Rumble This On Down the Rails.
Even the run-of-the-mill box car can fool you sometimes. As a teen, I spent an afternoon helping to unload one shipped to AG Warehouse, a co-op owned grocer warehouse. Some will recognize the Shur Fine label. My grandfather had been a member and I remember hearing him talk to his customers about the good purpose AG was founded on. My mother was 3 years old when AG was founded. Today, the group has grown covering the Great Lakes to the Gulf. I will forever remember that rail car.
Most every one knows what a standard box of Jell-O looks like. It's about 2 ounces in weight,3/4 x 3 x 3 inches in size. When packaged by the manufacturer, there were about 5 rows of single boxes. Each row was 20 boxes wrapped in brown craft paper. Nothing unusual about that. But, in a box car, usually, products are loaded on pallets. These were not on pallets, but had been hand loaded one package at a time and that meant that they had to be unloaded by hand. At 60-tons, do you know how many of those little boxes it takes to fill a box car? That's why to this day, I do not like the smell of Raspberry Jell-O. That fine powder in the air in close quarters would be considered a health hazard today. Then, it was just an afternoon experience. Whenever I see a box car parked next to a warehouse-type building, I still smell Raspberry and think about that afternoon.
No comments:
Post a Comment