And in the end, I was probably a better and stronger person for it. :-)

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  5. Excellent post- we all have a dark side, I think it's part of how we learn- not such credit in being good if that is all you are, but choosing to be good, that's a powerful positive experience. And my answer is yes, and I had a tattoo- but I might save that story for another time! :-)

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    1. Uh oh, lol...the tattoo?? Please, be sure I don't miss that story when you get around to posting it! Thanks for taking the time to read this, Lily! :-)

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  6. I can't or perhaps don't want to believe such things go on...
    When I was younger, I worked in a few factories, and it was bitchy, and competitive. Thank goodness I was made redundant after two years!
    Very moving, and yes we all have a dark side.

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    1. Thanks for taking the time to read it, Maria. It seems so long ago. Almost as if it were another life. But, I learned from it. :-) Thanks for your kind words :-)

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  7. It makes me sad to think of my Mammaletto experiencing this. But you never brought the hell-hole home. You were always our sweet mommy who showed us how to shuffle in the leaves, read Robert Frost poems and taught us how to pinch with our toes. You made our world beautiful and good. I love you, mom.

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    1. Carol (C)--to differentiate from Carol P, mentioned in the blogpost, and I talked about this at work, today. She said she can remember some of it, but that the majority was so shocking to her that she blocked it out. And we both made the same observation--if you ran into a coworker away from work, they were so normal. The darkness, lack of inhibitions... who knows? It was hard but honest work, and it paid the bills. You kids were worth every bit of it. Love you!

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  8. The most important thing is that you managed to find your way back to the light. I think situations like these are key in testing our natural moral compass. Yours is working well: feeling guilty for not realizing it sooner (or by yourself) makes it all the more apparent - I believe it must be comforting to learn that. I hope one day, I'll have a experience like this - but I can't say I'm looking forward to finding out if I'm a Ralph or a Roger - like in The Lord of the Flies. Deeply moving and powerful writing! :)

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