Dipping

( the rite of dipping )

The red mixture was brewed
in two old cut-in-half forty-fours
which had round stainless-steel baskets
specially made
to just slide out and in.

You had to three quarters fill a basket
at a time. It took two and half cases,
- a hundred and twenty pound.
So it took a good heave
to lift it into the drum where
you let it soak for several minutes,
then an even bigger heave
was needed to haul it out,
wet and heavy. You had to skew it
across the rim, caught there so it
drained the costly skirmish
of chemicals for germ-war back
in for the next basketful of spuds.

We dipped spuds by the racks
in the boundary pines deep shade.
In early Spring it was most always
still wintry, no sunshine got in,
and if a South wind blew
it vented in below the dense foliage.
The chill factor was below zero,
our knuckles grew white
despite the red drench, even
inside our rubber gloves. Dipping
spuds was like a sled ride i
n the Antarctic -we gripped the sides
to keep ourselves aloft, heaved
cases of bulk potatoes to keep
circulation up and waited for chemistry
to sink in, as if in cold blood,
like waiting for the end of the world,
or for death to happen!

You could really never say we completely
believed in this costly chemistry.
We knew to be careful how we plunged
the seed potatoes in
For splashes were just as likely to get us
... and in the eyes.
The solution was no panacea,
but Dad sometimes did rebaptise.
It was full immersion, protected
by a prayer the rubbergloves were.

We knew of Dupont, Ceba Geigy and ICI,
like peasants know their aristocracy.
Anyway, their aristocratic jewels might
seem more than crystals of white sugar,
but they were no sugardaddies for us.
For there was Mum who resented Dad
using any chemistry except her own.
So we just used the products Dad
decided we couldn't do without.
He was just holy dipping, take
the most needful war-icides and saving.

The dip cleansed, stopped the rot,
submerged a doubtful pedigree
in the strong force.

Once the spuds had drained you had to
tip their bulk out on the wirenetting racks,
go through the dip process again.
It was constant as a chorus, as the printed page
hardly ever is, a repetition as mnemonic
as of the Lord’s prayer, the memory
of the manual work got in,
like school poems hardly ever did,
like bible verses were supposed to
with each memory text in Sunday school:
Give us this day our small potatoes.”

But we, proudly, had no ritual in our religion.
Our rote was learning the manual rite!
Ritual was a part of the chemistry
in every sentence of a working life.


3 December 1996 © Wayne David Knoll