candy company

The Candy Factory...

My first full time job out of high school was at a caramel company in York, PA. Other than the initial job of glueing boxes together and putting bags of caramels within, then glueing closed and dumping assorted caramels onto a conveyor belt (my supervisor said once I got that down, he would stick a broom up my ass and I could sweep the floor as I go), I was moved upstairs to where the caramel was actually cooked. I attended a machine that cooled the caramel.

It was a giant hollow wheel about two feet wide and eight feet tall. Cold water and steam regulated the temperature. Steam was also used to cook the caramel. This meant the three men who cooked, flavored, and cooled the caramel had many valves, handles, and levers to play with to adjust things.

The guy who did the flavor and coloring mixing wore a kitchen timer on a thong around his neck (this is a strip of leather used like string, NOT a bikini bottom with a string that goes between the ass cheeks). He would time when color or flavor needed to be added. He would also do separate mixes and I would need to help carry large tubs of hot caramel to cooling tables (see comment above about the broom). He also started a game with me called "Sabotage".

You would mix a paste of water, powdered sugar, and food coloring (there is an abundance of these, of course) and line the back of the valve or handle with it. The "victim" would, of course, be going about his normal business of keeping things regulated until he found his hand green or brown. Revenge was the name of the game from that point on. The green-brown mixture remained the standard. We used "atomic" red once -- "atomic" because of the fallout. Red dye seems to go a long way. The day after that session, the wood floor and the janitor's mop had a light pink tinge that never seemed to fade.

The mixer was good at this game having a little more experience, but the last day of the "game", he had his comeuppance. He went to lunch, leaving the timer (on the thong) on his work table. I worked up a blue paste and put a fine coat of it on the thong. He came back to lunch and put the timer back around his neck. We continued to work. The thing about blue is that it's almost as bad as red. A blue band began forming on the sides and back of his neck. By now, I'm having a fit trying not to fall on the ground in hysterical laughter.

When the supervisor came up, the band on the mixer's neck spanned the whole way around the back of his neck and was two inches wide. The supervisor (his name was Wally) saw the blue immediately and asked the mixer (who had no concept that his neck was blue) what was going on. What kind of excuse can you give in such a circumstance? I'm sure my face was red and grinning throughout. He told us to cut it out.

I went to the bank to cash my paycheck that night and I would usually take off my hat when I went but for some reason didn't that night until I went back to the car. Good thing, too. I could see I had green on myforehead in the rearview mirror.