I’ve been here before, or so it feels. Maybe it’s the flickering neon sign of “Pizza Palace” casting a familiar red glow on my beatle-length hair. I rock the “early days” look, paired with year-round sandals and a perpetually shoulder-draped jacket. Not exactly bar-worthy, which sucks at nineteen.

No car, no license. My “haunt” is this late-night pizza joint, a haven for weary souls and my trusty notebooks. Two of them, because you never know when inspiration strikes. One night, it took the form of a giant Finn named Don, and his “girlfriend” – twice his size and three times the ambition. He spent nights here drowning his existential dread in cheap beer, while she built her own life, brick by brick, degree in hand.

Don offered me a job at the cannery – peaches, pears, and the dubious glory of fruit cocktail. From head to toe, I donned a rubber hazmat suit (before Hazmat suits were a thing). My baptism by fire was the graveyard shift, pushing a squeegee and sending fallen fruit on a one-way trip to the bay.

Then came the steam. Hours spent hosing down machinery, the air thick with the metallic tang of fear. The real terror? Zeke and the sewers. The guy who knew the labyrinthine network of tubes carrying deceased peaches to their watery grave. Every so often, a tube clogged, and Zeke asked for a volunteer from the cleanup crew. I was volunteered. He’d return alone, the disposable guy long gone, quitting after the shift.

I quit before my shift came. The money was good, but the thought of Zeke’s expeditions under the cannery sent shivers down my spine.

Yet, next summer, a postcard arrived: “Come back, the second year is easier!” Apparently, seniority had its perks. This time, I landed a swing shift, working my way up the cannery ladder. My station? Lid-placing. Easy, right? Except, I mostly fed the machine, occasionally causing a five-minute “distraction” with an upside-down lid. Hey, a little chaos never hurt anyone.

Third season. Savings account growing. I was assigned to the fruit cocktail line. Here, the rejects found redemption – diced, de-rotted, and swimming with a few grapes and maraschino cherries. Speaking of cherries, I confess, I pilfered a few during breaks. Mistake. Absolutely tasteless, dyed imposters. Turns out, the “pop-pop-pop” of the cherry dispenser wasn’t the sound of juicy delight, but of culinary deception.

My season ended with a rogue barrel, a misplaced hand truck handle, and a near-burst appendix, the “largest inflamed” one the hospital had ever seen. They kept it in a jar, a morbid souvenir of my summer spent whispering secrets to fruit.

Sure, the job wasn’t perfect. But hey, it was an adventure, and who knows? Maybe that jarred appendix still resides in the hospital basement, a silent testament to the summer I became the Fruit Whisperer.

BTW, nine cherries per can.