I used this circumstance to earn money. I signed up as a temporary driver in a central fleet. The boss examined me, checked my driving license, and sent me with a truck to a confectionery factory.
There I had to transport candy neatly packed in cardboard boxes from the factory to a warehouse about three kilometers away. After three shuttles, I had covered just under 20 kilometers, but had weighed a good ten tons of boxes of candy onto a conveyor belt.
I felt as if I had no hands left because my fingers couldn’t find a grip when lifting the smooth cartons. At the end of the day, the fleet manager asked me if I could take over the ‘bread tour’ the next morning? But I would have to drive up to the bakery at five o’clock in the morning. ‘It’s a pleasant tour, though,’ my boss said, grinning.
I could. At dawn, the truck was loaded with bread, rolls and cakes. I drove the truck from village to village in the surrounding countryside and supplied the consumer and HO stores with fresh baked goods. The tour was really pleasant.
Most of the stores were located on the main road and were easy to supply without awkward maneuvering, the salespeople were friendly and helpful. Here a cup of coffee and a piece of cake, there a sandwich. Two villages away, an elderly colleague gave me a few bananas. At the fair there were now and then such rarities. I would have liked to take the tour again.
But the next morning, a farmhand was cleaning the hold of my truck with a water hose and a scrubbing brush. I had to go to the slaughterhouse. The gatekeeper told me to park the truck and report to a barrack. There, the entire staff was sitting down to breakfast.
The killing and cutting of the pigs and cattle on the assembly line had stopped for the period of the break. On the tables were large bowls of burst sausages. One of them waved me over, saying, ‘You can eat all you want, but you can’t take anything with you.’ I sat down and ate breakfast.
As if on cue, everyone suddenly got up and went about their work. The truck was loaded with large aluminum saddles (large flat bowls) full of pork livers that I had to take to a sausage factory. Outside of town, I stopped and fished a liver out of a slat. Bloody as it was, I stowed it in the cab. With so much liver, I didn’t even feel guilty.
At the factory, a couple of men unloaded the aluminum slats from the truck bed and hauled them to the cold storage. During the trip, a liver had sloshed out of a slat and was lying on the loading area. I pointed to the liver.
Bored, the man waved it off. Shortly after, he returned with the signed delivery bill and gave me a good half roast pork and a large piece of meat loaf. Now I was ashamed. In the evening I distributed everything to the inhabitants of the house. The next morning the smell of roasted liver still hung in the stairwell. 𝓣𝓸 𝓑𝓮 𝓒𝓸𝓷𝓽𝓲𝓷𝓾𝓮𝓭…
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