After graduating from high school in 1953, I had easily landed an entry level position at Caterpillar. But at the end of my first year at Knox, in the summer of 1954, I couldn’t find a job, even after applying everywhere. The frustration of being unemployed and hearing turndowns day after day taught me a good first lesson in economics: you can’t work if there’s no work available.
Finally, my perseverance paid off when my application for Gravel Gertie landed me a position as a cook. My experience getting employed on this riverboat provided a few more insights into economics. You do what you have to do, even pretend to be a cook if that’s the job description. Also, work doesn’t find you. You have to go out and hunt for work, and be ready for it, even if it means being awakened early Sunday morning and shipping out a half hour later.
In my second year at Knox College, our family finances became a little tight, so my folks suggested I get a part-time job. In 1954 Galesburg, home of Knox College, an oversupply of college men and an undersupply of work made job-hunting a frustrating experience.
During my freshman year I had earned extra money at seasonal work, such as washing windows, installing storm windows, and raking leaves. But now my financial situation called for a weekly schedule of hours I could depend on. An English professor had the responsibility of fielding requests from the community for student help. I made a point of going by this prof’s door every morning, because secretaries pinned notes on his office door from homeowners and firms looking for workers.
I paid no attention to the notices for odd jobs. After a few weeks I spotted an early morning note saying the local Meadow Gold dairy needed a man to work four to eight Monday through Saturday, doing manual labor. I had been looking for something like this, a regular job that wouldn’t conflict with classes. Although twenty-four hours a week would stretch me thin for study time, I didn’t hesitate going for this opportunity. After my first class, I knocked on the prof’s door, innocently asking about any new openings.
“Hey, Byron, you’re in luck, we just got a request from Meadow Gold for a four to eight P.M. part-time job.”
I didn’t tell him it was more a matter of pluck than luck. I welcomed this opportunity, even though it would be difficult to handle classes and work.
Some people attribute success to luck—being in the right place at the right time. You can’t make luck happen, but you can improve your odds by being available at the right time and place.
The mid-level office manager at Meadow Gold who hired me couldn’t have been nicer. “We usually start workers out at $1.05 an hour, and then after a probationary six months, move you up to $1.10, but you need the money, so we’ll begin you at $1.10.”
Meadow Gold (later Beatrice Foods) had a large dairy plant in Galesburg, receiving milk from farmers, and processing it into a wide range of products, even ice cream. The Galesburg facility also served as a distribution center. In the morning, drivers picked up refrigerated trucks to deliver milk and ice cream to grocery stores in the surrounding towns, and returned in late afternoon to load the next day’s products, parking their vehicles in a garage with refrigeration lines hooked up to the insulated compartments.
My job was on the loading dock, helping other employees use conveyors to transfer cases of milk and packages of ice cream to the waiting trucks. We had an energetic crew that cooperated efficiently, largely due to Arnie Montgomery, our good-natured foreman. He had graduated college with an education degree at the beginning of the Depression, when teaching positions were non-existent, so he made a living by working at Meadow Gold.
We worked hard loading a conveyor with cases of milk. We got so hot we didn’t need special clothing in the cooler. Entering the freezer to get an ice cream order, we donned a war surplus parka. The only time I had a problem was a week during the summer, when I started work at 11:30 in the basement helping women pack containers of cottage cheese. I could just barely lift a ninety-two pound container of cottage cheese and dump it in a huge tray for the women. The temperature and humidity were both in the nineties. Sweat oozed from every pore.
After working 11:30-3:30 I had a brief lunch break. We didn’t have a separate lunch facility, eating in a dank room with wooden benches in the same space that contained a shower and toilets. The morning’s exertion and the heat left my clothes wet and sticky. After lunch I worked 4:00-8:00 loading ice cream in the -30 degree freezer, slipping on a parka over my soaked clothes. Several times that week I almost passed out from the shock of the extreme temperature change. I went to a doctor who just shrugged, and said, what do you expect, abusing your body like that.
We all kept busy loading trucks as quickly as possible. One Saturday afternoon as I was going to the cooler for a three-gallon can of milk shake mix, Arnie asked me to drop off an order at the front office for a Sunday ice cream special order. I went to the cooler by the ice cream machines, placing the order on a shelf outside the cooler, and got the three-gallon can, then took it to the loading dock.
Oops! I didn’t drop off the special order at the front office. That Sunday, Bob Ryan, the plant boss’s brother, had to go in and deliver the ice cream order. Monday when I went to work, Arnie asked me about the order. I found the paper slip on the shelf by the ice cream machines, and apologized to Arnie for the mistake.
Bob Ryan had come in earlier that Monday, ranting and raving, insisting that I be fired. Arnie said that was no reason to fire me. I was a good worker, I had just made a mistake. We all disliked Bob Ryan, who had a job only because he was the boss’s brother, and his position of “supervisor” for the delivery trucks was a sham.
We all liked Arnie, who stuck up for his crew.
A twenty-four hour work week meant that every minute not in class, I was reading and studying. My day had three compartments: sleep, classes and study, and work. I had no use for a fraternity, figuring it was a waste of money and time. I could have joked that my fraternity was MGD, the initials of Meadow Gold Dairy. At work we enjoyed the camaraderie, and we had no hazing rituals.
My first week of work, I faced the problem of finding a time and place to read. Leaving the dairy at eight, I rode my bicycle to a nearby restaurant for a quick supper, and then headed back to the dorm to get in some studying. Unfortunately, the evenings in my dorm resembled a zoo, with a lot of noise and rowdiness, which didn’t settle down until after midnight.
This situation called for a radical plan. The second week of work, I stayed up all Monday night, somehow making it through classes and work the next day. By the time I got home, after eight-thirty, I crashed and slept until early morning. Then I got up and joined the few night owls in the lounge. The heat was off, but we bundled up, and about six A.M., steam radiators began to knock and hiss, announcing the get-ready for breakfast at seven.
This rigorous schedule enabled me to be self-supporting, and still do good academic work. Decades later, as a university prof, I had to deal with students who had trouble keeping up with classes and assignments. A number of them said that they had done better in school when they worked part-time, because that tight schedule forced them to make good use of every spare moment. But when they quit their jobs, they felt they could goof off, and they just put off studies. They taught me what I had learned working long hours at Meadow Gold: it’s not only how much time you have, but how well you use your time.
The end of my days at Meadow Gold came the first week of September, 1956. I was feeling very good, having completed three years of undergraduate work at Knox, and having passed entrance exams into the doctoral program at the University of Chicago. In a few days I would be married to my high school sweetheart. She landed a clerical position at the university, and we would live in a campus apartment.
My final week at the dairy, I had been driving a daily run of milk products from Galesburg to Farmington. On the way, I couldn’t help noticing a peach tree by the side of the road. This would be my last trip past the tree, so I stopped to see if the peaches were ripe. As I pulled off the highway, I felt the front tires and then the dual rear wheels sink into dirt, made soft by recent rains. I knew there would only be one chance to make it back onto the pavement, so I figured I might as well eat several peaches before seeing if I could make it out of the mud.
Then I made my valiant attempt to escape the soft shoulder, but to no avail. I got stuck up to the axle, and had to find a phone to call Meadow Gold and tell them of my predicament. They sent Bob Ryan, the boss’s brother, who had tried to get me fired. He hung around with me while we waited for a tow truck. Looking around, he spied the peach tree.
“Hey, that’s a peach tree, and they look ripe.” He tried one, and remarked how sweet they were. “Why don’t you try them?”
“No thanks.”
“Well, why did you pull over here? Checking tires?”
“Uh, yeah.”
The tow truck pulled me out of the mud back onto the pavement. I delivered my load at Farmington, and returned the truck to the dairy garage in Galesburg.
My days at Meadow Gold started with milk and ice cream, but ended with a peachy predicament.
H. Byron Earhart 