Built To Last

“The end,” I say. “No more.”

I’ve been watching potatoes roll past me for three days straight. We’re trying to get them from the field and, since the market price is so low, into storage as fast as we can. Twenty-six tons one day, 24 the next. I managed to sell one trailer, so that was 20 tons less that didn’t go to the basement.

My friend, who long ago left potato farming for fruit, stops by. We are farmers, but we are not without philosophy, and I feel more at peace every time this old friend, this friend of my father’s, comes to visit.

We talk about issues surrounding agriculture, we talk about changes and the cost. “What I couldn’t take anymore,” he says, “was how one year the price would be here” — he gestures above his head — “but the next it would be here” — he plummets his hand toward the floor.

All relationships change. In friendships, the weight that holds it together is figurative. In work, it can be literal. Heavy conveyors from one end to the other — my father built this place with lots of steel and concrete, and he built it to last.

The packing house was what made it possible for him to broker and ship his produce. This margin of efficiency was, to some degree, what allowed us to stay in the potato game when other growers were getting out.

But now, glancing toward a bearing that has begun to whine, don’t I wonder if this sufficiency didn’t keep me here too long. I used to work in here with a crew of 15, but now I am doing it with just five.

Watching the potatoes roll past, pulling the occasional clump of dirt, my mind may wander but my ears are tuned to the sounds of this operation.

I grab a grease gun and a ladder. The squealer is in the “b” chain, and that belt travels near the rafters. Up here, I am eye to eye with a motor that has obligingly turned for 50 years, solid state.

This is not the safest place to be, and none of my co-workers has seen me ascend, but I grab hold of the beam and, with two pumps of the grease gun, the noise stops.

I briefly study the design and think how my father bolted, anchored and welded this place together. Up here, I can see the whole floor in the glow of old fluorescent lights, and it’s impossible not to be impressed. And because it is now mine to steer elsewhere, daunted by this industry below. All relationships change.

Potatoes prefer the dark, so there are no windows in the packing house. I begin by merely imagining a window, and the light it would let in, in that southern wall.