Denver 2017 - Cityscapes and Architecture, Inkmonstr / The Singing Fat Washer

As stated in Monday's post, I managed to distinguish myself at IBP for the fact that I was so interested in everything happening on the floor.  Why does this go there?  What do they do with this part?  Who uses that?  And, because our duties were very repetitive, I enjoyed telling people that I did not work in an assembly line, but rather a disassembly line.

This overt fascination with the goings-on was blended with the fact that the summer of 1978 was pivotal in other ways for me.  I was truly on my own for the first time.  I was making good money for my college education.  I was cultivating deep friendships in what until then had been a far-away city in which I knew no one.  Most of all, I had embarked on a real Bible study for the first time in my life.

All of those things, and more, led to joy.  And what happens to a person when he experiences joy?  He sings!  Yes, one day I found myself singing.  I sang as I washed the fat.  I sang as I carried the buckets of tendon.  I sang in the freezer while spreading pancreas tissue.  And, because the place was a noisy, bustling cacophony, I could do so at the top of my lungs and barely make a dent in the clamor.

This did not go unnoticed by my co-workers.  Some thought I was crazy (possibly true).  It made others smile, this oddball singing at the top of his lungs and apparently enjoying himself on the kill floor of a slaughterhouse.  Yet others saw weakness, and exposed to me the raw edge of hatred.  I learned a few things about human nature in the process.  Regardless of all that, I kept singing.

And so it went in the summer of 1978, that in the unlikeliest of places I found my voice in more ways than one.