It’s a trap.
Mussels are the single most disgusting food on the planet and the people who slurp them down are idiots.
They look gross, they taste gross (you can pour all the butter and cream you want on them, you’re still chowing down on little blubbery bits of gunk no self-respecting seagull would look twice at) and the smell when they’re being sucked up from the briny depths? Good frickin’ lord.
Having made the mistake of abruptly leaving newspaper life at 23, I compounded my problems by winding up on a mussel-processing boat owned by a tightwad, two-bit lawyer who staffed his operation with the absolute cream of the work force.
Since we were working for a rinky-dink operation which went belly-up not too far down the road, instead of the other highly-successful company in the area, which is owned by solid citizens, we were in deep from the start.
Instead of the successful, smart, career-minded people I had rubbed elbows with at the Whidbey News-Times, these were the people who couldn’t get hired for fast food. The mentally scarred. The indifferent. And the guy we later discovered was hiding out from twenty-plus warrants out for his arrest.
Of course, that was the guy who I gave a ride to work every day.
Thirteen brave, lost souls, who started with a gut-churning ride through the waves out to the company’s run-down boat, where we then put in a welcome-to-hell 12-hour shift.
By the time I left — or rather, dumped my gear on the dock and fled in the middle of the night never to be seen again — several months later, we were down to just two from that group.
And why not? Even at its best, mussel processing hits you with long hours, you’re constantly cold and wet, the boat rocks like a mother in the slightest breeze and the stench is remarkable.
If I didn’t mention it before, this was not mussel processing at its best.
Mussels grow on knotted ropes put down in the water, but when it came time to harvest them, we on the S.S. Have No Clue would pull up everything.
Long, centipede-type sea worms with no eyes, which would run up the ropes, where we would stab them and flick them into each others faces, trying to make the guy next to us fall into the water.
Then there were mysterious round bubbles of fleshy material which were like gold to us.
That was only because we could pop them, shooting out an oily, not-very-tasty liquid. If you hit them right, bang, gut-like material all over the guy next to you. Do it wrong, bam, all over your face.
We spent most of our day covered in half-dried, gut-like material.
Which wasn’t so bad, compared to the muscle-bound woman in charge, who had a cold seemingly for the entire time we worked out there. Snot covered her face all day, long strands of half-dried mucus, and she’d entertain us all by blowing wads at anyone who walked past her.
The walls were gummy and seemed to be alive.
Mussels are sold two different ways, either as is or with their “beards” removed. That costs more, but gives the guys in the kitchen less work to do once the disgusting food stuff arrives to be served to moronic dining room guests.
To remove the beards you can either stand there and rip them off one by one, usually cutting yourself on the sharp edges of the mussel several times.
Or, in our case, you could try to operate The Machine ‘O Death — a grim-looking steel contraption on which you poured a bag of mussels, then ran around and watched as they moved down towards you, navigating a series of sharp metal pieces which would rip the beards out.
Of course, those metal pieces would also rip your hands up if you touched the thing. Being the only person trustworthy enough — or stupid enough — to operate the bearding machine, I was given a 25 cents per hour raise, which mainly went for bandages.
The worst part was the smell, a constant, choking vileness unmatched this side of a particularly unsanitary slaughter house. Your nose would shut down while out on the boat, but ten minutes after returning to shore you would be gagging.
Pity the sister who picked you up to give you a ride.
She shed tears that day, but I don’t think they were for me. She kept moaning, “My baby, my baby…” and she set her car on fire when we got home.
Said it was the only merciful thing to do.
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