When I returned home from college, I needed a temporary job, if for no other reason, to get out of the house. Just something to cover a few weeks to a month. All that was immediately available was a labourer position in a small, local, family-run poultry processing plant, and it was only full-time leading up to Thanksgiving. Literally a glorified barn set up for butchering chickens and turkeys. I worked in the kill room, and this had to be the least enjoyable job I ever had. I had no intention of staying very long.
We had a government meat inspector on site every day, but not the same one. They rotated on a weekly basis. Everyone's favourite was a big Irish fellow who constantly cracked jokes. One day, a few unsellable extra chickens came through (broken legs or wings), and instead of wasting them, Edwina, the boss's wife, cooked them up for our lunch. He cheerfully asked if one of them was the one he condemned that morning while he filled his plate.
The ladies working in the cleaner end of the operation warned me that he was a devout atheist, and as soon as he found out that I had recently graduated from studying theology in college, he was going to make me the butt of his humour. I needn't have worried. This place didn't give me many reasons to smile, and he thought me more serious than I am.
He leans over one day and asks me, "Did you know that baseball is mentioned in the bible?"
I laughed inside and thought, "Is that the best you've got?" I responded, "Yes. In the big inning (beginning). He paused for a moment, trying to come up with another angle to go after me with, but I'm not having it. It's my turn now. "Did you know King David had a motorcycle?"
"No."
"Yeah. The roar of David's triumph was heard throughout the valley."
He laughed, and the two of us worked together well the rest of the time I was there. Never had a problem.
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