I’m chuckling to myself as the scene of Lucy and Ethel in the chocolate factory plays in my mind. In one of the most hilarious sequences in television history, the two queens of “I Love Lucy” struggle to keep pace as chocolates they are supposed to box stream down a conveyor belt at increasing speed. They resort to stuffing their faces and shirts with bon-bons to keep pace. Comedy magic. My scene was not so hilarious, but I’m smiling anyway. I’m inside Harry Hakala’s Mobile Wine Line parked at Markus Niggli’s winery in Victor.
It’s early on a Saturday morning. Markus has new red blends that need to be labeled and so does Barterra Winery in Half Moon Bay, one of Markus’s clients. The assembled crew of a dozen has scores of cases to label and load onto pallets. I’ve never worked on the line before but have been assigned to release the bottles onto the conveyor belt to start the process.
It’s not as easy as the crew made it look before they turned over the reins. In deft movements, the boxes are flipped, lifted and the bottles, already filled with wine and corked, are positioned onto the conveyor belt. From there, the bottles whisk to the labeling machine. The bottles are rotated automatically, and the front and back labels are slapped on by the machine. The labeled bottles continue down the conveyor belt and are placed into their original 12-bottle case box, taped, and off-loaded.
The process is a marvel to watch. The machinery with thousands of moving parts and the crew work seamlessly. In a couple hours, they can go through hundreds of cases; that is, if there are no mechanical glitches and the crew does its job. On that Saturday morning, the machinery and the crew weren’t the problem; however, in short order as I struggled flipping the boxes and releasing the bottles onto the conveyor belt, another TV show popped into my mind. I am the “Weakest Link.” Goodbye.
So, off box flipping duty and onto box filling duty. My job now is to put six labeled bottles into the case and allow six bottles to pass on the conveyor belt so my partner can fill the case and send it through the automatic taping machine.
If I could have stuffed the bottles into my mouth or down my shirt, I would have as they continued to pile up, frustrating the experienced co-worker next to me to the point of sheer madness.
There really shouldn’t be any noise inside the truck other than the whirring machinery. The sound of clinking bottles is not a good sign. It means something or someone is not right. At times, there was a symphony of clinking bottles.
Again, I was the “Weakest Link.” Goodbye.
Third time’s the charm? In this case, yes. I was assigned to the easiest job on the truck … box handler. All I had to do was open the boxes after they had been emptied, make sure the chambers were straight, and hand the empty cases one by one to the box filler. I killed it! Those boxes were perfect. No clinking bottles. No more being chastised en Espaňol. All was well in the wine world. Once we finished, we walked across the street to Victor Market and Deli for breakfast. What a great place; a grocery store with a little Mexican restaurant in the back. We feasted, then I worked a shift at the Lodi Wine Visitor Center. All in all, a great day.
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