The Green caldron - University Library

14 The Green Caldron
protective rubber outfits. They rapidly curl the salmon and stuff each can
with the rich red-orange sections. Their hands fly from one can to the next
as they carefully pack stacks of tin cans with fresh salmon. Since each can
must weigh no more than eight ounces, every girl checks the weight of the
cans she packs. At the end of the lines of "stuffers" a "checker" reweighs every
can on accurate scales. A salt vat spits two tablespoons of crystallized salt
into every can, and another machine stamps on the lids as the cans whirl by.
The canned salmon are now ready to be cooked and packaged. Teams of
men and boys force open the huge oven and stand back while thick billows
of steam rush out into the room. They then shove the racks of canned
salmon into the ovens and bolt the doors. After two and a half hours of
baking, the salmon are removed from the ovens, cooled, and sent to the
packaging building to be labeled and boxed.
Tractor-type lifts dart back and forth from the cannery to the warehouse
carrying the racks of hot salmon to be labeled and boxed. The cans are
placed on a roller track. First they roll over a glue solution and then over
the labels. After the cans have been labeled, they are shoved into boxes and
loaded on the trucks which rush them off to the supermarkets.
All through the summer months the cannery hums with activity as tons
of chinook, chum, and pink salmon are canned and rushed off to distant
supermarkets for sale. The canners wait anxiously for the first catch of
fish to be brought in by the commercial fishermen who scan the ocean in
search of the large schools of salmon returning from their breeding places
in the mountain streams. The can that the shopper picks up in the grocery
store represents a small fraction of the tremendous salmon industry.
I
The Teacher
Ruth Gembicki
Rhetoric 101, Theme 3
CAN STILL SEE HER NOW, SKITTERING ACROSS THE
worn, dusty playground, dead brown leaves swirling about her feet.
Miss Carrington, my fifth grade teacher, was like a leaf herself in many
ways. She was tall and thin, a bony thinness which made her grotesque but
somehow exciting and strange. Her hands were caricatures of leaves, with
veins rising distinctly beneath yellowish, mottled skin that looked dry and
powdery. Her hair was brown and looked dusty, and there was always a
scent about her which was the result of a combination of smoke, chalk dust,
and respect.
For we students did respect her. In Oklahoma, where poor facilities and
worse salaries resulted in the worst kind of teachers, she was an exception.
Miss Carrington had a scratchy, monotone voice that would have put the