I dropped out of college after the spring of my freshman year and moved back in with my parents. Well, technically, I hadn’t dropped out so much as I knew I wasn’t planning on going back in the fall. My parents weren’t aware of my plans, or lack of them. A high school friend, who moved to the farm across the field from us, was working at a turkey processing plant about 30 miles away. She talked me into applying for a job on the line and driving back and forth with her every day. “It rocks!” she said. “The people are awesome!” Turns out, she was half right.
They tell me there had been big improvements made in meat processing facilities across the country by that summer of 1984, which makes me wonder how bad things must have been at one time. My first morning there, I was issued a belt and scabbard, two knives, two sharpening steels, and a metal mesh glove to keep from cutting off my fingers. We were required to wear hairnets every day. I wonder if it was to keep our hair out of the meat or the meat out of our hair. The plant itself smelled of a combination of wet feathers and turkey shit. It was chronically damp and eerily gray. The sanitary conditions were, well, horrible. I remember when the line had to be shut down because maggots were dripping onto the conveyor belt which transported de-fatted turkey breasts. For excitement, someone had thrown a chunk of meat up on the machinery high above our heads, and a few days later, the maggots had moved in. And, they fit right in, too. Some of the less sanitary workers smelled vaguely of rotting flesh because they didn’t bother to scrub their mesh gloves at the end of each day, but they didn't bother to wash their white uniforms very often either, so it's probably not fair to blame the odor on the mesh gloves alone.
The days themselves were usually long and always unpredictable. Work began at 5:00 am; that meant leaving home by 4:15 am to get there on time. The line ran until no more truckloads of birds arrived. Rare were the nights I was home by 9:00 pm. I remember once when the last truck arrived at 11:00 pm and, when all the birds had finally been butchered, we were held over to rework a pallet of breasts that hadn’t passed inspection. It ended up to be a 22-hour day. We left the plant at 3:00 am, and were told to be back to work at 11:00 am, just eight hours later! A couple of indignant workers contacted OSHA, who informed them that, since turkey was a perishable food product, it was legal to work up to 22 hours as long as workers were given eight hours off before being required to return to the line.
When forced to perform under such conditions, most people form close bonds with one another, finding ways to encourage each other. Besides a healthy respect for anyone earning a living doing line work, and an urgent call to return to college, the turkey plant blessed me with a handful of salt-of-the-earth friends. One such friend was Gloria. She was 25 years older than me, but she had a real sense for what it was to be a young woman living in a fast world. She watched over us and encouraged us to be true to ourselves. She told off-color jokes that seemed to make the minutes pass more quickly.
I ended up going back to college that fall, and returned to the turkey plant the following summer. Most of my old friends were still there, but the conditions had changed for the better. 1985 was the last summer I worked at ‘the plant’. I slowly lost contact with the good friends I had made there. Twenty-six years later, two days after Logan died, I got a phone call from Gloria. She had read Logan’s obituary in her local paper, then asked her daughter to search out my number on the internet. Gloria called to offer me her condolences. She asked a million questions about the years since we'd worked together. She encouraged me to cling to the truths of my faith. She asked if there was anything she could do for us, so I asked her to pray for the other driver in the accident. I had no idea how he was physically, but I knew he had to be an emotional wreck. I asked if she’d also put him on the prayer chain at her church.
Over the next few weeks, Gloria called me almost daily to tell me she had added the other driver to another prayer chain at another church. She would comb the yellow pages for telephone numbers. She called every number in her phone’s contact list, reached every relative she could think of, and in 3-weeks time, had listed him on over 90 prayer chains across the country! Ninety prayers is a lot of prayers, but ninety chains of prayers is mighty.
I have never seen or spoken to the driver of the other vehicle, except through our lawyers. He filed a personal injury suit against me, well beyond what I was insured for, since the vehicle Logan was driving was in my name. The man was not wearing his seat belt and was thrown from his vehicle, sustaining a head injury which required him to be air lifted to a larger medical facility. Four days later, by the grace of God, he was discharged from the hospital. I know his life will never be the same as it was before 12-noon, September 3rd, 2011, but I'm thankful he has the opportunity to make each moment of what remains of his life worthy. I pray he walks those moments with Christ.
I wish I had understood at the time that standing for endless hours in that cold, damp, dirty processing plant would turn out to be one of the biggest blessings in my life. God is good.
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