Trucks and rifle shots.

 This segment is the continuation of the warehouse job.  As sugar is processed, we stacked or loaded out, stacked or loaded out, stacked or loaded out. As you can tell , there was nothing else but that. This sometimes lead into mischievous doings

As we stacked up sugar,  there would be guys working below us. One thing that would accidentally happen, is a bag would get torn open.  If someone was working below they would become sweaty so  we would somehow spill sugar off the stack.  This sugar would sift down their backs and become simply a sugar syrup.  Of course I never did that, I was always on observer.

Semi's would show up at all hours to load out sugar. Nothing special about them except one trucker, He would show up about 3am, swing his truck around, backing it in and hit the mark ever time. By stating hit the mark, I mean he never had to pull away and realign his trailer. When the wind was blowing in February, he could align his trailer so square to the building, that little air came thru. This in itself was not exciting, but what was cool was that he drove the only truck he ever owned.

Keep in mind that this was 1970 yet this guy drove a truck that looked like it was built in the 40's to early 50's. He pulled the original trailer also, thus he took pride in what he had and he watched us like a hawk. No one was allowed to scuff the sides of his trailer  as he would tear you a new ***hole quickly.  As we would be winching the conveyors into his truck he would stand inside his trailer to ensure we stayed center of the trailer and then he would watch each and ever pallet being laid down.  Once he was happy, he would exit the trailer and pull out a bottle of booze every time and sip away.

As for the warehouse stacking this was not very exciting. The cool thing was the sugar stacks would be warm at the top regardless of the temp outside. This was do to the fact we were stacking 70-80 degree warm sugar into a thermal stack.  At times when things became slow in the warehouse and we were not needed at any other job location, then we had the choice of sitting around waiting, or we had this other choice.

At least one person had to stay up, but the rest of us would take a small canvas tarp and climb to the top of the stack. We would dig down about 3 layers of stacked sugar just large enough for us to lay down. Then we would pull the tarp over the top and go to sleep. With out winter jackets on, this created the best sleeping conditions ever. Warmth from the sugar and the cold fresh air sifting in, created  the best sleep ever.  If a truck showed up, then the guy on the floor would come up and get us.

One night it was my shift to work the floor which meant stacking sugar on pallets until a truck showed up. . Everyone else had wandered off  to find a sleeping area and I was doing my thing.  The warehouse was quiet except for the sound of running motors and the conveyor that was delivering sugar to me. Somewhere along that night, I grabbed a pallet and flipped it over to start another stack. The pallet landed on the floor in such a way that you heard a load “CRACK” as if a rifle had gone off. I didn't think to much about it, but 15 or 20 minutes later one of the guys came down off  the stack and left.Soon another guy came down and came over to me. He asked me what the hell happened down here. After I  told him, he then told me what had happened on top.

Every one had settled down to sleep and enough time had gone by that they had drifted off into slumber land. Then the shot rang out, or so it seemed. What no-one knew was that the one guy had just come back from Vietnam. When I dropped the pallet, I guess he heard the “SHOT”, jumped to his knees and had a rifle in his hand. Of course there was no rifle, but he had been catapulted back to Vietnam, and was prepared to defend himself. The other guys around him told me later that he did not respond to them, but just swept the area looking.  He soon came back to reality, climbed down and left the area.

I never knew who he was as he had just hired on. I wanted to talk to him and apologize, but I was told later that he never came back to work.   I think of that little incident from time to time, and wonder if he ever came to grips with things like that.