I used to work in a fish stick factory in Maine once, true story. I saw a guy die there. Messed me up for life.
You see, me and my best bud Benny scored a rare well-paying but gruelling job in the recession of 1989. Although we were 2nd year architecture students, there were no jobs to be had in the construction sector. However, my roomie's Dad was plant manager at a nationally branded producer of frozen fish sticks.
Benny and I, courtesy of nepotism, were put in charge of walking around the top of the mincing vat, making sure the steady stream of flash-steamed cod meat was fed properly into the inductor grinder, which via a dag-nasty compaction process yielded the small white protein pegs that further down the line would be breaded and flash-fried into a major brand-named delicious fish stick, straight from your oven to the table.
However, occasionally the impellor screw that ground the endless white stream of Fish Ruin into compacted naked fish sticks would become jammed, requiring manual obstruction-clearing with a large wooden "oar" we called "Peggie". That was mine and Benny's duty: alternating 12-hour shifts pacing the catwalk among the top rim of numerous grinding stations, ramming meat clogs through with "Peggie". It was hard work, but well-paying for a struggling college student in need of a lucrative summer job.
I was at the end of my grueling 12-hour shift, my yellow rubber overcoat covered in greasy codfish gore, when I looked up and saw the welcome site of Benny's familiar face there to relieve me of my shift.
Suddenly, without warning, the catwalk at station 7 gave way, dumping Benny into the creep-feed grinder impeller screw below. I lunged forth to save him; although I grasped the sleeve of his yellow rubber overcoat, I could hear the sickening cracking of his leg bones as he was sucked into the hungry maw of the fish stick grinder machine; I knew it was too late for my friend Benny.
Suddenly, I felt my arm following him into the white meat vortex. I struggled mightily; by a miracle, I was able to snatch my right arm back out of the impellor screw and scramble back up the listing ruined catwalk to safety.
Later that morning, as the coroner sifted for scraps of Benny's body, I was struck by an epiphany like the hot kiss at the end of a wet fist: I had escaped only because my yellow rubber overcoat was covered in the overspray of 12 hours of oily fish gore, unlike Benny's fresh clean dry rubber raincoat.
Then and there it occurred to me, as I pondered my friend's horrid demise:
There but for the Grease of Cod go I. ********** The family of my friend, Benny, turned his body over to the local funeral home. My poor deceased friend had sported a thick bushy beard as long as I'd known him; I couldn't imagine him without it.
However, the funeral home cosmotologist shaved his face due to a mix-up in paper work. Because of this, his corpse was visually mis-identified by the staff and he was mistakenly sent to the crematorium instead of the embalmer for preparation for his open-casket funeral, which as you can imagine, was going to be a daunting task.
Had he not been shaved, he would not have been sent to the cremation oven.
I guess the moral of this story is: A Benny Shaved Is a Benny Urned.
Comments
You see, me and my best bud Benny scored a rare well-paying but gruelling job in the recession of 1989. Although we were 2nd year architecture students, there were no jobs to be had in the construction sector. However, my roomie's Dad was plant manager at a nationally branded producer of frozen fish sticks.
Benny and I, courtesy of nepotism, were put in charge of walking around the top of the mincing vat, making sure the steady stream of flash-steamed cod meat was fed properly into the inductor grinder, which via a dag-nasty compaction process yielded the small white protein pegs that further down the line would be breaded and flash-fried into a major brand-named delicious fish stick, straight from your oven to the table.
However, occasionally the impellor screw that ground the endless white stream of Fish Ruin into compacted naked fish sticks would become jammed, requiring manual obstruction-clearing with a large wooden "oar" we called "Peggie". That was mine and Benny's duty: alternating 12-hour shifts pacing the catwalk among the top rim of numerous grinding stations, ramming meat clogs through with "Peggie". It was hard work, but well-paying for a struggling college student in need of a lucrative summer job.
I was at the end of my grueling 12-hour shift, my yellow rubber overcoat covered in greasy codfish gore, when I looked up and saw the welcome site of Benny's familiar face there to relieve me of my shift.
Suddenly, without warning, the catwalk at station 7 gave way, dumping Benny into the creep-feed grinder impeller screw below. I lunged forth to save him; although I grasped the sleeve of his yellow rubber overcoat, I could hear the sickening cracking of his leg bones as he was sucked into the hungry maw of the fish stick grinder machine; I knew it was too late for my friend Benny.
Suddenly, I felt my arm following him into the white meat vortex. I struggled mightily; by a miracle, I was able to snatch my right arm back out of the impellor screw and scramble back up the listing ruined catwalk to safety.
Later that morning, as the coroner sifted for scraps of Benny's body, I was struck by an epiphany like the hot kiss at the end of a wet fist: I had escaped only because my yellow rubber overcoat was covered in the overspray of 12 hours of oily fish gore, unlike Benny's fresh clean dry rubber raincoat.
Then and there it occurred to me, as I pondered my friend's horrid demise:
There but for the Grease of Cod go I.
**********
The family of my friend, Benny, turned his body over to the local funeral home. My poor deceased friend had sported a thick bushy beard as long as I'd known him; I couldn't imagine him without it.
However, the funeral home cosmotologist shaved his face due to a mix-up in paper work. Because of this, his corpse was visually mis-identified by the staff and he was mistakenly sent to the crematorium instead of the embalmer for preparation for his open-casket funeral, which as you can imagine, was going to be a daunting task.
Had he not been shaved, he would not have been sent to the cremation oven.
I guess the moral of this story is: A Benny Shaved Is a Benny Urned.