Do you understand the difference between 60 and 100?

Jan 25th is the start of this series remember

This may be a 2 or 3 part topic as this is where I spent most of my time at the Plant. As you can tell we have arrived at the end of the line for sugar processing. The sugar was cleaned, cut, cooked, spun, and broken up. Now the sugar was traveled to another overhead bin, where it gravity feeds into the bagging area.

The bagging area was fun to work at, as it never became cold during the winter campaign. Sugar had just completed its process and it is still warm from the processing. I would guess that the sugar was about 80-90 degrees in temperature coming out of the bins. Because of the high volume of sugar being bagged, the area stayed nice and toasty no matter how cold it became in the warehouse.

The sugar was bagged into what was called the nickel, dime and hundred bags. A nickel bag was the 5lb bags sold in stores, the dime bag was the 10lb bags. These store units size bags were then slipped into a shipping bag and stitched shut where the total weight was now 60lbs per sack. Of course the 100lb bags where for shipping off to bakeries, etc. From there they slid out into the warehouse to be stacked for shipping. It seemed all these workers came to work each night, so our chance to take it easy was few at these stitching and bagging jobs.

My primary job was out in the cold warehouse and it all depended on what was needed that night. We stacked sugar into 30 by 30 square feet pads reaching high to the ceiling. In the middle of the warehouse the pile would reach 40 feet tall. Stacking sugar was simple enough, as all you did was lift the 60lb bag off a conveyor and build the stack in such a way as to tie it all together. In other-words making sure it would not fall over. If trucks showed up, then we would divert the bagged sugar to the doors and just load the trucks.

We had a gent who worked out there, who was mentally challenged. The plant hired him into the warehouse so we had to deal with him. It was nice to see this but keep in mind we had a lot of dangerous stuff going on and someone had to watch him. Guess who had that job on my shift. I also want to point out that certain other “gents” didn't want him there, thus they made it rough on him.

As you can see where this is going, this slow-gent latched on to me as a caretaker. He always seemed to be where I was and getting into the way. In fact the shop foreman made it a point that I watch over him. I sometimes think back about this, as this was how MOM raised us kids. She told me more then once “to be kind to all, as you never know who will be checking you in at the pearly gates”. I guess I listened up to a point. I was nice to him but up to a point.

One night we had rail-cars to fill, plus trucks coming and going. The foreman told me to take the “gent” into the rail-car and both of us work at filling it up. That was a polite way of saying keep him out of the way. Of course this car was going to be filled with 100lb bags of sugar and there was no way this fella would be able to handle it.

The 100lb bags were coming down the slides and rolling on out to the warehouse, and a guy stood inside turning every 2nd or 3rd bag onto my rails, Time was such that I had time to walk to the end of the rail car, stack it and get back to gather up another. My friend of course heard that he was to assist me, and he kept hounding me. Of course I knew he did NOT understand 100lbs vs 60lbs and was afraid he would get hurt. He kept hounding me and getting in my way,so after awhile,I just gave up and told him to watch close.

The trick to handling these 100lb bags was that the bag came into the rail-car by going up a chain lift/elevator. We would set it to the shoulder height of the men working inside thus no bending over to lift. We would walk to the lift, turn, grab the ears of the bag and start walking. The bag would lay on our shoulder and we would walk away only to rush back and grab the next one.

Now close your eyes and think this through. Simple right? My challenged friend wants to help, and like I said, I finally gave up. I showed him again how to do it, complete with details of what to expect. Warned him that these were heavy and I told the dude out in the warehouse to slow things down a little.

My friend gets under the lift, and hunched over like the Hunchback of Notre Dame He watches for the bag in happy anticipation. He waits and waits and finally the bag appears, he grabs the ears, and starts to walk ------- Bang ----- he goes straight to the floor.Now you understand why I told the sugar bag turner to slow down.

All 100lbs of sugar is now on top of him. He screams and kicks and finally gets away from it all. He has kicked open the bag, thus sugar is all over. He has now lost his mental control, and he starts to raise a ruckus so the foreman came running.

I have to admit I was chuckling because of what I witnessed and of course the guy out turning bags was laughing his head off. I mean I never saw anyone hit the floor so fast. He just didn't understand the weight that was going to land on his shoulder. The kid climbs out of the box-car, points to me, stated something and walked off.

Now don't pick on me for laughing as I did all I could to keep him out of harms way. I would have laughed even worse if it had been anyone else. The next day, he had forgotten all about it, so I was back on even keel with him.