Denver 2017 - Ninja Warriors Downtown / The Slaughterhouse

Tonight the Denver competition for the NBC hit Ninja Warriors airs (I'm writing this on July 17), and we were there back in May when they were setting up for the show.  Always been intrigued with show business and hung around for a few minutes to watch.  I was admonished one time for taking pictures, so walked around and snuck this one from a distance, using the awesome reach of my walkabout lens:

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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.

Bookmark Project - Tokyo Bridge with GE (cityscapes) / My Best Summer

The glowing edges and found edges effects in Photoshop seem to work well for bookmarks also.  This was captured on a trip to Tokyo in 2015.

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

The summer of 1978 - the first of my three summers in Amarillo - was probably the best in my life, in large part due to the experience of working at the slaughterhouse.  People think I'm nuts when I get nostalgic about a slaughterhouse, but without that experience I would not have learned the value and satisfaction of hard labor, and I would not have met the most important influences of my life to date - namely Ramón García, Bill Davis and the bunch responsible for my conversion to Christ, for the direction of my professional career, and for where I am (and ultimately who I married) today.  I am a staunch social, political and fiscal conservative, but must put the brakes on that once in a while because, after all, it was an illegal alien fresh from Mexico (Ramón), that steered the ship of my life at such a formative time.  And it all sprang from the kill floor of the largest, most modern slaughterhouse in the world.

None of this would have happened with my brother Bob.  I realized at the conclusion of my experience there, as well as in ensuing years, that following his advice generally results in a positive outcome.  I am forever grateful that he planted the seed that led to those experiences.

Not to mention that it was just plain fascinating!  I became intensely interested in even the smallest jobs on the floor, learning something every day about the processes that make use of every part of the animal.  Once I learned to manage the three parts of my fat-washing job well enough, I could be seen in every nook and cranny of the floor simply watching, and often asking questions.  What is this used for?  Why do they save that?  Where does this go once it's boxed?  Hence the nickname, "Mr. IBP".

From 2006 - Mexico 04

Could not resist these angles. Often in Mexico homes are built around a courtyard, with nuclear and extended family members in each one. This cage was affixed to the inside wall of such a compound in Matamoros, Coahuila.

As stated in an earlier posting, the Mexican people are a great people, and it's too bad things are getting out of hand down there. I was going to visit my old home in Charcos (a 14 km drive from Allende, Coahuila) to celebrate the 30th anniversary of my first summer there, but cannot - especially with a family to consider back here in the States. So reluctantly all travel down there is put on hold for now.

But that summer of 1980 was one of the best in my life, a pivotal time that steered me in a direction I've never regretted.

It actually started in the summer of 1978. I'd just finished my first year of college at SFA, and needed to make money to finance the following year. My brother was a lawyer up in Amarillo, fresh out of UT law school, and knew of a place where the hiring was easy with a respectable hourly wage. It was called IBP - Iowa Beef Processors, the largest slaughterhouse in the world.

So I headed up there as soon as the spring semester was over. I didn't own a car at the time, so packed a suitcase plus a box or two and boarded a Greyhound bus...my brother had moved out of Amarillo in the meantime to work here in Houston, but left one of his cars for me to buy (a Rambler American, $150) and made arrangements for a place to stay (a plumbing shop, $90 per month including utilities). Thus, at age 19 I was headed into a town I'd never even visited before, where I knew not a soul, to take a job on the kill floor of a slaughterhouse and live in a corner of a plumbing shop. It was exciting.

After my first day at the slaughterhouse I was in the locker room getting ready to go home, and didn't know where to take my work clothes to be washed for the next day. There was a Mexican fellow about four lockers down from me that looked approachable, so I asked him where they needed to be deposited. It became immediately obvious that he didn't know any English, but I'd taken a couple of years of Spanish in high school and we communicated well enough to get me on my way.

Little did I know that meeting Ramón García would forever change my life, and lead me to what would become my chosen career path as well as a greater spiritual security to this day. The angels were with me that summer of 1978.

Cruise 2017 - Aboard Ship, Micro-Balconies / Perfume on the Slaughterhouse Kill Floor

1981 was my third summer working on the kill floor at IBP, and by then I knew my way around, both in Amarillo and at work.  Charley and Johnnie had split the year before, so instead of living in the plumbing shop I rented an apartment close to downtown.  And on the floor at work I was getting better with knives and doing some of the harder jobs, so they put me on the gut table.  Not as a gutter, though - instead they put me further down, in the last position on the conveyor.  My job there was three-fold; to separate the trachea from the lungs, to process the bile, and to throw any leftover fat into the fat chute.  A level-four position...nothing particularly difficult.

About the bile - if the livers were good enough for public consumption the gall bladders were already separated and just there by themselves.  In such a case - which was for the vast majority of the livers - I would pick it up, slice it open and allow a moment for all of the greenish fluid to pour into one of those 55-gallon white barrels, then throw the remains back onto the conveyor to drop over the end and into the floor below.  Sometimes, however, a liver was bad due to disease or whatever.  For those I would use my knife to separate the bladder first, then empty it in the manner described.  Each bladder produce about six ounces of bile.  I always started fresh with an empty barrel whether on the morning or evening shift, and it would be more than half full after eight hours (the depth of its contents through the day was how I measured the passage of time).

One day not long after starting the job I observed something peculiar.  I had gotten used to the smells on the floor through the years and they didn't bother me at all.  But at that post there was a new smell wafting into my space - something that smelled good.  What could it be on the kill floor of this slaughterhouse that smelled pleasant?  On a lark I ducked my head into the barrel filling with bile, and discovered that the bile itself was the source of the smell!  After asking a foreman about it he explained that IBP in fact sold the bile to perfume companies all over the world!

Isn't it true that at times sweetness and sunshine can be found in places that appear bitter and dark...

Bookmark Project - New Orleans Domino Sugar Factory (cityscapes) / Slaughterhouse Advantages

I bought my first digital camera Thanksgiving 2002.  Shortly after Christmas of that year Andrew and I took a trip to New Orleans, marking the first trip captured with the new technology, a Fujifilm 3800.  By then I was hooked, excited at the potential and the fact that we could come back home and see our pictures without the hassle of taking film to Walmart or some such place.  And the literally-instant gratification stoked my creativity to a whole new level.  Almost every frame brought a surprise that could be creatively explored as the days passed.

This particular bookmark is from a pic taken while on a boat tour of the Mississippi River.  It's the Domino Sugar factory - full of history, nostalgia and earth tones...I knew right away it was a "keeper" (though I hadn't yet adopted the term).

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

There were many advantages to working in the slaughterhouse.  One was that it was good, honest hard labor.  Very hard labor - for every ten hired about eight washed out within two weeks.  After each summer there I was a lot healthier physically, and noticeably stronger - my brother Bob used to make me show off my muscles whenever we got together.  The hard work was one of the greatest aspects of the job.  And in later summers when I moved beyond the fat table and took other jobs on the line, the repetition didn't bother me that much.

Another advantage was that it was almost 100% blue collar.  There were a handful of the white-collar manager types, but virtually every soul under the roof of that plant was the hard-working, down-to-earth, hand-to-mouth, non-pretentious individual with (mostly) good values.  Indeed there were a few jerks, as is the case everywhere, but I felt very comfortable and learned a lot about life in their midst.  However it's true that, being a college student, I had a brighter outlook for the future, thus knew - and was glad - that I was merely a visitor to that world looking in, if not even a little down, from the outside.

While on the subject of the people on the floor, there was an incredible variety.  Many were immigrants from Mexico, legal and otherwise.  For some reason there was a good percentage from Laos...in fact the first ethnic grocery store I ever saw was a Laotian one that I passed every day on the way to work, on the famous Route 66.  And, most interesting, there was a smattering of Navajo Indians.  True to the stereotype, they were known for showing up drunk, and not many stayed very long.

Backyard Shots - More Orange-and-Black Critters / Johnnie's Kill Floor Tour

One more critter shot.  These guys, nothing more than juvenile stinkbugs, are making use of those long Chinese beans as a pathway to the top canopy of the vegetation, where they gather in great numbers.
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As written in a recent story post, I lived on the ground floor in the back corner of a plumbing shop in Amarillo, called Charley's Plumbing.  It was a fine arrangement - not much space but adequate for a summer tenant that was there only to earn college money before going back to school.

The owners of the shop, Charley and Johnnie Scholl, set up an apartment on the second level of the shop.  Charley was a great guy to get along with and played as hard as he worked.  Also as stated in the earlier post, his wife Johnnie was really something to look at, but I was attracted to her spirit more than anything...we got along famously and did a lot of things together, becoming great friends (and no, I never made a pass at her).

Whenever we were on the afternoon shift at IBP it became my routine to sit across the desk from Johnnie in the shop downstairs and visit before moving on to the rest of the day.  Her son Chip was a toddler at the time and would invariably be exploring the place and darting here and there, having to be looked after.  We both enjoyed that time together, and I would go on and on with stories of my adventures at the slaughterhouse.  Finally, during my second summer there in 1979, it occurred to me that, after hearing so much about it, Johnnie might like to tour the place!  She appeared eager, so I asked Glenn, our head foreman at B shift, and he gave permission.

The day arrived and off we went.  Upon our arrival we both had to don white smocks, hard hats, boots and ear protection.  Thus prepared, we stepped onto the floor.  I was excited and proud for the opportunity to share with my friend the sights, sounds and places that I'd been talking about in the summer and a half that I'd worked there.  We walked almost the entire floor, stopping at places where she had questions or where I wanted to explain something.  Then up we went onto the catwalk - used almost exclusively by the maintenance team - to look down from that perspective.  Johnnie was somewhat in awe at the operation because it's not something you see every day and, after all, in 1979 it was the fastest and most modern slaughterhouse in the world.

As stated before, Johnnie was a beautiful girl and we had to put up with a bit of whistles and cat-calling (I'd warned her of this beforehand), and the odd eyeball would fly by when we were up on the catwalk.  But none of this phased either of us and the tour, in my view, was a success.  It lasted the better part of an hour.

Bookmark Project - Red Hibiscus Stamen (flowers and blooms) / A Final Thought about the Slaughterhouse

This picture in its entirety was posted recently, but because it's my all-time favorite of the flowers and blooms decided to post it again as a bookmark.  I've printed this one a dozen times for family and friends.

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

So how do I conclude this series of slaughterhouse stories.  Probably with the question/comment I get most, which is, "I'll bet you couldn't stand to eat meat after working there!"

Actually the opposite is true.  I saw first-hand how standards of cleanliness were enforced by the FDA.  The floor had at least six of them roaming around at all times, scrutinizing every move we made to ensure that we followed all the rules: no picking anything up off the floor; use the (steam-heated) hand sterilizers between every carcass processed; return and exchange a knife it it's been dropped, etc. etc.  They would also look for unsanitary conditions everywhere, even ensuring that the brick floor was squeaky clean.  And they would diligently check product for things that shouldn't be there, such as strands of hair or stomach contents.  We all got nervous when an inspector ordered a box to be opened in our work area, which could happen anywhere at any time, then examine closely whatever was in there.  I once got dinged because two strands of hair were found in a box of my lips, and a couple of guys had to work overtime during the A shift to open every single box in the pallet and get all the hairs out.  This was not an uncommon sight on the floor.  Very tedious work, but some were glad for the opportunity to earn a little extra dough.

I remember one of the inspectors very well...in fact he was the head of the inspection team on B shift.  He was a little guy - all of about 4'10" tall - but was mean enough to strike fear if he wandered into your work area.

It's one thing to get a reprimand from the feds on meat that wasn't up to standard, but an absolutely fireable offense was consuming product on the floor.  Here we were surrounded by meat, and what could be more fresh?  It was the practice of some workers to take the little salt and pepper packets out of the cafeteria during break and bring them out on the floor to season meat that was clandestinely cooked in the hand sterilizers.  I did this but once, for some heart meat, and thought it was great.  But only once, as my conscience wouldn't allow it to become a habit; I bought heart meat at the supermarket thereafter.  And if I saw an IBP logo on a box in the back through a door, wondered if I was the one that packed it in the first place.

So this ends the series on my experiences at IBP.  Of course there is much, much more but it's all out there somewhere, and we'll just let it rest for now...

Bookmark Project - York Minster Profile (architecture) / Slaughterhouse Stories Begin Again

The next category we're going to sample is architecture.  This is a sliver of a picture posted here last year.

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Well, I suppose this is as good a place to start as any.  Back in September of 2017 I started a series on my slaughter house stories.  It was published a little sporadically, and I was never really satisfied with the writing, but left it in place.

Very recently, in digging through some of my old files, I found 25 pages of writing from 2013 that I'd completely forgotten about.  Included in this writing was a stretch involving my time working at IBP in Amarillo, which at the time was the biggest beef slaughter house in the world.  It was a hugely positive, transformative time in my life...a time I've endeavored to capture in writing and stories around the dinner table (!) ever since.

In reading over my work from 2013, I've concluded that the writing is maybe a little better, and I'd like to record the series in consecutive posts as opposed to skipping around some, as was done a couple of years ago.  Thus, tomorrow begins again my time there...

Bookmark Project - Guardian Statue (culture) / The Next Summer at IBP

This was captured from my sister-in-law's backyard of a neighbor's statue on the other side of the fence.  One of those cases where I'd seen it from this perspective dozens of times, wishing I'd had a camera.  Well, finally brought one along and got my chance on a cloudy day when the light was more/less even.

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

When the summer of 1978 was over I returned to Nacogdoches and college, full of slaughterhouse and conversion experiences.  And financially I was taken care of for my third of the expenses.

Naturally, the next summer - the summer of 1979 - I returned to Amarillo and was hired again to work on the floor, and again, by request, assigned to the fat table.  Not much had changed, except the neighborhood was a little emptier.  Adjacent to the table were three work stations where the small intestines were skinned for sausages.  Due to a lack of demand for those skins, my neighbors were reassigned.  I'd gotten to know them the year before, and actually missed their presence.  Other than that the job was exactly the same.

Since I'd already developed a pretty good workflow, there was even more time that second summer to wander around and learn.  This time, though, I not only watched but tried many of the jobs I'd observed the previous summer: one of the jobs on the skinning line (without much success); I cut the heads off and placed them on hooks at the beginning of the head line (each weighing between 35 and 40 pounds); the squeegees in the blood pit; Ramón let me try my hand at skinning livers; and I even messed around on the gut table once in a while.  Every so often a foreman would have to kick me out of one of those places and order me back to the fat table.

This was also the summer that I gave my friend Johnnie Scholl a tour of the floor.  She'd heard me talk about the place for going on two summers, and was eager to let me show her around once I got permission from management.  After getting approval I took her to the plant one day after a morning shift, and proudly showed her all of the places I'd been talking about.  She was young and a drop-dead gorgeous blond, so we got a lot of cat-calls from the guys, but I hardly even noticed in my enthusiasm to share the place with my friend.  The only near-mishap was when an eyeball whizzed by as we were walking on the catwalk above the floor.

The end of the summer of 1979 marked the end of my tenure as a fat washer on the floor.  The summer-fall of 1981 (I was in Mexico the summer of 1980), I graduated up and beyond the fat table and was assigned to the third of the four jobs I ever did at IBP - that of boxing spleens, hearts and head meat which included cheeks and lips.

Bookmark Project - Colorful Column (abstract) / A New Puppy

From this point forward, for the near term, I'll be posting two pictures from each area into which the bookmarks are categorized (Animals, Abstract, etc.).  Then the posts will be randomized to whatever strikes my fancy.

Probably my favorite category of bookmarks is that featuring abstracts.  In order to put something in there, I had to come up with a definition: Exactly what makes a picture abstract?  Decided that an abstract is an image that is interesting but in which one cannot identify what the subject is.

So where did this one come from?  Turns out it's a night shot taken on a cruise ship headed for the Bahamas.

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Well, today is the day.  We're leaving to pick up a nine-week-old puppy, about an hour northwest of Dallas.  Mini Australian Shepherd.  Already named her Coco (or KoKo, or CeauxCeaux, or...) In order to prepare for the rigors of puppyhood I've posted way ahead - in fact four months ahead, a record.  So by mid-February perhaps we'll have things ironed out enough to get back to a routine allowing us to follow more personal pursuits.

Interesting how it happened, considering we've never owned a dog.  Our son Andrew and his new bride, Ellen, were looking for a breed, and settled on a merle gray Mini Aussie.  We've been talking about getting a dog ourselves, but perhaps at retirement.  The pandemic changed all that, and since we're working 100% from home now it's possible to look after a four-legged family member.  That, plus some well-timed reminders from Andrew and our daughter Allison that a sibling was still available, is what tipped the scales.

It made sense to us on several levels:  our dog and Andrew's are littermates and will have the chance to visit on hopefully-frequent play dates, which will bring the added benefit of having a reason to spend more time with him and Ellen; Mini Aussies are a very active breed that need lots of exercise and intellectual stimulation, which will get us out of the house and away from screens more; and it's just good to bring more life into the house.  We are daunted at the changes we know are on the way, but excited at bringing in a new family member that we know will have a good home.

Watching our favorite TV shows probably had something to do with it, too.  In the evenings we've been alternating between Yukon Vet and The Incredible Dr. Pol on Disney streaming (which includes National Geographic), and very much like both shows.  And anyone who follows this blog knows I'm a huge fan of Alf Wight, a.k.a. James Herriott.

So there we have it.  Posts will continue uninterrupted, and in fact a re-write of the slaughterhouse series will begin this Tuesday the 20th.  Still not out taking new pictures, but bookmarks will keep the posts going for a while yet.

Bookmark Project - New Taipei Flower (flowers and blooms) / The Gut Table

My gosh, flowers and blooms.  Where do I start?  As of this writing I've created seventy bookmarks featuring flowers and blooms.  Guess I'll post a couple of the more popular ones...

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

The fourth and last job I did at IBP was during the summer and fall of 1981.  At the end of the gut table, once the parts intended for human consumption were taken out for processing, the leftovers were carried by the conveyor to be dumped into the basement below.  Just before that, however, as the last job on the gut table, I was stationed to do two jobs.

One of those jobs was to use my knife to cut the trachea from the lungs.  Don't know what they did with those things, but it was my job to separate them before the churning conveyor conveyed them over the edge into the basement.

The other part of that job was much more interesting.  The gall bladders came my way either by themselves (if the liver was good enough to use for human consumption and taken off the line to be skinned) or attached to the liver (if it was diseased and/or otherwise deemed not fit for human consumption).  Either way, I would grab it at the proximal end and slice it open, allowing the bile to drain into a 55-gallon plastic barrel.  Naturally I was curious as to why they saved the stuff, and was told that it was sold to the perfume industry!  What?  Sure enough, I stuck my head in the barrel and took a good sniff, discovering that it actually smells pretty good!  They used the gall from cow guts, drained by a college kid on the kill floor of a slaughterhouse, so that people could smell better...

Cruise 2014 - Bayport Terminal, Industrial Sun Rays / Slaughterhouse Offal Boxer

Very fortunately during our time walking around on deck these rays appeared, giving an opportunity for the silhouette of a nearby industrial complex.
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(continuation from post of 09/20/17)
After such a happy and successful run my first summer earning college money on the kill floor at IBP, I decided to do it again the summer of 1979.  The living arrangements were to be the same - I rented an apartment nestled in a corner on the first floor of Charlie's Plumbing at 6th and McMasters in Amarillo.  That aspect alone of my time in Amarillo was a very bright spot.  The rent was cheap and the store owners, Charlie and Johnnie Scholl, were awesome folks who were friends of my brother when he worked there as a lawyer.  Charlie was a gregarious, fun-loving extrovert, and his wife was just as gregarious and fun-loving.  The moment we met was one of the few times in life when an instant and lasting connection was made with folks that are just good people.  At the time they had a toddler named Chip who had the run of the place.

But of course the purpose was to work another summer earning college money for my sophomore year.  This time knowing a bit more about what to expect, within a few days of arriving I applied and requested B shift again, which worked out.  I was hoping to be fat washer again also, but this time I wasn't injured so didn't have a reason to be there; I instead got a job that had a higher grade, thus paid a bit more ($6.05/hr), which was alright by me.  In fact, before long I grew to like it, though there were no gaps of time that allowed me to explore as I'd done the previous year.

The job was located adjacent to the fat washing table, next to the gut conveyor and underneath the head line.  My duties were to pack five kinds of meat into 80-lb boxes - cheek meat, lips, head meat, spleens and hearts.  The exercise was great since they were heavier than the 40-pounders from the previous year, and the pace was much faster, which kept me on my toes.  A great job.  However, since there were two workers within my area (the head meat cleaners) and since I couldn't wander hither and yon, I didn't sing as much.

Taiwan - Chenjean's Village, String of Cups / Captain High's Last Flight

Thought about something captured on a trip to New Mexico while snapping this photo.  Don't know the significance of these little cup things but makes for some interesting content.
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A few months ago I posted a series of coincidences in five segments.  None of them, however, compares to the one I am about to tell.

My best friend in college was Kevin; one of our college adventures was posted here.  One of the things we had in common was that, prior to our freshman year, we both held jobs of high responsibility - he as assistant manager at one of the largest ice cream shops in Houston and me in both TV and radio broadcasting in the Golden Triangle of Southeast Texas.  And the following summer, between our freshman and sophomore years, Kevin got a job as fueler of those huge jets for American Airlines at the intercontinental airport, and me as a very important fat washer at a huge slaughterhouse.

Naturally, when we both got back to SFA for our sophomore year in the fall of 1978 there were lots of stories and adventures to tell.  One that Kevin related was that an incoming Texas International flight was the last for a retiring captain.  It was tradition in those days for a retiring captain of any stature to do a low pass over the runway at speed, then circle back for a landing.  So on that day all work on the tarmac was stopped so that the workers could gather on the edge of the apron to watch the spectacle.  Houston cleared all traffic, and this captain, with a plane full of passengers, streaked by at 300 knots, gear up, only a few hundred feet above the ground.  At the end of the runway he pulled up in what amounted to a shallow Chandelle, then circled back to land.  Kevin, who was among those gathered there on the apron, said he'd never seen anything like it, even at an airshow, and likely never would again.

Flashforward to 1987.  My grandmother died that year, and three of us siblings made the drive from East Texas to Kansas City in order to clear some of the stuff from her apartment.  It was a long, arduous drive, as neither of my brothers wanted to stop, preferring to drive straight through the night in both directions.  I cannot sleep in a moving vehicle, so it fell upon me to either drive or keep the other driver awake as the nights dragged on, usually by talking and sharing stories.

It was during one of these shifts, deep into the night, when my oldest brother, Bob, began to relate how he'd been on a flight that was the last in the career of its captain.  The pilot got on the intercom and explained to everyone that this arrival was going to be a little different.  Instantly I shook myself out of my groggy state.  My gosh, could it be so?  Bob then described how the captain descended, leveling off at what seemed to be a very low altitude, then screamed over the runway at speed with wheels up.

Yes, it was so - my brother WAS ON THAT VERY FLIGHT!  He described feeling the incredible sense of speed as the ground raced by, and catching a glimpse of the crowd gathered to watch.  Then feeling the G force as Captain High - yes, his name was Captain High - pulled up when he got to the end of the runway.

And thus it was that I was able to get two first-hand accounts of that historic event - both from outside and inside of the airplane captained by a man named High.

Bookmark Project - Stewart Title Company (architecture) / Headed to Amarillo

This is (or was as of 2008) the Stewart Title Company on the Strand in Galveston.

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[continued from yesterday's post]

In August of 1977 I was college-bound for SFA in Nacogdoches, and left radio and television behind, a move that I've never regretted, though the experiences left fodder for some good story-telling once in a while.

In order to pay for college my dad and I had a deal going.  One-third of my education was to be paid by my mother's estate (she'd died the year before, in April of 1976), one-third by my dad, and one-third I had to earn myself.  This was when education was a lot cheaper, and SFA was one of the cheapest, so there was no big hurdle for any of us.  So it was that toward the end of my freshman year I was faced with figuring out how to earn money for my third of the bargain.

I didn't have to think long, because in short order it was all handed to me on a silver platter, as they say.

After graduating law school at UT Austin, my brother Bob took his first job with Tom Upchurch in Amarillo, up in the panhandle of Texas.  One of the cases he worked on was in defense of Iowa Beef Processors, Inc. (IBP) - some guy got cut on the floor and tried to sue.  While working on the case (which he won), Bob learned that the hourly pay there was decent, and that it would be easy to get hired there because of the huge turnover, especially on the kill floor.  He called me at SFA one day and suggested that I might apply there to earn money for the summer.  To make the arrangement a little easier he knew of a place that I could rent, and on top of that he would sell me one of his two cars - a 1968 Rambler American named Old Blue.  Things seemed to be falling into place for me to come on up, so I hopped on a bus and did just that.

This was one of those times when I felt strongly that I was in the right place at the right time.  I had given up the glamor, notoriety and ego-stroking experience of being on the radio and behind the scenes in television, and took on the hard labor of working on the kill floor of a slaughterhouse.  To this day that summer of 1978 remains one of the brightest spots in life.

Denver 2017 - Cityscapes and Architecture, Reflection from the Capitol Grounds / Slaughterhouse Shroud Diapers

This one should have been published earlier in the reflections series, but here it is nonetheless, captured from the grounds of the capitol.  Zoomed out from the same spot is the picture below.
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(continued from post of 09/10)
So they moved me on the shroud line to the floor position, where it was our job to pin the bottom flaps of the shrouds up like diapers on both sides of the carcass.  This pouched the loose ends of the meat and fat into a nice tidy bundle.  Had to hurry, though...within about 15 seconds the sides disappeared through some doors into cold storage.  Another part of the job was to sterilize the shroud pins, brought to us from the other side of the plant in a stainless steel cart, with a big yellow hose that gushed extremely hot water.  After sterilizing we would use those pins while every so often handing some up to the girls when they ran out.

I thought, OK, didn't do so well up high... maybe here it will go better.  Well, the dance routine continued with the sides of beef, and after a couple of days my steps were not getting any smoother.  The guys kept telling me to relax, but after the failure up top I was tense and would often send the beef swinging and spinning, sometimes following it around in a complete circle.  The dancing continued, sometimes ending with a view of my partner entering the cold-storage doors, half-dressed with pins uselessly dangling from the shrouds.  It wasn't getting any better.  But, to my credit, it was not for lack of trying.

My wife has always said that I have tofu skin, and that fact became apparent after a few days on the bottom of the shroud line.  My desperate efforts to drill the pins through the cloth and into the beef caused holes to develop in the skin of my right hand, clear through the epidermis, in spite of the fact that I had on two pairs of gloves.  At first I kept it to myself and refused to quit.  But after two more days it got so bad I couldn't ignore the injuries and reported to the nurses station.  They took one glance at my hands and called in the head foreman, whose name was Glenn.  When Glenn saw the number and size of holes in my skin I was immediately reassigned to another station, which at level one was known to be one of the easiest jobs on the floor, where injured workers could convalesce until they were able to go back up the line.  Very fortunately, this was where I stayed for the remainder of the summer.  From that point forward, for the duration of the summer of 1978, I was to be a fat washer.

Taiwan 2024 - Alishan, Indigenous Lady

During an early visit to Taiwan I became curious about the indigenous peoples that were driven by the Han Chinese up into the mountains, and pretty much stayed there ever since before the 1940's.  Who are they?  What languages do they speak?  What do they look like?  What do they act like?

One can't help but compare them to the Native Americans that we have here in the U.S. - a population driven from their homelands to settle in the places allotted to them by force.  There is yet another parallel, and that is how they handle alcohol.  Indians here in the U.S. are famously prone to alcohol addiction, something I witnessed firsthand working in the slaughterhouse at IBP; very few of the Navajoes who lived in the area worked more than a few weeks because they kept showing up drunk to work, no matter the shift.  And years ago during a visit to Hualien, a coastal city on the East Coast of Taiwan, I was on a morning walk and saw one of their natives sitting on the sidewalk, already drunk at 8:00 a.m.  There are definite similarities.

But I'd never really interacted with one in Taiwan or got to witness much more than that brief encounter in Hualien.  Partly because they live in such remote areas, and partly because they generally don't speak Mandarin...only Taiwanese or another native tongue, leaving me with little hope of understanding anything.  Thus in time the mystique behind their culture grew in my mind, increasing my sense of curiosity about them.

So imagine my excitement when I saw this lady, clearly from a native tribe way up in the boonies.  She was at a train station with all her stuff - the perennial bag lady, Eastern style.

She obviously was used to being gawked at, and very wary of the Bigger Cahoona.  Try as I might to be discreet at a distance, every time it was lifted she turned her head so as not to expose her face to the camera.  I sat on my perch long enough, however, to grab a couple of shots that captured the exotic facial features that you see in the shots below.  My gosh, where did this look come from?  What race were her ancestors?  Are there entire communities nearby that have that same look?  Don't get me wrong - not really bad looking...I thought she was even pretty, if only she would smile.  But she obviously originated from a very different gene pool.

Her visage was always exceedingly sad, never smiling or making eye contact with any of the touristic multitude constantly passing her by (and ignoring her).  Where was this girl from?  Where was she going...was she even going anywhere?  She was at a train station, after all.  Is she smart?  Had she attended school in her lifetime?  Does she have children somewhere? Is she the exception to the rule of her racial makeup, or are her relatives and neighbors as destitute and sad as she appears to be?  All of these questions entered my mind as I stayed in my place, trying to look but not stare.

Sort of reminded me of a time at a church service in Querétaro, Mexico.  There was a lady in attendance, the mother of one of the members, that was from such a remote area that she did not even speak Spanish.  For obvious reasons she didn't talk much, so I didn't get to hear her Maya or Aztec or whatever it was that she spoke.

Of course I didn't get to hear this pretty girl speak either, but think it would have been very interesting to compare it to Mandarin or even Taiwanese.

Denver 2017 - Cityscapes and Architecture, Inkmonstr / The Singing Fat Washer

As stated in Monday's post, I managed to distinguish myself at IBP for the fact that I was so interested in everything happening on the floor.  Why does this go there?  What do they do with this part?  Who uses that?  And, because our duties were very repetitive, I enjoyed telling people that I did not work in an assembly line, but rather a disassembly line.

This overt fascination with the goings-on was blended with the fact that the summer of 1978 was pivotal in other ways for me.  I was truly on my own for the first time.  I was making good money for my college education.  I was cultivating deep friendships in what until then had been a far-away city in which I knew no one.  Most of all, I had embarked on a real Bible study for the first time in my life.

All of those things, and more, led to joy.  And what happens to a person when he experiences joy?  He sings!  Yes, one day I found myself singing.  I sang as I washed the fat.  I sang as I carried the buckets of tendon.  I sang in the freezer while spreading pancreas tissue.  And, because the place was a noisy, bustling cacophony, I could do so at the top of my lungs and barely make a dent in the clamor.

This did not go unnoticed by my co-workers.  Some thought I was crazy (possibly true).  It made others smile, this oddball singing at the top of his lungs and apparently enjoying himself on the kill floor of a slaughterhouse.  Yet others saw weakness, and exposed to me the raw edge of hatred.  I learned a few things about human nature in the process.  Regardless of all that, I kept singing.

And so it went in the summer of 1978, that in the unlikeliest of places I found my voice in more ways than one.