Cottage Cheese!

When you first walk into the factory area you are blinded by all of the gleaming stainless steel and spotless white tile. I’m talking about the cottage cheese department of Lehigh Valley Dairy. You also notice the chill in the air and the sweet mist of the various stages of cottage cheese production. It was a magical place in many ways. Even the building itself, on MacArthur Road where Whitehall turns into Allentown, was an architectural masterpiece. That building is in the process of being torn down. Sad. Though it hasn’t been a dairy for decades.

I worked there in the summer of ’70. It was my first factory job. It was an interesting place to work. I was put in the cottage cheese department. Cottage cheese was huge at the time. We had three packaging lines going two shifts a day. Yogurt hadn’t hit the big time yet, as they had one packaging line that ran sporadically.  You don’t really hear much about cottage cheese anymore.  Maybe that’s just me.

The dairy had milk and chocolate milk on tap for its employees.  Anytime you wanted, you could get a cold glass of milk in the lunch room. You would always see employees from the ice cream department in there with their winter clothing. They worked a half hour in the freezers and a half hour out, so basically they worked half a day and got paid for a full day. But they always looked miserable, and cold.

My job was to help out wherever it was needed. Some days I would be cleaning. Other days I would be on the packaging line, putting just sealed containers into cardboard boxes.  Boring! Other days I got to help the Cheesemaker. He, other than management, was the king of the department.  I liked helping him. He was an older man who had been there for thirty some years. I learned a lot from him. About life in the working world, as well as about cheesemaking.

It’s Labor Day Weekend so let me add a little labor story. We were all union employees. I was a Teamster! Yes, me and Jimmy Hoffa! The cheesemaker was going on vacation. Because I knew how to make cheese, and the cheesemaker extolled my cheese making abilities, I was scheduled to be the cheesemaker for a week. But they didn’t want to pay me cheesemaker pay (the top rate in the department) because I had only been there a couple months.  The union steward stepped in and filed a grievance. I not only got cheesemaker pay for the week but I also made some mighty fine cottage cheese! Look for the union label!

Here’s an  interesting fact that you probably already knew.  The cottage cheese we made was for many different companies. There was Lehigh Valley, Penn Maid, Sealtest, and many grocery store generic brands.  All the same cheese just in a different package. Brand loyalty be damned!

I only worked at Lehigh Valley Dairy for a few months. I left there to go to LCCC. It was an eye opening adventure for me. I learned to respect the people that work in factories. They work hard and probably deserve more than what they make in pay.    I also learned to appreciate what unions can do for employees.  Perhaps the start of my Democratic Socialist ways?

Now I’m a little hungry for cottage cheese. They do still make that stuff, right?