Mary Garvey 1992
“Stella is a beautiful little town on the lower Columbia. The whole town was on piers when I was growing up.” Stella is a rural village near Longview, WA (1.5-2 hrs from Portland, Tacoma, and the ocean) named after Stella Packard, the daughter of a local merchant.
Mary Garvey: https://marygarvey.bandcamp.com/track/cannery-shed-stella
Chorus:
I’ve worked all my life in a cannery shed
And if I’m dying or you think I’m dead
Don’t bury my bones, just put ’em instead
In a can in the cannery shed
Now the cannery shed perches over the river
Where the winter winds blow and you freeze and you shiver
When the boss comes around I might have to give her
My opinion of the cannery shed
We chop off the heads, and we chop off the tails
Scoop out the guts, and throw ’em in the pails
Won’t get a rest till the next schooner sails
From the dock at the cannery shed
There’s no time to talk, no time to linger
You’d better move sharp or you might lose a finger
It’d turn stomach if you knew everything here’s
Been canned in the cannery shed
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 landed in the shredder
Now it’s canned in the cannery shed
Now 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