About Me and Meat:
My interest in meats started
in 1958, when as a junior high school. I got an after
school job as a clean-up boy at Green’s Locker Service in Elk Grove, CA.
Locker plants were common during the 1930’s and
into the 1960’s, before home freezers became
affordable and commonplace.
In those days, when a much
higher percentage of the populace lived on small farms
and many people raised their own meat, a butcher would
go to the farm and slaughter the steer, pig or lamb
right in the field. From there, the butcher would bring
the animal to the Locker Plant where it would be skinned,
quartered, and cooled until it was time for the carcass
to be cut, wrapped and frozen according to the owner’s
instructions. After the meat was "quick frozen,"
meaning that it was put in a freezer room that was
kept at between -15 to
-25 degrees Farenheit, it was either taken home by
the customer, or was put the meat in the locker the
customer had rented. Locker plant customers could go
into the plant at any time it was open, walk into the
very large "walk-in" freezer, and put their
fruits and vegetables or their meat in their individual
locker, or take it out as needed.
Note:
I should clarify here the difference between a “butcher” and
a “meat-cutter.” Before the days of refrigeration,
there was only “the butcher.” One of the
old-timers who taught me the trade had been a butcher
in the late 1800’s, and was still a meat-cutter
into the late 1950’s. He told me about how he’d
hitch his horse up to his wagon at 3 a.m., butcher
and skin a steer, take it to his butcher shop and cut
it up. He’d then load the meat on his meat wagon
and begin his meat-pedaling route. His customers would
select what they wanted to cook that day from his wagon,
pay him, and he’d be on to the next customer.
When he’d sold everything on the wagon, he’d
return to the shop, make bologna or sausages, corned
beef, etc., and generally end the day when the entire
steer, and/or hogs and/or sheep were sold and utilized.
With the advent of refrigeration
the meat wagon was a thing of the past. Specialization
followed, and with the beginnings of trade unions, “butchers” slaughtered
the animals, “skinners” skinned them, “meat-cutters” cut
them up, and “sausage makers” made sausage.
I was never a butcher, and very few meat-cutters even
at that time were ever “butchers,”
although the name is still generally used when referring
to a meat-cutter.
The locker plant had been
closed for some years prior to Burt Green buying
it and re-starting the business. It was just Burt,
a part time meat wrapper and I who worked there.
I quickly learned how to trim the meat for wrapping,
learned the cuts so they could be properly labeled,
and to wrap the meat for freezing. Soon I was breaking
the quarters of beef into the various sections, called
primal cuts, and learning how to cut steaks and chops.
By the time I graduated from high school in 1960,
the owner of the plant said that I was as good a
meat-cutter as any he could hire from the Meat-Cutter’s Union Hall, and kept me on
as an apprentice. This was for the first year of the
required two-year apprenticeship prior to earning the
designation of “journeyman meat-cutter.”
After completing the first
year of apprenticeship, with his influence, I was
hired at Arata Bros., which at the time was the largest
volume super market in Sacramento, CA. The meat dept.
employed 8 full time meat-cutters, including me,
and I was put on the “steak
table” along with Clyde, a middle-aged meat-cutter
of over 30 years in the trade. Our responsibility was
to do nothing but cut all the steaks and tend to the
self-serve steak counter. Fifty to sixty hindquarters
and fifty to sixty front quarters of beef were delivered
to the store every Monday morning and broken into their
primal cuts (round, head loin, short loin, rib, chuck,
cross rib, flank and sirloin tip) by the end of the
day. Unheard of by today’s norms, the store was
open only from Tuesday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to
6 p.m. From Tuesday through Saturday, Clyde and I did
nothing but cut steaks and keep the steak counter full.
After becoming a journeyman, I had to leave Arata
Bros. in order to be able to work part-time and take
day classes at City and Sacramento State College.
I had attended night classes
after graduating from high school but was more interested
in continuing my education than contemplating being
a meat-cutter for the rest of my life. I worked out
of the Union Hall. That meant that whenever a meat-cutter
called in sick, or didn’t show up for work,
the boss could call the Hall and ask for a meat-cutter
to be sent to his store.
Sometimes this was for one day’s work, and sometimes
it could turn into a
full-time-part- time job.
For long periods during those
school years I worked for Safeway, Raley’s, Lucky’s, Mayfair,
and a host of smaller chains and independent supermarkets,
on a part-time basis, whenever I didn’t have
classes at school. During those years I had remained
good friends Burt Green. Burt didn’t like to
skin the deer, elk, moose, wild pigs, etc., that hunters
brought to the plant by the hundreds each fall. In
whatever spare time I had, I’d go to the plant
and skin them for $3.00 each. I could skin 6 deer per
hour, and that was real big money for a college student
in the 60’s.
.
I received my B.A. degree in 1969, but decided I didn’t
want to be a high school history teacher after all.
I was offered a chance to buy the business, Green’s
Locker Service, in Elk Grove. Without a dime to call
my own after 9 years of earning only enough money to
be able to stay in school, Burt and I worked out a
deal and I bought the business.
After four years, I had expanded the business to the
point that I would either have to compromise my ideals
in order to keep up with demand, or go into debt for
the rest of my life and build a large plant. I sold,
went to real estate school, and have been a real estate
broker ever since.
Over the years, my knowledge of every facet of the
meat business has served my friends and family well.
I hope you will benefit from
our site. I’ve
tried to make it very easy follow along. The only thing
you can really do wrong, is to not do it at all.
Enjoy!
Lee
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