I punch us in while Clinton puts our lunches in the cool room. The cool room is a big room beside the lunch area that’s as cold as a fridge and that stays empty during corn season. Bud, the foreman, lets us use it because in terms of a lunchroom the warehouse workers get the shaft. The rest of the factory has a kitchen, fridge, microwave, and four vending machines that we aren’t allowed to use because the management doesn’t want us walking through the factory. Bud made a makeshift lunch area consisting of two tables, two vending machines, and the cool room, which I’m convinced makes my sandwiches taste like rubber.
*
There are four big machines in the warehouse. Usually only three are going at a time. All I know about the process is what I see here. The cans come down the conveyor belt like stubby tin soldiers and march onto the Britestack where they form a square of a thousand cans. If they are out of place or fall down, I take an L-shaped iron rod to straighten them up. That’s it. It’s that boring.
*
The warehouse is better to work in than the rest of the factory—less pressure. My job may be boring, but at least I don’t have any responsibility. My job isn’t important. Clinton’s is, but I wouldn’t want his job for anything. I don’t have to worry though—they never let women run the big machines. Working in the lab would be good. The room is tiny and soundproof, and they have a little fan going and a radio. I peeked in the lab a couple of days ago. Brenda offered me corn to eat right out of the can, and I did, and it tasted really good. I’ve never eaten canned corn before. My mother always buys frozen, but now I think canned tastes better. It’s sweeter and has a better consistency. I ate it cold but imagine it’s good warm with butter and salt and pepper. Clinton says you can buy a case wholesale from the factory for ten bucks. Maybe I’ll do that.
*
The lights and no windows trick me into thinking it’s day. Except when
I take my break and slip out the side door for a cigarette. The air is cool compared to the air inside. The sky is clear because we’re outside city limits, and there are no clouds, few lights. I hear crickets the way I imagine my mother did growing up on my grandparents’ dairy farm. Corncobs are piled in pyramids ready to be husked, de-cobbed, and sealed in cans. Before we leave tonight, Clinton and I will stash an A&P bag full of fresh corn to eat when we get home. We’ll have garlic bread with cheese and fall asleep in front of the TV—the window fan blowing our hair on and off our faces like wind and weeds.
*
On my first day I walked through the factory without my hardhat: Bud Richards hollered at me in front of everybody. Now I never forget.
—It seems like Bud always picks on me, I say to Clinton.
—It’s because you work in the warehouse, Clinton says. Bud’s old school; he thinks only men should work here.
If you liked this post, consider sharing it!
Playlist
» Continue to Episode 3 (coming soon)
« Return to Episode 1
All Episodes
Extras
Where was that damn factory?
The factory that this book is based on was a corn canning factory where I worked just outside London, Ontario in 1989. I’ve tried to find information about this factory for years and have come up empty.
I remembered that it was a Green Giant factory and that it had, at the time, recently been purchased by Pillsbury. No one was happy about this change of ownership because the Pillsbury wages were much less than the Green Giant wages.
My boyfriend’s mother worked there every summer and got us both jobs, but I couldn’t remember where the factory was located because I have a habit of not paying attention to such things—especially as a teenager and even more so if I am being driven somewhere. My boyfriend’s mother drove us for awhile until my boyfriend got his motorcycle.
How could I remember all these details from the book and not know where the factory was located? Shrug.
I decided to check in with a Facebook Group called If You Grew Up in London, Ontario, You Will Remember When… because I thought that someone might have worked there or known someone who worked there, and sure enough I got many responses.
People were sharing about when they worked there, the jobs they had, getting paid well, lasting only a day, lack of safety precautions, never wanting to eat canned corn again—someone even met their husband there.
Although the commenters referenced a couple of canning factories in London at the time, I believe that I worked at the one just south of the 401 outside of London on Green Valley Road. That rings a bell for me, and I remember that the factory was surrounded by farm land. Very grateful to that Facebook group for answering my question.
What was your most memorable summer job as a teenager?
Description of Onion Man
Onion Man follows an eighteen-year-old girl working for the summer at a corn-canning factory in London, Ontario in the 1980s as she navigates her relationships with her factory job, her boyfriend, her alcoholic mother, her terminally ill grandfather, and the man who every night “peels an onion and eats it as if it were an apple.
© Copyright 2011 and 2024 | Kathryn Mockler | All rights reserved.
If you like Onion Man, you might like Anecdotes by Kathryn Mockler, winner of the Victoria Butler Book Prize and was a finalist for the 2024 Trillium Book Award, 2023 Danuta Gleed Literary Award, 2024 Fred Kerner Award, and 2024 VMI Besty Warland Between Genres Award.
Share this post