To this day I cannot swallow sweet soft drink. It makes me sick.
The events which caused this aversion were nearly 40 years ago, in January. And the heat of January, like this week, always reminds me of them.
I got a holiday job at Murray Breweries in my hometown of Beechworth. The brewery was hounded out of beer production in the 1920s by the temperance movement. In the 1960s it produced soft drink, particularly lemonade and its unique portello.
Nowadays it produces gourmet cordials.
Workers were allowed to drink as much soft drink as we wanted. In the factory heat you had to drink it however sick of it you were. We worked from 6am to 6pm with an hour for lunch.
I started sorting bottles: screw tops, crown tops, large, medium, small, paper labels, ceramic labels and so on. They then went to a bottle-washing machine. You turned the bottles upside down on to moving arms each of which took four bottles through a tunnel of steam and hot water jets. There was not much to clean from most bottles, but some contained caked dirt, leftover kerosene or great globs of black mould and had to go through the washer several times.
These days it is more economic to recyle than wash.
At the other end of the bottle washer, aged wizened Charlie grabbed the empties and put them one by one into a circular machine that squirted syrup, water and gas into each bottle and took them out the other side. His body was bent to the machine.
Charlie had started work at Murray Breweries two days before World War I ended when he reached school-leaving age. He was near retirement which coincided with him being replaced by a machine.
As the full bottles were put on a table by Charlie another worker put a blank screw top on each bottle. They were then picked up by another worker who put each bottle through the screw-capping machine.
This machine was the height of a man. The worker put the bottle on a small platform at waist high and press a pedal with his foot. This caused a slowly turning brass disc with a hole in its centre to descend upon the bottle, carving grooves into the screw cap, thus sealing the bottle. The worker then took the bottle from the machine, turned it upside down to ensure it was not leaking, put it in a box and sent the full boxes down the rollers for storage.
The screw-cap machine was remorseless, repetitive, pitiless work.
Meanwhile, down at the bottle-washer I began what was to be rapid promotion – not through any special ability or agility of mine – the work was unskilled and you had to work at the speed of the machines.
I was promoted because one day the young bloke on the screw-cap machine psychoed. He threw several bottles around and stormed out. So “Bluey” who had been putting the blank caps on each bottle was promoted to the screw-cap machine and I moved from bottle-washing to the blank-cap job.
“Bluey” was terrific at the screw-cap machine. He rarely got behind. His hands, arms and feet co-ordinated rhythmically.
In my mind’s ear, I can still hear that machine – the pedal and brass disc clicked and clunked in a two-bar drumming sequence that never changed.
In my mind’s eye, though, I will never forget what happened a few days later. “Bluey” got a bit blasé. He did not quite push a bottle to the back of the machine. So when the brass disc came down the neck of the bottle did not go into the hole at the disc’s centre. So the disc squeezed the bottle till it cracked and exploded.
A piece of glass tore up “Bluey’s” forearm and a gory mix of blood and soft drink went everywhere.
And I was promoted to the screw-cap machine.
Production went on. At Charlie’s machine every now and then a weak bottle would explode, but it at least had a guard which blocked most of the flying glass.
I worked at the screw-cap machine until university started. At least I knew there was light at the end of the tunnel. “Bluey” was happy. We saw him sitting on the footpath outside his parents’ house after work some days later – left arm and hand bandaged to the elbow and right hand clutching the neck of a large bottle of Victoria Bitter. He had been given three blessed weeks on full pay away from the cursed machines. On his return to work he stayed sorting bottles.
I don’t blame the factory owners. They did what was standard practice at the time – no better or worse than anyone else.
I relate this story because I saw an utterly foolish “remember when” ditty the other day. It painted a care-free life of the good old days when kids roamed free and pesky governments and busy bodies did not nag and interfere.
These were the good old days when industrial safety was sissy, when real men smoked and when seat belts were for woozes. These were the days before busy bodies put safety warnings on things. (Yes, there are a lot of over-the-top idiotic warning labels, but there are also a lot of idiots out there.)
Yes, the good old days when kids could get into medicine bottles, when little girls with pretty frilly pajamas got burned by unguarded bar heaters and where kids could cycle with the freedom of having wind blowing through their helmetless hair.
You know, when the death and injury rate from “accidents” was about treble what it is today.
My experience was fairly small beer, but it was salutary.