Of all the stories I tell at the dinner table or in class at church, the ones that most intrigue my listeners are my slaughterhouse stories. They are mostly Christian-based and clean in content, but because of the location inevitably contain an element of the strange, the different, the macabre. Not many folks know someone that's worked in a slaughterhouse.
And there weren't many people working at the slaughterhouse like me, either. Thanks to my brother Bob, who knew about the place and told me that good money was to be made if you can handle the labor, this is where I chose to work summers for college tuition. It was a large, busy and modern place - in fact the biggest and most productive slaughterhouse in the world at the time - and I'd be willing to bet that I was the only college student there that had plans to go back to school each fall (I worked there three summers). And I loved the work...something else that set me apart.
This was in Amarillo, at Iowa Beef Processors (IBP). My brother was there because he was a lawyer in town (for Tom Upchurch) who successfully defended the company against a lawsuit by one of its workers that got cut on the floor. By the time I got there, however, he'd moved away to a new job in Houston (Coastal). Thus, I rode into town not knowing a soul but had the support of a couple of his friends named Charlie and Johnnie Scholl, who set me up in a small apartment that occupied a corner of their plumbing shop at 6th and McMasters. Lots of stories there also, but I digress. Nutshell...it ended up being the best and most pivotal summer of my life.
Though so much more happened, the purpose of my going there was to make money, so the first order of business was - once I had wheels (a used car that Bob had owned while he was there, $150) - to head out to IBP on the edge of town and apply. I'd been told it was a shoe-in job, but was still a little nervous. Nothing to worry about, though - there was the application, the briefest of interviews, a physical, and I was in. The third or fourth day into town I showed up at the appointed time for my first day of work.
After getting set up with a locker I dressed in my work clothes for the first time, which included white short-sleeve shirt, white pants, boots and a yellow apron made from the same material as those big yellow raincoats you see men wear on shrimp and fishing vessels. Plus of course a hard hat. I looked ridiculous. Then, along with several others that were hired that day, we all walked for the first time out onto the floor.
And when I say floor, I mean kill floor. The plant was divided into two vast areas - one side was the kill floor, where all the disassembly took place, and the other was the cold side where they sliced up the sides of beef into the different cuts you see on the supermarket shelf. I wanted to be on the kill floor because - a) it paid more, and b) it wasn't cold; on the steak side the temperature was kept at around 40-45 degrees, and I wouldn't have lasted very long there.
So we all punch in with our brand-new time cards and walk onto the floor with a couple of foremen. I don't know about the other guys, but I was very curious and anxious to see what the kill floor of a slaughterhouse looked like, and full of anticipation about what job I would end up with in a place like that. After all, there was no turning back. I was there to earn college money and had to stick it out no matter what...quitting or changing my mind was out of the question. I was there to stay. Which is something else that set me apart, because about four out of five hired leave within two weeks because the work was so hard. My brother had told me about the turnover, and the reasons for it, which only strengthened my resolve.
But alas, there was mild disappointment for me because I was the first one they dropped off and couldn't even go all the way inside! The floor was set up so that from the locker room you walk next to what they call the shroud line, and the rest of the floor was down a ways and off to the right, so from the shroud line you couldn't really see the rest of what was going on. My day for that would come at another time.
The shroud line is where they pin big, salt-water-saturated cloths over the entire sides of beef as a last step before they went into cold storage; the salt acts as a preservative until they get cold enough to be processed on the other side of the plant, usually 24-48 hours. My first assignment was to climb a ladder to a place where they took the shrouds out of the salt water and draped them over the sides of beef, which were hanging by the Achilles from a meat hook. Then they stick a big pin in to secure it from up top so that on the floor another couple of workers could bring the bottom of the shrouds up to pin them on both sides, like a diaper. It was supposed to be a tidy job - no blood or guts involved - and at grade two (out of six) it was supposed to be fairly easy.
But not for me. In the rush of getting the shrouds out of the water, draping them over properly and then jamming that dastardly pin through the cloths and into the meat - all while the line was moving at an impossible pace - I would often appear as though I were dancing with the meat, spinning it around and twisting the shroud that flayed about like a wayward dress. I spent just a day at that higher position before the girls (yes, girls) up there decided I was incompetent, so they sent me to the bottom. At least there I could have some man time and bond with the guys doing the diapers.
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