More Box Shed Stories
During my pre-married days, I either drove to work from my
parents house in Lake City, usually over the then new Evergreen bridge. At that
time, you could get a commuter book of 20 trips, and the toll person took a
ticket each way. It came to $0.195. Regular cash trip was $0.35. It was always fun during a storm when the
waves would crash over the side onto the roadway. Later they added some buffers
to decrease the waves overtopping the side.
After I moved into the bachelor apartment with Mark
Merryman, I would often just ride my bike to work. One time the security guards
came back and said they were looking for a hippie on a bike driving around the
back lot. Yeah, me the hippie. I would even ride back to the apt on my ½ hour
lunch break. Not a lot of time to make the trip, eat, and ride back, but I
liked getting away from the shed.
After a cold snap, the floor of the shed would be very cold.
Surprise, it’s not like we had heat in the open building or anything. Having a
cold floor was no problem, but if it warmed up fairly quickly, and the humidity
went up, guess where the warm, wet air condensed? Yep the floor would get wet,
and stay wet for a day or so. Well , the smooth wheels on the pallet jack didn’t
steer, or stop very well on the slick floor. We’d throw sawdust around for traction
and that was a mess.
Repairing pallets was done every day. Sometimes one person
on a table, once in a while 2, sometimes several tables going at once.
Crowbars, 20 oz. hammers, and air driven staple or nail guns were the main
tools. We went through thousands of dollars of wood slats, and staples/nails a
month. Noisy too.
I had a replacement job for a time, when the yard cleaner
guy was on vacation. I’d drive around and clean all of the trailer side of the
docks, clean out the trailer wash pit, and assorted other odd and end jobs. The trailer
wash was a machine that had a 40 foot apparatus that the yard switch driver
would use and back his trailer over the long gadget. A sensor would then turn
on pumps to spray hi pressure water out jets as he pulled the trailer back out.
The water jets would wash anything in the trailer out the back. All that stuff
was what I had to clean up.
For a sanitation rule, there was a foot and a half white
paint line around the walls. Theory was that any rats, mice etc. would use that
area and you could shine a UV light on the white paint to see rat leftovers.
Yeah right. We’d dutifully wave the UV light around, but never, NEVER saw any
traces.
If the baler shredding part got ahead of the baler bailing
part, it was possible to jam up the chute
where it constricted from a large
round silo thing to the square section that fed the baler. If it wasn’t
noticed, the large silo could fill up with chopped up cardboard. When that
happened, we’d shut off the machines, and climb up on the roof, and the ladder
up to a side door in the chute. You’d have to lean in and keep grabbing
handfuls of damp cardboard, being sure not to have your head in the chute when
the blockage gave way and rushed down into the baler machine. Another OSHA
heart attack job.
We were supposed to remove twine etc. before it went into
the baler. That was never perfect, so every few weeks, we’d turn off the
machine, and climb into the shredder, sit there with your legs in the chopper
area and use knives to cut the twine rope off the shredder axle. Took quite a
time. It would have been a bad day had someone not known we were in there and
turned on the machine.
Later!
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