MADE RITE

In the summer of 1966, I got a job loading trucks at the Made Rite bottling plant in Longview. My "shift" was from 6PM til 6AM (five days per week).

Made Rite "manufactured" and sold Dr. Pepper and several other "flavors" of soda pop such as orange, grape, root beer, and "red". Yeah, I know "red" ain't a flavor, but that is what the people in my world called that particular bottled drink.

I say "bottle" drink because in the golden age of my 16th year, all soda came in glass bottles, no aluminum cans, no plastic bottles, just glass containers. Also, you had to pay a "deposit" of a few cents, in addition to the cost of the "sodie pop". I think this was more so they could get the bottles back, rather than an environmental issue?

The drinks were bottled COLD on the assembly line and while at work, we could drink all we wanted from the assembly line FREE. Now you would have to know that poor folks in East Texas didn't all have their "ice boxes" stuffed with soft drinks. On the rare occasion you got to drink one, it was usually a single purchase at a gasoline station (like Uncle Reggie's Sinclair, where they used to cost a nickel, if you left the bottle there after finishing the treat).

Anyway, I thought I was in heaven while swiggin' that sweet nectar all day long. In fact, my feeling of elation lasted for at least a week. Didn't take too long before I got plumb overloaded with the bounty and couldn't even think about drinking them thangs?

The bottles were placed in wooden crates that held 24 bottles each. There was no plastic rings to hold 6 together, there was no cardboard containers to hold 12 together. They were sold to retailers 24 to a wooden case.

As the 24 bottle wooden cases came off the assembly line, we would stack 24 of the cases on a wooden pallet. When the pallet was full, we would mount a motorized fork lift, pick up the pallet, and move it to a designated location. (don't tell the boss, but we had drag races on those fork lifts in the warehouse at night after the managers left for the day).

The "designated place" for the pallets was against the wall of this huge warehouse. Naturally, the same flavor would be stacked in its own line. The pallets with 24 cases of 24 bottles each would be stacked 3 pallets high (1,728 bottles in a stack, remember this as it will be important later on). Then a stack of 3 more pallets, and so forth as the line of stacked pallets got longer. Now imagine MOUNTAINS of glass towering in neat rows along the East and West walls of the warehouse.

When the delivery trucks would come in after a day of delivering to the grocery stores, etc., us peons would get the driver's order form for the next day and load his truck with his order (25 cases of this, 12 cases of that, etc.)

To get the needed flavor, we would hop back on a fork lift and head toward the MOUNTAIN. As the flavors would be needed in unequal quantities, some stack lines would be 40 yards long while others would be 10 yards long.

Now imagine the flavor you need is 10 yards long while the flavors on either side are each 40 yards long. Ease your butt between the long rows that tower over your head to get to the needed flavor on the short row. Now look around and up!!!!!!!!!! Holy Moly!!!!!!!

Think about being in that canyon of glass where there are 1,728 bottles in every stack and there are hundreds of stacks adjacent to you (meaning there are about a gazillion that are unsecured around and over your frail butt)? Now imagine running the boom of that fork lift as high as it will go to the roof of the warehouse to GINGERLY (while not breathing) pick up the pallet on top and ease back without that pallet of drinks falling. We didn't have helmets, the fork lift had no top (and some them looser stacks were downright wobblers).

When the needed pallet was on ground level, all you had to do was back out about 30 yards to get out of the canyon and get to the appropriate truck (easy, right?)

Now comes the actual loading of the truck. Today they would just use the fork lift to sit the whole pallet in a side bay of the truck. Not so over four decades ago (8 lustrums?)

The trucks at that time had metal rails that ran from side to side that the wooden pallet would ride on. I would pick up a wooden case of 24 drinks (at least 25-30 pounds), put it at the entrance to the rail, and push it in. Pick up the next case and repeat. The rails started from about waist high and went up. As the rails got higher, I would bend over to get a case off the pallet, and eventually have to lift it over my head, and then SHOVE harder as the rail filled with the drinks. The trucks all had a solid sheet of metal on top with rails as well, but with a metal support strap running about two feet over the top from the front of the truck to the back.

For that roof top load, I would bend over and grab the case of drinks, hold it over my head, and then THROW IT at the roof while trying to land it in the rails, but with low enough trajectory to go under the front to back metal strap. Most times I did it successfully. Sometimes I was short and 24 glass bottles of sticky pop rained in my face (along with the sharp slivers).

Now repeat the above mentioned "cakewalk" (with no break for anything) for a 12 hour shift, all night long, when you would normally be a sleeping teenager.

I survived that summer with one reminder that I carry to this day. We were loading the roof of a truck and I got on the roof to straighten up some cases that were awry. One of my buddies reared back and slung a case my way, but its trajectory was too high. The necks of 24 bottles hit the metal strap running over the roof and sheared them clean, followed by a mass of glass shrapnel hitting me.

I was OK, for the most part, but one piece put a slice in my arm that went to the bone. Think much blood and a gaping wound of maybe 5 inches long.

I went straight to our nurse station (the two cleaning ladies who tidied up the manager's offices at night) and sought their advice. There wasn't even so much as a band aid in that entire warehouse, but there was a large metal can of Watkins course ground black pepper in the manager's break room.

Those surgical saviors (janitors) poured the entire contents of that Watkins pepper can into my wound and bound it with a semi-clean dish cloth they hunted up. The bleeding immediately stopped, no infection occurred, and I ended up with a clean, neat scar that looked like it had been treated at the Mayo clinic.

And last, but not least, I went into the warehouse and finished my shift. Hell they was paying me $1.15 per hour (no overtime), so my 60 hours per week (after taxes, social security, FICA, whatever) netted me at least a whopping $45!!!!!!!!!!! Thank the Lord for free enterprise!