I had a summer job once at the Red Owl grocery. My boss was a slippery old guy named Mr. Kraft and he spent most of his time smoking Camels on the loading dock. My job was to unload the cases of fruits and vegetables from the big trucks and pull them on a flatbed dolly into the refrigerated room in the back of the store.
The trucks would be waiting when I arrived at the grocery in the morning. Mr. Kraft would be waiting too. (Sometimes I felt like that fella might live at the grocery, and maybe he had a little pallet to sleep on in the back there.) We’d unload wooden crates of tomatoes and carrots, onions and beans, apples and potatoes. Plus there were always strawberries and cherries in summer, too. The corn came from a local farm and generally the farmer’s kid brought those cases in and stocked the bins himself.
We never got any oranges, except at Christmastime. Oranges were very expensive and not many people bought them in our little town. We never got fancy produce like you see in the stores today: white asparagus, pineapple, kiwi fruits and the like. These are some of my favorite foods to eat today, but I never encountered them on the docks of the Red Owl grocery.
I did see lots of food that came in spoiled. Bruised and beat-up fruits and vegetables were refused delivery or sent right out to the back-alley for the neighborhood strays to forage through. Mr. Kraft saved some of the food that had taken a hard knock in transport and I suppose he took it home to a grateful Mrs. Kraft to prepare that night. It wasn’t pretty, but you still got fed with bruised peaches and potatoes with black spots here and there.
I look now at my kids and how they go to the gym to “work out,” and I wonder. We never “worked out” – but my summer spent on that loading dock was exercise enough! I rolled up the sleeves of my t-shirt that summer and showed off my biceps, you can be sure of that!
I heard from my Bill Sheraton a few weeks ago – he worked with me that summer, but he was an inside stockboy. He learned from his mother that Mr. and Mrs. Kraft had actually run a little back-door soup kitchen from their home in those years. Anyone needing a meal or just a cup of coffee knew they could stop by the Kraft’s and get a little something. I guess us kids didn’t realize that’s where some of the grocery’s cast-off goods were going. We always though Kraft was shifty and watching us on the docks for no good reason. But it turns out, he was keeping an eye out for perishable items that were just a little past their prime, so he could feed the needy who turned up at his home.
What we learn as we get older casts a new light on the past, I suppose. I think I’ll go have an orange!
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