Saturday, October 27, 2012
RANDOM 31 OBJECT
ANTIQUE 41" hand FORGED IRON 2 fisted MEAT CLEAVER carcss splitter OHIO FARM-$81
My little red object is merely to show the center of gravity, an important thing if you’re the person wielding one of these big rascals. And I speak from experience.
Having literally grown up in a slaughterhouse, at age four or five I sat on a lard can day after day in the “kill room” eating an Eskimo Pie as I watched the process from start to finish. A pig or steer would be led in to the small concrete room and within a short period of time rolled out as two halves each swinging from a hook attached to a roller on an overhead rail. From there the halves would be pushed along the rail and directly into a cooler where they’d age for fourteen days or so.
From either end, sighting down the edge shows a straight tool used a’plenty but none the worst for wear.
While some might consider it odd that one so young would be allowed to witness what went on, but I thought it no more unusual than watching my friend’s father unpack and hang dresses on racks in his clothing store, or watching another childhood friend’s father arrange apples in bins at his grocery.
As we all grew into teenagers, able to participate in the trades, I was skinning and butchering; another was telling farm women how nice they looked in that dress; and the other was running the cash register in the grocery store.
Back in those days, the early 1950s, there were no games – no horsing around and most certainly no cruelty associated with killing and processing. From what I’ve seen, the slaughterhouses of today, some, not all, operate under an entirely different code of conduct. Thinking back on it, about the only bad memory I have related to “the kill room” is the time I thought it might be a fun place to take a date. Turns out she was a screamer. Who knew? I remember she made me take her home immediately even though she hadn’t gotten all that much blood on her sweater.
the devil takes a witches soul, while her accomplice is broken for the wheel. 1517.
fom a upstairs window. big low arched window.
