Boxes of My Youth
I don’t recall the age at which I started working but a picture of me and my two older brothers, horsing around in a large brown box makes me want to believe that I was perhaps seven or eight years old. It wasn’t considered working at the time. I knew what the word meant in the practical sense but it just seemed like a regular family activity. Perhaps that was the intended remuneration. The mere essence of participation allowed entry into the familial fold.
Brown packing boxes were very much a part of our childhood. Boxes, boxes, everywhere. (No storybooks at the library ever had matching pictures for that sentence.) The presence of them, more times than not, caused bubbles of annoyance to form in my chest slowly making their way up through my throat, floating to the front of my mouth and popping as my lips expelled it. I made sure they didn’t make a sound. Any disturbance of the air that wasn’t from my breathing or something that resembled an ‘umph’ would surely provide me with quick and painful one-on-one time with the hangers littered around. It wasn’t an experience I sought to repeat.
It was a tight relationship. At times riddled with anger and jealousy when the boss manipulated one of us, but we tapped down on those feelings. And when we did that successfully, we were a productive enterprise. We dealt with the chaos that covered the ground. Each of us worked a station. One removed the wrinkled garments from the box. Tops in one pile, bottoms in another. Each laid upon one another straight, one by one. The hangers sat in two boxes previously sorted, one for tops, one for bottoms. The second person began putting the garments on hangers placing them in a stack to be taken to the next station. The garments then went to have their wrinkles removed. Water filled the machine and the spout started to chortle and choke, the steam escaping from the holes on its hose. Slowly the steam seeped into the threads straightening them out nice and neat. They were hung to the side for placement back into their original point of departure, the box.
We often worked in this way. Trading places to diversify our work and exercise our limbs. Sometimes we were alone and cracked jokes or messed up the order of things just for the hell of it. Other times the boss sat in the corner behind the machine. His foot resting on the pedal as the needle flew across the fabric mending its wound. Properly stitched up, it was thrown into the box to join in on our fun. During those times we worked in silence. Listening to the laughter and chortling, their gleeful sounds children heard from the open door at the top of the stairs or the small windows. Their sounds rode on wisps of air that wafted down to us, mixing with the steam hanging about, neutralising it and providing us with some relief.
On normal schools days, all of this was done after homework was complete. Being busy with one didn’t exclude you from the other. They were both a top priority, however, schoolwork often required a day turnaround, while the boxwork had a Friday night deadline. Friday was one of the most important days of the week. Not because of any religious significance though that is indeed the case, but because it was prep time. Everything needed to be complete and ready to go at the crack of dawn on Saturday. Including us. Schoolwork could wait this night. After all, we had the weekend, well at least part of it, ahead of us.
Dressed in t-shirts and pants with comfortable sneakers we raced down the stairs to the boxes. Better to get it done quick. Saturday would be a long day at the market. We collected all of the garments hanging from the beams, placing some in their temporary resting place. Special ones were shrouded in a clear plastic before placement in their temporary resting place. The box flaps folded upon one another and sealed them in. Those left behind would be carried in bulk to be place upon another set of beams. The assembly line started. The eldest of us hoped onto the back of the truck, its rear facing the house in the driveway. He opened the padlock and threw the door upwards allowing it to slide up into its grooves. In his post, the remaining three of us went down to the basement, one by one carrying boxes or bulk garments on hangers. Up the stairs across the grass and handed up into the truck. Down the stairs, retrieve load, up the stairs, trample the grass, handed up. We worked like this for usually about half an hour. If we were lucky, the boss would be out and we’d be able to finish quickly and catch some TV before sleeping. On those nights, when he returned before we had our fill, the sound of keys in the door would start another quick enterprise. TV off. Lights off. Door shut. At least one fake snore in place for when the boss cracked open the door to check up on us.
When the winter arrived it was a nice reprieve. The market was closed. We had our other obligations but it was a time when we could freely ride our bikes in the bitter cold. Sledge down the hill at the corner. Have snowball fights and create snow angels on top of the pressed grassed we’d stomped across during the warmer months. Those days, when we raced to the basement then, we welcomed any heat available, throwing our wet clothes onto the ground, sometimes slapping one another’s bodies, until the garments fell limp on the ground. There was never a lack of hangers to rescue them. And when we did they left their imprint on the cement floor. Not unlike the boxes on us.
