Mushroom Mines Narrative- Part 1

"The workers for Cherokee Mushroom farm clock in for the start of their early day. Outside of the break room door each one equips them self with latex gloves and secure a white hairnet over their head like a stretchy spiderweb. Like elementary school children each worker then goes to an assigned locker and retrieves a pairing knife and permanent marker. Then they go to their labeled hook on the wall where they reach up with their ghostly gloved hands and retrieve a metal "carrier". A frame like device with two hooks attached and two holes meant to fit a bucket in and 2 boxes on.

The group of about ten workers, many of whom seem so vacant they come off as if dead inside walk purposely down the dark, dirty hall. The hall is long and uniform. On the left their are many numbered doors, sixteen to be exact, each one the same as the last. Large and brown with a small window and a large lock mechanism on the outside.

The workers reach room 1 and separate into two crews; upstairs and downstairs. I climb up the short set of stairs to the top floor clinking my metal carrier on the metal stairs as I approach the wooden hatch. In the room there are twenty "tears" of mushroom beds. Each tear is made up of three beds. A bed is like a set of bunk beds with one extra bed piled on top. Each bed is like the frame of a single bed and filled with dirt and of course many, many mushrooms that it is my job to "harvest". A fancy term that at first made me think of festivals, the country, fall colors and magical characters, like elves and fairies dancing around these mushrooms in fields. 'Picking' is the word we use, it is much more suitable. More of a practical, factory term that efficiently encompasses our dirt stained knees and hair nets.

I still remember my first day while on a tour of a growing room as workers slaved away digging in the tightly packed beds. Something that was so foreign to me , and yet because of my girlish nativity, enchanting. As my boss pointed out diseased specimens I feasted my eyes on a short, brown skinned woman ducking into the middle bed and reaching to the back. "Katie this is Julia" my boss mentioned offhand. Julia's carrier hung beside her, her grubby hands dug deep into the dark soil as she painstakingly thinned the densely packed sections of the bed. Julia's nose seemed close to the dirt, her small, dark, beady eyes stared with determination at the clumps of growth. I looked at this portly, middle aged woman in the shadows of the bed digging so intensely in the soil, and conjured up the clear image of a blind mole digging a hole. As we walked on, continuing our tour, I zipped my lips and withheld my laughter hoping to be hired."

To be cont'd..