La Junta – For decades, Peter Piper purchased a particular product from a pretty popular pickle producer perched amid these panoramic prairies and pastures.
This week the prolific pickle plant will close, prematurely plunged into the post-pickle-producing period. And pardon the prose, but the prideful and passionate pickle packers are plenty p- … well, they’re angry is what they are.
And sad. And scared.
The plant cranked out its first vinegar-and-salt-soaked pickle in 1940. It was purchased in 2002 by Bay Valley Foods of Green Bay, Wis., and continued making pickles and relish for supermarket chains and other private-label pickle sellers. Including Peter Piper.
But in November, plant manager John Canaday, who served in the Air Force for more than a decade before retiring and becoming a pickle producer 21 years ago, got a visit from a corporate executive.
“Unfortunately,” Bay Valley vice president Rod Bacon said in a news release, “Bay Valley Foods has experienced a reduction in our pickle business and a significant increase in overhead costs, making it necessary to consolidate our manufacturing network.”
Canaday, who worked as a radar specialist in the Air Force, saw it coming.
“Pickles,” said the stout plant boss, “are a declining market. People eat out now more than they eat at home. Frankly, I felt uneasy about the industry for years.”
And so, on Nov. 16, he gathered his 150 employees and broke the news.
“It was pretty hard to hold in the emotion,” he said. “Even for a big ol’ guy like me. There were a lot of tears.”
Workers are like family
La Junta is a farming town mostly, a village on the flatlands 65 miles east of Pueblo and 90 miles from Kansas. Its population is 7,307 – down 161 from 2000. If you use money as a guide, it’s a poor place, with a median household income of about $26,000, far below the Colorado average of $40,000.
But the pickle workers made good money, an average of more than $11 an hour. And they were, by other standards – standards that should matter – rich.
“We’re a family,” said Canaday, 53. “I’ve been in the homes of more than half of the people who work here. I know them. I know their children. I know their grandchildren.”
He looked away for a moment, and his eyes misted.
“I can’t tell you,” he said softly, “how much I’ll miss seeing them every day.”
In 1999, a pounding spring storm swept across Otero County and flooded parts of La Junta. Canaday’s home was hit hard, with water and mud cascading into the living room and kitchen. Before the rains had stopped, people started knocking on his door. The pickle people. They brought buckets and shovels and wheelbarrows. And big hearts.
“There were dozens of them,” Canaday said last week, sitting in a small conference room in the pickle plant, the smell of vinegar in the air. “They cleaned mud and tore down Sheetrock with me. They took my family’s muddy clothes back to their homes and they washed them.
“And then they chipped in and gave me money.”
Canaday has tried to return the compassion. He has been to his employees’ homes to repair furnaces and refrigerators and to pour concrete, and even to remodel a kitchen or two.
“I did,” he said, “what you’d do for any family member who needed a hand. And they did the same, with me and with each other.”
Forced to move on
Sally Aragon has been at the pickle plant for 20 years. (More than half of the employees have been there 20 years or more.) Her voice catches when she talks of the end. Thursday is the final day of production.
“In any tragedy, the death of a family member or someone in the hospital or even something little, you knew they’d show up,” she said of her colleagues and bosses. “They are all willing to give so much. My brother passed away a few months ago and John showed up with cookies. He said, ‘If there’s anything we can do, let us know.’ I knew he meant it.”
Frank Barela, 44, has been at the plant for 15 years. His wife, Michelle, has also worked there 15 years. They will lose both paychecks and their health insurance. They have a 7-year-old daughter.
“It seems like I’ve been here all my life,” Frank said. “I’ll miss getting paid every week, that’s for sure. But I’ll miss the rest, too. I have a lot of friends in this place. It was a good crowd to work with. When we got the announcement in November I didn’t show it, but I was hurt. It really got to me.”
Most of the workers will stay in town, they say. Canaday set up a job fair at the plant last week, with representatives of several area businesses collecting résumés. Some pickle workers will find jobs 30 miles away at the Crowley County Correctional Facility. A few will work at the local hospital.
And some will leave.
“I’ve taken a corporate job in Green Bay,” said Terry Kienitz, 38, the plant’s safety supervisor. “My wife and I are both from here. Our parents live here. We have four kids in school. At the end of the school year, probably in June, we’ll leave.
“It’s the only place we’ve ever known. It will be so hard to just drive away.”
Staff writer Rich Tosches writes each Wednesday and Sunday. He can be reached at rtosches@ denverpost.com.
