Easy as Pie

While growing up my father was regularly verbally abusive to me. Of course at the time, before I had any Psychology classes or other messages from today's society that has now taught us that we were all victimized some how, I just thought he was a jerk.

One of his favorite put downs was "you are too lazy to work in a pie factory" As most other things he said to me it went into one ear out the other. But occasionally I would try to analyze the statements as to severity, but I had no point of reference on a pie factory nor the level of difficulty to labor in one.

While going to college in Tulsa, Oklahoma one of the Football Boosters would hire off season players to work in his factory.  I checked with one of the assistant coaches on the possibility of working nights. He set me up an appointment and I went over and was hired to work at the Bama Pie Company.

I couldn't believe it, I was going to have the opportunity to prove my father wrong and actually work in a pie factory. How difficult could the work be if it had this well known illustration of indolence.

During the interview they were a little sketchy on what I would be doing, but them knowing I was a jock I didn't anticipate to be in an executive position, only heavy lifting. The job paid $2.60 hour, which was a $1.15 more than the $1.45 minimum wage and offered some over time at $3.90 per hour.

The Bama Pie Company, Tulsa, OK

I showed up for work the next afternoon and was directed to my workstation which was a very heavy steel 55 gallon barrel with a large colander setting on top. I was told to wait there and my supervisor would direct me what to do.

Shortly thereafter a fellow came up to me and told me to follow him as he walked back through the plant and to the rear of the building and the loading dock. there waiting was a tractor trailer loaded with 12 gallon tin cans filled with sliced apples in their own juice. I was told to unload a dozen of these cans onto a cart waiting there, which I did.

Then the supervisor held up a long handled sledge hammer for me to see and said "see this?", which I acknowledged with a nod. He proceeded to raise the hammer over his head and hit the lid on each individual can in the center at the top would fly off. Again he queried "can you do that?" which I affirmed. He then handed me the handle to the cart and said take this back to your barrel.

When we arrived back at my workstation he picks up one of the cans and pours it into the colander, looks at me and says "squeeze the juice out of them" I looked at him, like....okay...how? He says "put your hands in there and press the juice out" which I did. He pours another can in and I repeat. He instructed me once the colander was about full to walk it across the aisle to him, because he was the Slurryman.

Slurry is the mixture of the juice I was straining combined with sugar, water and cinnamon that was again blended into the strained apples. This mixture is poured into an automated piece of equipment that disburses measured equal amounts of the mixture onto a rectangular piece of uncooked dough on a trip down a conveyor built where it will shortly be topped with another piece of dough and crimped together just before a longer ride through a flash freezer machine. Once the freezing process was complete, a hardend apple pie was complete to be box and shipped.

Okay, I understood not only my job, but now the entire process used to produce what I found were all of the fried apple pies sold at every McDonald's around the World. With this information I felt I had a broader purpose in work, which helped in the horrible monotony of my process. Which I quickly realized could and should be automated for efficiency.

I had never realized that apple juice stains your skin. The juice stains your skin black, and in what I was having to do with my hands my fingers and under my nails were constantly black. The only way you could get the juice off from staining was using other apple juice and then quickly wash that with soap and water.

The repetitiveness of constantly doing the same thing for 8 hours everyday was excruciating and the apples were cumbersome and heavy. The only escape was the same plant made and baked the little pecan pies sold at Kentucky Fried Chicken and they were baked on my route to the loading dock for more apples. The smell of them permeated the work area and every trip through I would snatch a few warm ones and eat them in two bites.

Another great deviation surprise was four or five days during the semester I worked there.I came to work finding during the shift we would make cherry pies instead of apple. Sad, but true, I really found that as a relief.

I always played mind games and challenged myself to stay ahead of the Slurryman and the pie assembly line, I suppose in sort of John Henry kind of way.

It was an interesting experience and probably the greatest motivator I had that I had better get my degree because I could never do something that monotonous everyday of my life, I just wasn't cut that way. Nor, to this day I will not eat an apple pie at McDonald's.

I was told within a year after I left my job was replaced by automation, so the steam locomotive and progress won

At least I proved my father wrong, I would, could and did work in a pie factory.

It was a piece of cake, Dad.