Cannery Shed (Stella)

                                    © 1992 Mary Garvey

           

            Another of Mary's Columbia River songs.  This is a good song to sing on the Maine coast where many of us still remember the sardine packing plants here.  Quite a few of my school friends had summer jobs in those plants. 

            Mary says "Stella is a beautiful little town on the lower Columbia.  The whole town was on piers when I was growing up."

 

Carol Rohl and January Men and Then Some – vocals

David Dodson – acoustic bass guitar

 

            I've worked all my life in the cannery shed

          And if I am dying or you think I am dead

          Don't bury my bones but put me instead

          In a can in the cannery shed

 

          The cannery shed perches over the river

          When the winter winds blow we freeze and we shiver

          When the boss comes around I just might have to give her

          My opinion of the cannery shed

 

          There's no time to rest and there's no time to linger

          And you'd better move sharp or you might lose a finger

          It's make you stomach turn if you knew everything here's

          Been canned in the cannery shed

 

          We chop off the heads and chop off the tails

          Scoop out the guts and throw them in the pails

          We won't get a rest till the next schooner sails

          From the dock at the cannery sheds

         

          LaFaye he went away and he wrote me a letter

          I tucked it up high in the sleeve of my sweater

          And it slipped and it fell and ended in the shredder

          And got canned in the cannery shed

 

          The cannery boy he's a very happy fella

          If he gets him a girl from the little town of Stella

          I would if I could but I'm not going to tell ya

          What goes on behind the cannery shed

 

Cannery Shed is recorded on the album Herrings in the Bay