Lost in translation: We called it the pickle factory

Across the field, just north of my house, the old pickle factory thrived daily during the summer and fall. Built entirely of wood, its lumbers were as exhausted as an old barn. Painted in red lead, it stood only two stories high, but was as big as one of today’s box discount stores.

Rusty old trucks, whose apparent defeated posture reminded me of the broken old mules on Wagon Train, drove up the dirt road to the pickle factory. As a five-year-old, I could not understand why they drove in full, but rolled back down the lane empty, still making clouds of gray dust. If it really was a pickle factory, I reasoned, the wood-framed truck beds should have been empty going in, and full to the top of the boards on the way out.

I asked my then young and dazzling mother why. She explained that the pickles went out to the box cars on the other side’s railroad tracks after they went through the pickle factory. Still, I did not understand why the beat up Depression-era trucks brought pickles to a factory, if that’s where pickles were made. The truth is, the trucks delivered cucumbers, not pickles. The green oblong little monsters were covered with dried, black Indiana muck from the fields.

When I was six, I fully expected to come home from school to see the trucks rolling with their day’s haul. But none came. No cars were at the pickle factory. It did not open the spring of my first grade year, remaining closed until it was razed in the seventies.

Eventually, my friends and I went exploring. In front was the office, sporting a single old eight-inch fan still hung above a window, its frayed electrical cord dangling. We found some yellowed bills of lading and the occasional pencil. Our hopes of discovering the safe that we hoped was full of cash never materialized.

Most of the factory consisted of 25-foot vats, as deep as they were wide, akin to large barrels. They had no floor, except for the ground. These large wooden casks held countless gallons of salt and water. This is where the cucumbers were pickled before heading for Chicago.

Adjacent to the tracks was the storage area and loading dock. Scant 50-gallon barrels were in place, but all were damaged. I later learned the good barrels had been scavenged by farmers. Some remaining burlap bags holding rock salt were all torn open, due to hungry critters. We dared each other to taste the salt, but each of us, thinking the wiser, declined.

The pickle factory did not finish its life unused. We found the loading dock to be an ideal stage for neighborhood dramas. In addition to its being elevated, the location was well shaded, which made each summer’s humidity much easier to tolerate.

And yet, to this day, I still do not understand how pickles were manufactured there.

Lyle Whybrew ’74