shed pajaro y cebolla summer 1989 my first attempt at a straight job, i was quasi sober except for the weed i scored off of a couple of the guys on the floor. believe it or not, the row of produce sheds actually smelled worse than the meet packing plant down the road...especially the carrot shed nexxt door, for some reason. our specialty was onions and it turned out to be the cause of the worst involuntary interruption in my social life i have ever had to endure. I worked in that place for two months during the peak of the summer season but smelled like a giant white scallion for just over three. the first day was the worst, i was stuck at the head of the line at the washing tank. pallet-sized crates of onions, sometimes the small green onions sometimes the large green onions, if it was the small ones we would have that much more work to do because there were more boxes of small greens by volume to a crate than there were of the large covered in the dirt from the field they were dumped down a conveyor into a huge washing tank whose water supply was slwly cycled out over the course of the day to get all the dirt rinsed off...there weren't enough aprons or rubber gloves to go around that day the next day at school, more than once i heard the question "hey, who's been eatin' onion rings?" i think i preferred being at the end of the line packing boxes and loading trucks and occasionally re-organizin the contents of our refrigerated warehouse. it was 116F outside and it was only 35F in the fridge...needless to say i took my time in there. when it was all over, i ended up throwing out all the work clothes i had used for that job and it took an extra month to sweat off all that onion, the calluses on my fingertips were stained a faint green from the solvent effect of the oil and the clorophyll that came off the greens for a couple of weeks, we switched gears. the shaded parts of the property were filled with the pallet/crates of Watermelons from a neighboring grower who made a deal with us: a percentage of his market take and three crates of his best melons for the shed workers - we kept our crates in the fridge and let me just say that there is a certain unmatched pleasure in cutting open a sweet, ice cold watermelon at the end of a blazing hot day. I wish i could remember her name, she was 17, just like me, her mom worked there too and since my dad had been the boss before he got sick, everyone looked up to him - especially since he had facilitated many of them being able to get their paperwork---fair skinned but with long, wavy jet black hair she looked more Spanish than her mother - those eyes and that smile she was kind of a flirt (more than a little, actually) but she had what appeared for all intents and purposes to be a boyfriend (which always baffled me on those occasions when she was nice enough to bring me lunch, totally unsolicited - but then again what is life without mixed signals) i don't know if she knew i was watching, but there was something about the slow, deliberate way in which she ate that particular watermelon on that particular afternoon that caused me to fall off my perch atop the ice bin where i had been eating mine when i noticed her sitting there. she noticed then, and i heard her laugh, that kind of laugh you can't help but remember fondly , even if it was somewhat at your expense...i was blushing so hard underneath this dark exterior that i could have steamed away the mound of crushed ice i was lying on top of. god, why can't i remember her name? 020430 ... lulie your skin. 020520 ... raze your shaved gold hair. 130315 ... raze in the warp and weft of winter_music cold walls contract grounded airliners generating thrust through thought alone their cabins repositories for all they've known and wished not to know 211230 what's it to you? who go blather from