Memory Corner #7
The Well-Fed Rats
I used to work at Kal Kan Foods in Vernon as an in-house teacher. I taught management classes for supervisors and foremen trying to climb the corporate ladder. Students would come to class two hours before their work shift started, and the company would pay them overtime for coming to class. I was a contractor, which meant I made a lot of money, but no benefits. It all balanced out, as long as I didn't get sick or my car didn't break down. I was available for the three shifts the company had: Day, from 8:00 am to 10:00 am; Swing, from 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm; and Graveyard, from 11:00 pm to 1:00 am. The factory ran 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so it was easy for me to arrange a suitable schedule for myself, what with college classes to attend and all.
Vernon was the "Meat" Capital of Los Angeles County. All your familiar brands were there: Kal Kan Dog Food, Oscar Meyer, Farmer Johns, Hoffman Food (Hoffy), and others. During the day wasn't so bad; it was at night that things got dicey. Truckloads and trainloads of cows, pigs, and chicken rolled into these special warehouse docks. The workers wore their hazmat suits to unload the "protein" (as the animals were referred to) in one of the few areas I was glad I was not allowed in. The "Killing Section". There was no high falootin term for the slaughterhouse; it was spelled out what it was: k-i-l-l-i-n-g s-e-c-t-i-o-n. That was where the production all began.
Then the "protein" traveled via conveyor belt to the butcher's section, onto the mixing section, the cooking section, the packaging or canning section, the boxing section, and, finally, the warehouse section, where trucks would pick up their orders for supermarkets, sports venues, and concert venues.
But let's get back to that first section. All the prime cuts of protein went to section two. The "leftover cuts" were sold to the employees at cost. Every Wednesday, where I worked, employees would line up by the protein unloading dock to buy not-so-prime cuts of protein. My students once described this meat as edible if you lived in a bomb shelter. Then why do you buy it? I asked. To sell it to my neighbors, of course. Some of my students owned stores and would sell the meat there, sort of under-the-table. But that wasn't the only place this meat ended up. What unloading dock couldn't sell, they dumped into these dumpsters.
Two types grabbed meat from the dumpsters: one, poor folk who tried to sell the meat on the streets as "stolen from the market" fresh. I heard they made a few bucks doing that. Two, rats who were big enough to lift the dumpster lid, grab a chuck of protein, and muscle their way out with a mouthful of meat. And, I mean, these rats were big. Not David Bowie "rats the size of cats", but rats bigger than dogs. The coyotes stayed away from these packs of muscular well-fed rats. Vernon rats ate better than many families in the neighboring communities of these factories.
I had a few encounters with these rats.
The first encounter was the one that prompted me to buy a car. I was using the bus system up until then. But one night after work, while I was waiting for the bus on a dark street corner by Farmer John's dumpster area (which was fenced in), a big rat approached the dumpsters and stopped when it saw me. Stopped for one moment, stared me down, and proceeded on its way. It wasn't afraid of me, but it did go around me by about several yards, and from the size of it, from foot to haunch, was about two feet tall. It was about three feet long, but the tail made it seem longer. Right away I could tell, it was not going to let me get in the way of its meat.
So the next day, I called in sick and went out to buy a car.
The second encounter was the one that made the deepest impression on my psyche. I was pulling into the car lot at the factory, and some lady came up to the driver's side and banged on my closed window. "It's got my baby," she almost shrieked. Like an idiot, I pointed to the security guard who watched over the lot at night. She kept banging on my window. The guard came over, and the woman rapidly told him what had happened. After parking, the guard asked me to accompany him. I think he wanted to be sure the woman wasn't crazy and needed a witness since she wasn't an employee of the company. Apparently she was trying to enter the dumpster area to steal some meat when a "giant" rat ran off with her little dog. She had left the door open, she explained. She was going to be quick, she told her dog, but she just turned around and the dog cried out in pain. We approached the dumpsters (they weren't fenced in where I worked like they were at Farmer Johns).
Whoosh. A rat ran by with a little Chihuahua in its mouth. My mind went into shock. The guard kept the beam of his flashlight on the creature the whole time, until it ran into a mass of shadows at the end of the block. I know the lady was screaming, My baby, over and over, but we all just stood there. Damn thing was bigger than the rat from my first encounter. That's not what shocked me though. It was the fact that the thing turned its head to look at me as it ran by, as if daring me to do something. Or maybe it was my writer's imagination. Except the security guard told me later, "Man, that rat didn't like you."
Cops came. It was procedure for the guard to call them. They couldn't do anything, except tell her to stay away from the dumpsters. Guard added unsympathetically, "Man, everyone knows that," which earned him a dirty look from the cops. They kept asking me if I was okay. Guard kept telling them, "He's just spooked, just started working here. First rat, t think." Once they figured it was a routine call, they drove off, with the lady driving off right after them. I went to work after getting a coffee. I was the talk of the town. I was waiting for someone to say, "He met Old Blue, the Mama Rat." But no. Nothing so sinister. Just a little old, "He met one of our residents," and they'd chuckle. "Don't you worry. Leave them alone, they leave you alone. And don't play stare down. They always win."
Just ask that poor little Chihuahua, right?
