Horse of a Different Color (22 page)

“What’ll it come to on stuff in the pans?” she asked.

“Two and a quarter cents a pound in the small ones,” I said, “but less than two cents in the big ones.”

“Lucky it wasn’t the other way abouts,” she said, looking back at the pans again. “No woman with more’n one or two cows wants to mess around settin’ milk to rise in a whole raft of little pans if she can get good big ones by just buyin’ twice as much sausage or whatever at one time—that is, if she’s buyin’ on credit—and the more of anything a woman’s got in her larder the more of it she’s bound to use. If it was me doin’ it, I wouldn’t put up shortenin’ in nothing but buckets, or wrapped in paper if somebody wanted less’n twenty pounds. And I wouldn’t put nothing but sausage in pans—that is . . . Hold your horse a minute! Didn’t you tell me you was goin’ to render out most of the fatback you didn’t make into sausage?”

“That’s right,” I said.

“Then you’ll have cracklin’s till you can’t rest, won’t you?”

“I suppose I will,” I said, “but they’ll make awfully good hog feed.”

“Hog feed! Fiddlesticks!” she sputtered. “Why don’t you use your head a bit before you go to throwin’ stuff out to the hogs? Don’t you know that almost everybody likes to make a batch of cracklin’ bread once in a while? And some folks salt cracklin’s and nibble on ’em of an evenin’ like they was peanuts—don’t let me forget to say somethin’ about that when I make the line calls—and it’s a cinch that everybody’ll want all the free pans and buckets they can get. If I was you I’d sell one of them big pans heapin’ full o’ cracklin’s for fifty cents, or a bucketful for a dollar. And, you know, there’s lots of German folks hereabouts, and they make sausage out of critters’ heads and insides. Why don’t you sell the whole works from a hog or a heifer—liver, lights, head, heart, and kidneys—bucket and all for a dollar. Elsewise you’ll have to give that kind of stuff away or throw it out.”

“How about pigs’ feet and ham hocks?” I asked. “Would you put those in pans or buckets?”

“I’d wrap ’em in paper,” she told me. “You can get a nickel apiece for pigs’ feet and a dime for hocks, anyways, and you couldn’t get a penny more if you was to put ’em in a thirty-cent bucket. It’s women folks that buys the meat, and if you aim to make any money doin’ business with ’em you’ll have to learn to use your head.”

“I’ve never had much experience doing business with women,” I said, “and it’s a little late for me to start learning to use my head. What I need is you for a partner.”

“Hmmfff!” she jeered. “And I need a partner that’s a’ready up to his neck in debt like I need a broken leg.” Then she turned serious again and told me, “I was only joshin’ you, Bud, and didn’t aim to poke you on the hurt place. You don’t need a partner no more’n a cat needs two tails, but I’ll tell you what I’ll do; I’ll put out line calls and take phone orders for you, and you can keep Guy and me in fresh meat if you have a mind to. Is that a deal?”

“You bet your boots it’s a deal,” I told her, kissed a finger, and touched it to the end of her nose.

“Well then,” she said as she picked up her headset, “switch that battery back on and get out of here. I’ll put out line calls right away, and give you a ring as soon as ever I get all the orders in. What time on Sunday should I tell the folks they can come for their stuff?”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” I said. “I’ll be around the place all day and all evening.”

“Don’t be a fool!” she told me. “If we don’t stop ’em right at the start, some of these women folks will devil you to death—comin’ by any time from sunup till midnight for a pound of spareribs or a bone for the dog. That Eyetalian bein’ scared of his own shadow the way he is, how do you reckon you’d get away to do any trading? I’m goin’ to tell the folks that the only hours you’ll be open for meat business are from six to eight on weekday evenin’s, and ten to one o’clock on Sundays. That way they’ll have a chance to come after supper, and them that goes to church can stop by on their way home. It’ll save time for all hands, and you won’t sell a nickel’s worth less than you would the other way. Now get out of here.”

Most of the heifers I’d bought were to be delivered when the sellers came to haul hogs on Saturday, but I’d arranged to have four delivered that afternoon. As soon as they arrived we picked out the fattest one and butchered her right away. Actually, Nick did most of the work. He was an expert at it and, as always, the sight and smell of slaughtering nauseated me. After the job was finished he stayed to scrub down the slaughterhouse while I went to start supper. The telephone was ringing wildly, and when I picked up the receiver Effie’s voice came over the wire irritably, “Where in the name of common sense have you been for the past hour? I was just about to send Guy over to find out if that Eyetalian had cut your throat, or if the both of you was froze to death in the icebox.”

“I’ve been out to the slaughterhouse,” I said. “We had to do some butchering so we’d be ready for Sunday’s business.”

“Well, I hope to goodness you done a plenty of it,” she told me proudly. “I’ve got orders enough here to choke a billy goat. Nelly Moss wants a bucket of that shortenin’ and a big pan of sausage and five pounds of beefsteak and . . . ”

“Hold it, Effie!” I broke in. “All I need to know right now is how much sausage and shortening to get ready. Will you add up the totals and call me back? I’ll bring you up some pork chops after supper and pick up the separate orders then.”

I barely had the fire started when she called back, “Well, here’s your totals,” she told me, “but land knows how long they’ll be good for. There’s still orders comin’ in faster’n I can write ’em down. Let’s see, it’s eleven big pans of sausage and six little ones, and eighteen buckets of shortenin’.”

“Whewww,” I whistled, “that’ll be a hundred and forty pounds of sausage and three hundred and sixty of shortening.”

“I told you what would happen if you put the stuff into free milk pans and buckets, didn’t I?” she gloated. “There’s more calls comin’ in, so I got to ring off now, but listen Bud, when you come up for the orders bring a little liver for my cat, will you? She’s crazy about it.”

As soon as we’d eaten supper Nick and I rounded up our three biggests hogs and had driven them to the slaughterhouse when he stepped in front of me and said, “I take now.”

With my squeamish stomach I was glad enough to have him take over the slaughtering. The pork he’d butchered that morning was thoroughly chilled, so I cut half a dozen thick loin chops, wrapped a pound of liver, packed them in one of the buckets, and drove up to the telephone office.

It was hard to tell whether Effie was more pleased with the bucket, the chops, the liver for her cat, or the orders she’d taken. “I’m a’ready up to my neck in orders,” she told me, “and there’s more still dribblin’ in. Besides, there’s forty things I’ve got to find out from you. First off, can folks outside the township have charge accounts if they’ve been doing livestock business with you? It seems like the news has leaked out and they’re callin’ in from all over.”

“Anybody with good credit can have a charge account if he’ll agree to settle up by Thanksgiving,” I told her.

“Well then,” she told me happily, “I’ve got orders for eighty pounds more sausage and five buckets of shortening, along with four hundred and fifty-one pounds of other stuff.”

I was too astonished to speak for a moment, but as soon as I’d collected my wits I asked, “For heaven’s sake, Effie, did you blackmail people into giving you orders? I didn’t think there was this much meat business in Decatur County.”

“You didn’t do much thinkin’ then,” she told me smugly. “Farmers won’t do their own butcherin’, leastways in summer, if they can buy meat on credit for fifteen cents a pound with free buckets and pans throwed in. But how you’re goin’ to make a profit on it—the price hogs have gone to—is more than I can figure out. Accordin’ to the six o’clock broadcast, top grade hogs brought eleven-fifty at Kansas City this morning.”

I reminded her that I’d bought my hogs before the market went up, and told her I’d come out all right on my prices if she kept on getting me shortening orders the way she’d started out. Then I hurried home and got back to work. By the time Nick had finished dressing the three hogs and scrubbed down the slaughterhouse, I’d broken down the pork carcasses from the refrigerator, ready for cutting into chops and cutlets, sidemeat slabs, spareribs, and scraps for making sausage.

It was past ten o’clock before we’d scrubbed the cutting room and gone to bed, but we were up, had eaten breakfast, and were back at work by four the next morning. In doing it we established a pattern that we seldom broke, for the hours from four to seven were the coolest of the day. Meat could safely be kept out of the refrigerator longer, remained firmer during the processing, and the work went faster.

The band saw with its semiautomatic carriage made cutting steaks, chops, and cutlets a simple matter, and the closer to the time of sale they were cut the fresher they would appear. As we broke down the carcasses of the hogs slaughtered the day before we hung the hams, shoulders, loins, and sidemeat slabs back in the refrigerator. Then Nick diced fatback for rendering while I boned leftovers for sausage. Boning a neck is rather tricky business for an inexpert butcher, but I soon discovered that it required little skill if I first cut it into inch-thick slices with the saw.

By eight o’clock we had the hog carcasses processed except for sawing chops and cutlets. But Effie had taken orders for so much shortening and sausage that we’d have to kill another beef and two more big hogs before we could fill the expected railroad order. We’d driven two enormous sows into the slaughterhouse chute when Nick again stepped in front of me and said, “I take now.” There was a certain finality in his voice, as much as to say, “This is my end of the business. You stay out of it.” From that time on I never went into the slaughterhouse except to show it to visitors when it wasn’t in use, and I always found it scrubbed spotlessly clean.

I returned to the cutting room, put on my white coat and apron, and had started breaking down a beef forequarter when the McCook taxi clattered into the yard. Although I hadn’t expected him so early, I knew it would be Mr. Donovan, so went out to meet him. He was cordial and friendly, but seemed embarrassed at having come to make the inspection. His only purpose, he told me, was to make sure the premises were clean enough and the refrigeration sufficient that there would be no danger of ptomaine. I told him I was glad he’d come, then led the way to the cutting room door and flung it open. For a moment or two he stood looking into the room with his mouth half open. Then he said, almost reverently, “Glory be . . . ”

The inspection took no more than ten minutes, with Mr. Donovan exclaiming over almost everything I showed him. When we’d finished the round he told me, “I’m that sorry, lad! I should have told you right at the outset that you didn’t need a fancy layout the likes of this. It’s a shame you’ve gone to so much expense, and for only a four-months’ business. Tell me, what ever will you do with it when the job is finished and done with? You can’t move a refrigerator like that one, or a slaughterhouse that’s cemented tight to the ground.”

There was no reason for telling him that the whole setup had cost only a shade more than a thousand dollars, or that it looked as though the farmer business would considerably exceed the railroad contract, so I said, “If my luck holds out until Thanksgiving the way it’s been running for the past month, I have an idea the setup will have paid for itself so I’m not going to worry about it.”

After the inspection Mr. Donovan asked if I’d mind driving him to Danbury, Nebraska, ten miles down Beaver Valley and beyond the railroad washout. On the way he told me that the equipment and commissary train had arrived, and that the work train would bring the construction crew Sunday forenoon. He said the camp would be mobile, always at railhead as the track was reconstructed westward, and it was there that I would make my deliveries. As we neared Danbury I could see that the shipping pens were crowded with horses and mules. A dozen carloads of grading and track-laying equipment were lined up on the siding, and beyond them stood three kitchen and bakery cars.

At one of the kitchens Mr. Donovan introduced me to the chief steward, an enormous, good natured Irishman named Tim. When I asked if he could give me his meat order for the first three meals he told me, “Surest thing you know! The lads’ll get here with their bellies as empty as their pockets, and for a couple o’ days they’ll eat a pound or more of meat at a meal. I’ll be needing two hundred pound o’ pork chops for Sunday dinner, the same o’ beefsteak for supper, and for Monday’s breakfast you’d best to make it a hundred and fifty pounds of pork chops and fifty o’ sausage. Fetch it Sunday mornin’ and bring a hundred pounds of lard for the bakers.”

I was worried by the proportion of pork to beef, and by Tim’s ordering chops and lard. But before I could say anything Mr. Donovan explained that the contract called for cutlets rather than chops, and shortening instead of lard, Then he said that my sausage was the tastiest he’d ever eaten, and suggested that Tim increase his order to a hundred pounds. Breathing more easily, I thanked Mr. Donovan for his kindness and Tim for his order, then got away as soon as I could.

23

My Boyhood Sweetheart

N
ICK
and I were by no means expert meat cutters, but I’d used a band saw a good deal while working as a carpenter during the war, and the piece of equipment made by the old German machinist was a lifesaver for us. While Nick finished his slaughtering and scrubbing that Friday forenoon I broke down and processed the first beef carcass, going at it more like a sawyer than a meat cutter. I first sawed out what ordinarily would be the rib roasts, the thick shoulder clods and rolls, the loins, rumps, and rounds, then hung them back in the refrigerator to be sliced into steak. The brisket and lower half of the ribs I sawed into three-inch strips, cut the best portions into short-rib chunks, and boned the rest of the leftovers for stew meat, hamburger, and sausage scraps.

That afternoon and evening Nick rendered shortening while I processed the second beef, then weighed out and ground meat for four one-hundred-pound batches of sausage. Worried as I’d been about getting rid of fatback if we used heavy hogs, Nick needed all we had for shortening, so I had to use largely sidemeat for pork fat in the sausage. For each batch I weighed the salt and seasoning carefully and mixed it with the meat before grinding, but held back the bread and water for the second grinding, to be made just before the sausage was sold.

We quit at nine o’clock, to get our cleaning done and be in bed by ten, but were back on the job by four Saturday morning. Soon after sunrise George Miner came over with Jack at his heels. I told Nick I’d be busy with the shipping till evening, and that he was to go ahead with the rendering until he had six hundred pounds of shortening, even though he had to use partly leaf lard to make up the weight.

In little more than an hour, and with only a few arm or whistle signals from George, Jack rounded up every hog on the place and brought them into the sorting pens. Until then I had no idea what tremendous growth they’d made in the twenty-three days since their diet had been changed from silted alfalfa pasturage to all the corn they could hold. As near as George and I could estimate, the whole herd had gained about a third in weight; the smallest shoats taking on about twenty-five pounds apiece, and some of the biggest sows nearly a hundred.

If I’d shipped two days earlier, I’d have sent every one of those heavyweights to market, but considering the way shortening and sausage had sold to the farm trade I thought best to hold onto them, and George agreed with me. We cut out and turned back to pasture all hogs weighing under 210 pounds or over 285, together with any others that showed a blemish, were too fat for their length, or too runty for their age. By noon we’d culled them down to four pens of sixty hogs each; one lot weighing between 210 and 235 pounds, two that scaled between 235 and 260, and the fourth from 260 to 285. Allowing for a ten-pound shipping shrinkage, those divisions would hit the three highest priced grades squarely on the button.

Hauling fat hogs more than a few miles on a hot July day is hazardous business, but exercise, excitement, or crowding will overheat and kill them more quickly than hot sunshine. We loaded no wagon until they had all arrived, then assigned each man his place in line—those with the slowest horses at the front, and those with the fastest at the rear. With no more than an occasional word or signal from George, old Jack did the loading all by himself, and no hog tried to turn back, squealed, or took a hurried step. One after another the wagons were backed up to the loading chute; eight or nine hogs waddled aboard like portly commuters getting onto a streetcar, the tailgate was closed, and the wagon pulled away. In less than an hour all twenty-eight wagons were on the road to Oberlin, and they arrived well before train time without a single casualty.

Getting the hogs off the wagons and into the cars was no more difficult than loading them at home had been. I’d had one of the farmers from whom I bought nubbins take a load to Oberlin, divide it between the four decks of my cars, and see that the watering troughs in the shipping pens were filled. As wagons were backed to the chutes the thirsty hogs unloaded themselves, drank their fill, and with a little urging by old Jack trudged up the ramps and aboard the cars.

As soon as the bills of lading had been made out I wired my Omaha agent, giving him the car numbers. I asked him to wire me the results of the sale, to send a check for $4600 to the receiver of the Cedar Bluffs bank, and the balance of the net receipts to the Farmers National. I didn’t wait for the train to pull out, but drove George and old Jack home, and was back in my white coat and apron by six o’clock.

Nick had completed rendering thirty buckets of shortening, processed the hogs he’d slaughtered the previous evening, and packed all the by-products. We stopped only to wolf down a cold supper, then set to work cutting steaks, chops, and cutlets. Since I was charging my farm trade twenty cents a pound it seemed only fair that they should have the best cuts, so we sorted out the center-cut pork chops and the sirloin, porterhouse, T-bone, and rib steaks. In packing cutlets for the railroad order we cut the ham and shoulder slices into roughly three pieces to the pound. Anything smaller, or that was more than a third bone, we threw into the sausage scraps. We didn’t cut the steaks to any particular size, but trimmed away any excessive fat or bone, stripped out the heavy sinews, and threw aside for stew or hamburger any pieces that weren’t cut reasonably straight across the grain of the meat. To make up the full two hundred pounds that had been ordered, we used mostly chuck and neck, then filled out with the poorer cuts from the rumps and rounds.

It was eleven o’clock before we finished, and midnight by the time we’d scrubbed up and gone to bed. At three-thirty Nick woke me by rattling the stove lids as he cooked breakfast. By four o’clock we were back on the job, the Ford engine that powered the grinder and saw backfiring in its indignation at being put to work so early. From our trimming we’d accumulated enough scraps for another hundred-pound batch of sausage, so I decided to make it—partly to teach Nick the formula, but more in hope that Effie might scare up more sausage business.

I had Nick weigh the various ingredients, mix the seasoning with the meat, grind it together to distribute the flavor, then add the water-soaked bread and regrind the batch with our finest cutting disk. While he added soaked bread and reground the batches I’d started the night before, I washed and dried tin pans, filled them with sausage, weighed and wrapped orders for the farm trade, and packed them away in the icebox. The last hundred pounds of sausage we packed in a tub for the railroad order, and by seven thirty I was on my way to Danbury.

I felt rather guilty about having held out all the best steaks and chops for my farm trade, and for having butchered mostly heavyweight sows when I’d told Mr. Donovan I planned to use bacon hogs. I got all over the guilty feeling two minutes after reaching the railroad camp. Mr. Donovan had gone back to Omaha, but Tim came to inspect the meat—and almost gloated over it. As he jabbed a finger into one piece after another he called to the head cook, “Come take a look at the meat we’ve got here. It’s that tender you can poke a finger clean through it, and trimmed as good as you’d find at the best market.”

When I unloaded the tub of sausage he turned the paper back and said, “So that’s the sa’sage the boss was doin’ all the talkin’ about!” He scooped up a couple of ounces, sniffed it, and told the cook, “B’dad, there’s a tasty smell about it. Fry up a bit and let’s see what it’s like.”

He turned to me, pointed a thumb toward the next car, and said, “Take the lard yonder to the head baker. Get his tomorrow’s order, and I’ll have mine ready when you come back.”

The baker was new on the job and didn’t know how much shortening to order, so I told him I’d bring plenty every morning and leave as many full buckets as he had empty ones to return. When I went back to the kitchen Tim was as enthusiastic about the sausage as Mr. Donovan had been. His order for the next morning—and for most of the days until Thanksgiving—was for two hundred pounds of steak and one hundred and fifty pounds each of sausage and pork cutlets.

While I was making the delivery Nick finished grinding the hamburger, cutting stew beef, and scrubbing the refrigerator shelves and floor. Weighing and wrapping orders, cleaning equipment, washing utensils, and scrubbing the cutting room tables, sink, and floor kept us busy until nine forty five. Toward the end of the cleaning Nick watched the clock nervously, and the moment we finished he asked, “Okay, boss, I slaughter now?”

Thereafter he did his slaughtering between six and eight o’clock on weekday evenings, and from nine thirty Sunday mornings until the last customer had gone in the afternoon. Of the hundreds who came to the place, I doubt that more than two or three—except the men who helped us with our first two days of building—ever caught a glimpse of him. Most people spoke of him as The Eyetalian, but George called him The Prairie Dog, for a prairie dog dives into his hole at sight of a stranger. If we were alone Nick would work at the rendering vat or help me round up hogs, but if anyone turned in at the driveway he’d duck for cover. The cutting room was his burrow, but the slaughterhouse—completely hidden from the road, the dooryard, and the house—became his sanctuary.

That Sunday morning we rounded up a couple of hogs and a heifer for butchering, and I’d just changed into a clean white coat when customers began driving into the dooryard. From then on there was no letup. Fully a third of those who came had phoned in no order and were from surrounding townships. A good many were on their way to or from church, but others had probably come out of curiosity. By ten thirty the shop was so crowded that I could barely get through to the refrigerator.

Fortunately, George and Irene Miner came over when I was so swamped I hardly knew which way to turn. Irene was good at figures, her writing looked like a schoolteacher’s and she knew everybody within twenty miles of Cedar Bluffs. When George saw the mess I was in he sent her to write charge slips for me, then called to the crowd, “Let’s get outside and give the boy a chance to work. He can take care of you twice as fast if there’s only two or three in here at a time.”

With room to work, and the meat all cut and processed, I had no difficulty in taking care of the trade. If some of the folks were skeptical when they came, they got over it by the time George had shown them through the refrigerator and cutting room. Buckets and pans proved as popular with the women who hadn’t placed orders as with those who had. I sold every spare pan of sausage and cracklings, every bucket of shortening and by-products, and could have sold double the number if I’d had them.

Although Effie had set my Sunday hours as being from ten to one, they didn’t work out that way. It was past three o’clock when my last customer drove away, and there was then nothing left in the icebox except five hundred pounds of steaks, cutlets, and sausage that I’d held back for filling the railroad order next morning. I’d had dozens of compliments on the cleanliness of the shop, and everyone had been happy with the quality of the meat, the prices, and the charge accounts. Before leaving, nearly every man told me he’d have a hog, a calf, a cow, or a load of corn to turn in on his bill whenever I wanted it.

Nick and I hadn’t eaten since three-thirty that morning, so when George and Irene left I started a fire and put a kettle of potatoes on to boil. After I’d washed up I put on a pot of coffee and whacked up a big batch of biscuits. While they were baking I set the big iron skillet on to get smoking hot, picked out the two biggest steaks in the icebox, laid them on the skillet to broil, and shouted for Nick to come and get it.

The pork and beef he’d dressed that forenoon wouldn’t be chilled enough for cutting with the saw before morning, but we needed shortening for delivery with the railroad order. To have it cooled out and ready, Nick rendered that afternoon, stripping the leaf and fatback from the pork carcasses and suet from the beef. It was a one-man job, so I washed the dishes, posted the charge slips in the ledger, and brought the books up to date.

During the whole day I hadn’t taken in a nickel, but the charge slips for the farm trade totaled $217.85, the railroad delivery had amounted to $112.50, the meat still in the icebox was worth $52.50, and the two cowhides would bring the total up to $390. As near as I could figure, the seven hogs we’d butchered had cost $90, the heifers $70, pans and buckets $11, ice $16, and bread, seasoning, etc., $3, leaving a profit of $200 before allowing for Nick’s wages or investment writeoff. I had sense enough to know I’d never have another day so profitable, and that I’d probably lose 3 or 4 percent on my charge accounts. But I was reasonably sure that I hadn’t set my prices too low, and that the venture wouldn’t end in failure.

Effie always scolded at me for working too hard, but my roughest times were those when I had no work to do. Since the Wilsons left I’d been too busy to be lonely, and had little time for fretting and worrying. But when I finished my book-keeping that Sunday afternoon I was stuck. No meat cutting could be done until the carcasses were thoroughly chilled, and there was nothing I could do to help Nick with the rendering. I got out the little Bible that had been my father’s and tried to read, but couldn’t keep my mind on it. When I found myself thinking about the folks back home I realized that I was lonely, and the one I thought most about was Edna Hudgins.

Edna’s folks moved to Medford, the Massachusetts city where our family lived, while I was farming with my grandfather in Maine. She went to our church, sang in the choir with my sister Grace, and they became close friends. When I came home on my sixteenth birthday Grace fixed up a date for me, and Edna became my girl. When we were seventeen I asked her if she’d marry me when we were old enough, and she said she would, but our engagement broke up in a quarrel about the ring. It was a quarter-carat blue-white diamond, and it took me more than a year to save the twenty-five dollars that it cost.

Edna was graduating from high school in the class I’d have been in if I could have gone on from grammar school, and it seemed to me that it would be almost the same as having made the grade myself if my girl were there, wearing my engagement ring. For months I’d saved every penny that wasn’t needed in the family, got the twenty-five dollars together just in time, and bought the ring the day before graduation. That evening I took Edna to choir practice, but didn’t mention the ring until we were on the way back to her house. Then I showed it to her under an arc light at the corner of a little park, slipped it onto her finger, and told her I wanted her to wear it to the graduation exercises. For some reason, she didn’t want to start wearing it until afterward. Having set my heart on it as I had, my feelings were hurt, and I didn’t have any better sense than to tell her that if she didn’t love me enough to wear my ring to the graduation she didn’t love me enough to marry me.