Saturday, October 07, 2006

Weird Jobs Part I

Clean Fish

Scrubbing fish, weird eh! At 17 I took a job at a fish factory. I was a small cog in a big line with salted fish being the end product. It started with guys getting big piles of cod on a table, gutting and sending them on to a machine that cut their heads off. Then there was the fillet guy, branding a shiny, long fillet knife slicing and hacking with precision, kind of cool looking. Then there was me. Clad in a white rubber apron, with a strange, white, oversized toothbrush in my hand ready to do some scrubbing. My job; scrub the blood clots out of flesh of the fish, to make it look nicer.
A fish beautician.

Thursday, October 05, 2006

Sea of Sand

desert

Hotels, motels, sand some sun, the road seems endless. It’s the desert, hot and dry, empty, vast. The cruise control set to 80mph and the world whizzes by. The rows of trucks on the right side of the interstate, chuck along. Slither like a smooth eel made of metal. We pass them all and as we pass they blow their horns and it feels like being on the sea, sea of sand.