For three summers, I ground up fish heads and cooked them - and I wouldn’t trade
that experience for anything in the world.
This process always creates splatters, especially when it starts to
fill up. There’s nothing like getting a face full of ground up fish heads first thing in the morning. Once a retort is full, it steam cooks for 35 minutes. When it’s finished, at the top, sits an inch or so of shiny orange fish oil. The oil is extracted, purified, cooled and boxed up for shipment to pharmaceutical companies.
You didn’t have to work there long to learn who the “head shed”
boys were. Being a “head shed” boy was a great thing – it was very prideful. Sure, there were better jobs, but not many where you were left alone for days at a time. Because who wanted to enter the “head shed?” Especially knowing the initiation rules, which called for every new “head shed” worker to take a ladle-full of warm fish oil – a rule I extended to all visitors under my tenure.
For three summers, I ground up fish heads and cooked them -
and I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything in the world.
Pepé Le Pew John Traylor ’69
Aha Moment Leslie Hand ‘00 Years ago, when I was about 17, I worked as a hostess in a fine dining restaurant. One of my jobs was to “check the bathroom” throughout my shift. I remember doing as I was asked, walking around in there, looking and thinking to myself, no problems, no one passed out on the floor, looks good to me.
There was a time when the manager came up to me and said
someone had complained there was no toilet paper in the bathroom. He asked me if I had been checking it, and, all of a sudden, a light bulb went on and I thought, “Oh that’s what I’m checking for!” I had no idea.
The Pinsetter Carol (Ulery) Williams ‘60 While as student at Mossyrock High School in southwestern Washington, I was one of several of my classmates who set pins at a small bowling alley outside of town. The bowling alley was in the basement of the Howard family home, next to their small gymnasium!
There were just four lanes. Here’s how it worked: The pinsetters
stood aside as the bowler lobbed their first ball down the lane. Then we picked up the ball and placed it in the ball return, picked up the fallen pins and placed them in the proper order in the frame that held the pins, and got out of the way – again. If anyone made
During summer break my sophomore year in 1967, my fellow ROTC
a strike, we did it all after their first ball was thrown. The job was
cadet Tom Roe and I were interviewing for a job with the YMCA at
fun and exhausting, and we all loved it. It was a lot more fun than
Camp Reed, north of Spokane. At that time, they had a big problem
picking strawberries, raspberries and blueberries in our little town.
with skunks under the cabins. We were already hired for the job, but
Au Revoir, Gopher
when the director found out that we could shoot, we were asked if we could report a week early.
Tom and I picked out the best cabin for ourselves, and over the
next week, ridded the neighborhood of the striped raiders. There were quite a few of them, and after a while, we no longer really noticed the smell. After a week, the other camp counselors showed up for duty and none of them wanted to share the same, rather nice cabin. Nor did they really wish to eat with us, or even wish to converse with us. Tom and I finally figured out that perhaps we might offend in some way. It just goes to show you – while you may really be needed, you may not always be appreciated!
Gordon Budke ‘63 While growing up in Dayton, Wash., I had a job of setting traps to catch gophers that enjoyed meals of recently-planted seedling apple trees. My payment was ‘per the tail,’ so I would run my trap line twice daily and sever the gopher tails and keep them in a jar until each Friday, when I would go to the office and we would open the jar, count the tails and I would get paid.
The days were long and the job was a real bore. The process of
counting the tails was a very quick process. You can imagine the smell!
spring/summer 2010 27