We were closely tied to the Ocean Spray Cranberry company, as Grammy was the switchboard operator, Dad worked nights doing janitorial work, Nenna worked some evenings doing secretarial work, Uncle Mac did some part-time evening warehouse work there, and of course we lived across the street – our yard abutting the employee parking lot. Not only did the family grownups receive income from the company, but thanks to Grammy we sold lots of hand made Princess Pine wreaths and streamers there. Each winter she would bring us a list of who wanted which or how many door decorations, we would tromp through the woods filling our onion sacks with the bushy little ferns, empty them out on the cellar floor, and produce whatever the list required. This generated a rather nice Christmas income for us kids.
When I was in 7th grade I would occasionally help dad buff the floors at night. After supper I would cross Main Street and go in the front door. Just inside was the receptionist/telephone operator who would greet visitors and send them in the proper direction, and connect incoming phone calls to the intended recipients using an old fashioned switchboard system.
To the right was the main hallway into the sprawling building, and instead of drinking water in the water dispenser they had it filled with chilled cranberry juice. I never failed to grab the little t
riangular paper cups and take a swig or two. I quickly became adept at operating the powerful buffing machine, making it slide back and forth simply by changing the tilt of the handle – careful not to let it get away and crash into walls or furniture. [This skill (and Dad’s network of friends) helped me get my first paid summer job at the Maquan School – cleaning and buffing.]
Once I finished my buffing duties, I would wander around and explore the nearly empty and mostly darkened multi-level complex. The main floor was comprised mostly of various meeting rooms and hallways. In the front/right there was a sort of sunken meeting room built into an enclosed converted loading dock space. Turning towards the back of the building a sloped hallway went uphill and then turned left into the mailing room area. Passing through there, you entered a warehousing area with berry sorting machines and elevators.
Uncle Mac taught me how to drive the forklift in there and let me practice – until I got it stuck on the elevator. He had to figure out how to work it free for me. Upstairs was where most of the offices where, with one large open room which contained probably 30 desks, surrounded by the smaller private offices of the managers and their personal secretaries. John was the upstairs night janitor and never minded if I explored his part of the building.
On the third floor was a large cafeteria with lots of windows overlooking downtown South Hanson (i.e. not much), and a large ornate office/meeting room which seemed more like a fraternal lodge gathering space to me – heavy drapes, plush cushy chairs, and dark paneled walls (there might have been deer heads or such). Down in the basement they had a laboratory where the cranberry scientists would experiment and test new drink flavors or whatever. There was even a trap door which when opened exposed the underground river that flowed out of Urann’s Pond, under the parking lot, Main St, the main building, the railroad tracks, the ‘cold storage warehouse’ and into the Great Cedar Swamp beyond. The railroad tracks ran smack between the office and the cold warehouse buildings, splitting into three sets wide, leaving just enough room between the tracks and the front building for a vehicle to drive along. Often a handful of freight cars would be parked between the buildings, but I never tried to get into or onto one. Although we occasionally walked the tracks between the buildings, mostly we rode our dirt bikes through to get to our gateway to the swamp. Literally, when we reached the end of the building where the enormous chimney is (built by great-great grand-dad McClellan) we would cross the tracks and ride through the generally open chain link gateway into the cold storage warehouse lot. From there and through another chain link gate, a quarter-mile long dirt dike road led to the cranberry dump.
Mountains of left-over cranberry shells from product trials and tests, and bad berries removed from the sorting process were brought here via dump truck and piled around the perimeter of a roughly 2 acre lot. How much of the lot was on solid ground and how much was simply cranberry backfill was hard to tell but the piles were fun to run up and down. The odor of biodegrading berries was sometimes too strong to hang around in, but usually it wasn’t too bad. Many bog roads and dike roads and old woods roads and power line paths branched off from here – leading all around to places like Burrage (Reed St), Monponsett (rt 58), Halifax (rt 106), Bog 18 (off of Elm St), and beyond from there. The Ocean Spray parking lot was our playground. Once the employees left for the day, we had all that open space to ride our bikes (and later – dirt bikes), play street hockey and touch football, or long-toss baseballs and Frisbees. The warehouse between our back yard and the pond was used for storing empty cranberry crates. Two stories high, the lower section would be loaded from the front of the building facing the parking lot. The upper section was entered from the rear, facing the woods. The empty crates would be packed almost to the 15 foot ceilings, leaving just enough head room for us to crawl over and through – when on occasion we discovered a broken window that allowed us an entry point. We never broke windows ourselves (well, maybe a stray hockey puck shot from the pond might accidentally find itself launched in through a pain of glass – but that was always hard to pin blame on someone – maybe the shooter, maybe someone deflected it maybe the goalie was bad) but were not against being opportunistic. We carefully and considerately only ever burned broken crates when we needed a bonfire for a late-night skating party. I’m sure we never broke them by crawling around on top of them or shooting poorly aimed slapshots at them.
http://www.answers.com/topic/ocean-spray-cranberries-inc?cat=biz-fin
To the right was the main hallway into the sprawling building, and instead of drinking water in the water dispenser they had it filled with chilled cranberry juice. I never failed to grab the little t
riangular paper cups and take a swig or two. I quickly became adept at operating the powerful buffing machine, making it slide back and forth simply by changing the tilt of the handle – careful not to let it get away and crash into walls or furniture. [This skill (and Dad’s network of friends) helped me get my first paid summer job at the Maquan School – cleaning and buffing.]Once I finished my buffing duties, I would wander around and explore the nearly empty and mostly darkened multi-level complex. The main floor was comprised mostly of various meeting rooms and hallways. In the front/right there was a sort of sunken meeting room built into an enclosed converted loading dock space. Turning towards the back of the building a sloped hallway went uphill and then turned left into the mailing room area. Passing through there, you entered a warehousing area with berry sorting machines and elevators.
Uncle Mac taught me how to drive the forklift in there and let me practice – until I got it stuck on the elevator. He had to figure out how to work it free for me. Upstairs was where most of the offices where, with one large open room which contained probably 30 desks, surrounded by the smaller private offices of the managers and their personal secretaries. John was the upstairs night janitor and never minded if I explored his part of the building.On the third floor was a large cafeteria with lots of windows overlooking downtown South Hanson (i.e. not much), and a large ornate office/meeting room which seemed more like a fraternal lodge gathering space to me – heavy drapes, plush cushy chairs, and dark paneled walls (there might have been deer heads or such). Down in the basement they had a laboratory where the cranberry scientists would experiment and test new drink flavors or whatever. There was even a trap door which when opened exposed the underground river that flowed out of Urann’s Pond, under the parking lot, Main St, the main building, the railroad tracks, the ‘cold storage warehouse’ and into the Great Cedar Swamp beyond. The railroad tracks ran smack between the office and the cold warehouse buildings, splitting into three sets wide, leaving just enough room between the tracks and the front building for a vehicle to drive along. Often a handful of freight cars would be parked between the buildings, but I never tried to get into or onto one. Although we occasionally walked the tracks between the buildings, mostly we rode our dirt bikes through to get to our gateway to the swamp. Literally, when we reached the end of the building where the enormous chimney is (built by great-great grand-dad McClellan) we would cross the tracks and ride through the generally open chain link gateway into the cold storage warehouse lot. From there and through another chain link gate, a quarter-mile long dirt dike road led to the cranberry dump.
Mountains of left-over cranberry shells from product trials and tests, and bad berries removed from the sorting process were brought here via dump truck and piled around the perimeter of a roughly 2 acre lot. How much of the lot was on solid ground and how much was simply cranberry backfill was hard to tell but the piles were fun to run up and down. The odor of biodegrading berries was sometimes too strong to hang around in, but usually it wasn’t too bad. Many bog roads and dike roads and old woods roads and power line paths branched off from here – leading all around to places like Burrage (Reed St), Monponsett (rt 58), Halifax (rt 106), Bog 18 (off of Elm St), and beyond from there. The Ocean Spray parking lot was our playground. Once the employees left for the day, we had all that open space to ride our bikes (and later – dirt bikes), play street hockey and touch football, or long-toss baseballs and Frisbees. The warehouse between our back yard and the pond was used for storing empty cranberry crates. Two stories high, the lower section would be loaded from the front of the building facing the parking lot. The upper section was entered from the rear, facing the woods. The empty crates would be packed almost to the 15 foot ceilings, leaving just enough head room for us to crawl over and through – when on occasion we discovered a broken window that allowed us an entry point. We never broke windows ourselves (well, maybe a stray hockey puck shot from the pond might accidentally find itself launched in through a pain of glass – but that was always hard to pin blame on someone – maybe the shooter, maybe someone deflected it maybe the goalie was bad) but were not against being opportunistic. We carefully and considerately only ever burned broken crates when we needed a bonfire for a late-night skating party. I’m sure we never broke them by crawling around on top of them or shooting poorly aimed slapshots at them.http://www.answers.com/topic/ocean-spray-cranberries-inc?cat=biz-fin
