Bookmark Project - Train Silhouette (Astros with Kevin) / The Fat Table

Anyone who knows me well knows that I don't follow sports that much.  The exception being professional football, which my wife and I followed closely and enjoyed immensely for several years.  Then, when it turned into a political circus a couple of years ago, we tuned out and never went back.  So sad, because one of the functions of attending a sporting event - whether in person or by watching on TV - is to provide an escape from exactly those types of things.

But 2008 was well before that time.  I do enjoy going to an Astros game because it is relaxing, and the crowds seem to be more family oriented.  For a couple of years Chenjean and I got to go for free, as we helped hand out stuff to patrons as they came in through the gates...usually the "first 10,000", though it sometimes went beyond that.  And as someone who "worked the game", when our duties were over we could sit in any seat that was vacant.  In a more recent year we were invited by a bank to attend in their special box, and actually meet some of the players.  So, while baseball is not a sport that we actively follow, we do enjoy the experience of an Astros game at Minute Maid park.

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[continued from yesterday's post; series began on 10/20]

I followed the lead man, winding around until we arrived at a low, flat table that had big sheets of fat chuted in from the gut table.  My new job was fat washer, which was considered light duty for the injured until they recovered enough to return to their former posts.

After being at it a while, however, I had no intention of returning to any other post, much less the shroud line!  The position was right in the thick of things, offering a pretty good view of everything going on in the floor.  And not that I've ever shied away from hard labor, but the duty was light enough to allow me to walk around a bit to get to know the folks nearby, learning what their jobs were and how they fit into the entirety of the disassembly line.  I enjoyed it.

My own job as a fat washer was a three-parter.  As the fat sheets came in from the chute, I was supposed to swish it around and look for intestinal contents and other undesirables that may have contaminated it from the gut table, as well as cysts and parasites that may have infected the beast before slaughter.  If it passed, I tossed the fat over the end of the table into an auger where it was smushed and fed into a 4-inch pipe.  Steam was injected into the pipe to emulsify the fat for the quarter-mile trip to the other side of the plant, where trucks were waiting to receive it for transportation to hither and yon: the destinations were where it would be processed into products such as Crisco Oil and margarine.  It was fascinating to me that I was there at the very beginning of this process, which provided cooks all over the world with these ingredients.