Horse of a Different Color (16 page)

“None,” I said, “but we didn’t try to sell it; we traded it for whatever people could spare—corn and chickens and eggs and butter.”

“And I reckon you’d have taken pigs and calves and cows if they’d been offered, wouldn’t you?”

I nodded.

“Anything wrong about a trader tradin’ what he wants to get rid of for somethin’ he can sell?”

I grinned and said, “It worked all right for Bob and me.”

“Ever been inside an old-time icehouse?” he asked.

“No,” I said, “but I’ve seen them in New England.”

“When I was about your age I helped to build one over by McCook,” George told me; “that was back in the days when we had colder winters than what we have now. The ice would freeze two feet thick on a pond alongside the Republican River, and some winters they’d put up a couple hundred tons of it. Well, what I set out to tell you was that we started off with an old rough-board barn. First we dug the dirt floor down about three feet and filled the hole in with coarse gravel, so’s to have good drainage. Then we lined the inside of the old barn with tongue-and-groove sheathing, clean up to the ridgepole, and stuffed the spaces between the studs and rafters tight with straw. Irregardless of how hot the summer was, that straw kept the heat from strikin’ through and meltin’ the ice.”

I had no idea what George was driving at, so just said, “I’ve heard that straw was real good insulation.”

“Best there is,” he told me, “if you pack it in good and tight and keep it dry. Well now, this is what’s been goin’ through my head: That bunkhouse of yours was tight enough to float in the flood, so it’s a darn sight better buildin’ than the old barn was. If you’d sheath it on the inside and stuff straw between the studs and rafters, and put in an insulated door with gaskets, I have a notion it would make you a plenty good enough icebox. It’s big enough that you could keep a ton or more of ice in a crib at one end and still have room to hang up a dozen or more sides of beef and pork. The way you’ve scrubbed that house, I don’t see a reason in the world why you couldn’t fix the kitchen up for a butcher shop. Then, bein’ right on the railroad line they’re goin’ to rebuild, you’d have a big edge over any McCook or Oberlin butcher, because in hot weather you could deliver meat still cold out of the icebox.”

By the time George stopped I was sitting on the edge of my chair, and asked, “How much do you think it would cost?”

“Oh, not too much, I wouldn’t think,” he said. “I reckon you’d have to put a sink and runnin’ water in the house, but with the windmill right close by the way it is that wouldn’t be much of a job. And you might want to run a drain pipe to the creek, so’s to keep the dooryard from gettin’ muddied up with water from meltin’ ice and the sink drain. Of course you could use the barn for a slaughterhouse, but with that much killin’ to do every day I have a notion it would get pretty ripe after a while. If I was in your boots I’d build me a slaughterin’ shed right on the edge of the creek bank, with a block and tackle for heistin’ up critters, and a tight plank floor. Then I’d run a water pipe out there from the windmill so I could hose it down after every killin’. And for makin’ deliveries I wouldn’t be surprised none if you could get ahold of a repossessed wheat-haulin’ truck pretty cheap.

“About all you’d need in the shop, it seems to me, would be three or four butcher’s blocks to cut meat on, and a good solid bench, and scales and plenty of hand tools—knives of different kinds and cleavers and bone saws and the likes—and a big kettle for renderin’ lard. To grind as much hamburger and sausage as you’ll have to, you’d prob’ly ought to have a power grinder. It would be cheaper to buy a gas engine than to hire a man to turn the crank. For a job like that railroad contract I can’t see where you’d need much of anything else exceptin’ a few buckets and tubs and meat hooks and one thing another. I don’t believe the whole shebang would cost much over a thousand dollars. In the big cities there’s been a lot of butcher shops close up since the war, and I have a notion you’d find everything you needed in the secondhand stores down to Omaha.”

“Even at that, it would run up my overhead two hundred and fifty dollars a month,” I said, “because it wouldn’t be worth anything when the job is finished. Then too, if more than half the established butchers are likely to bid no higher than twenty cents, do you think I’d have any chance of getting the contract unless I undercut that figure quite a bit?”

We’d all forgotten our lemonade, and for perhaps half a minute George sat with his eyes closed, as he often did when he was thinking. Then he looked up at me and said, “I don’t have a notion that too many of ’em will go much under twenty, but to have a chance against butchers a’ready in business I reckon you’d have to undercut their lowest bid by leastways a cent.”

“I believe I could make a pretty fair profit on seventeen and a half cents if I kept a tight watch on expenses and there was no rise in livestock prices,” I said, “but don’t you think it would be kind of risky to bid that low with the hog cycle due for an upward turn at any time now? I’d expect cattle to follow hogs, and a rise of two dollars a hundredweight on bacon hogs and fat heifers would make it an awful tight squeeze.”

“The way things are lookin’ right now,” George answered, “I doubt me that—leastways before spring—you’ll see any rise in the cattle market that amounts to a Hannah Cook. If the hog cycle ain’t been knocked galley-west along with everything else, a two-dollar rise wouldn’t surprise me none, but you’ve got an ace in the hole against that. All you’d have to do is to put two or three hundred young shoats into that corn field of yours before the price goes up, and without costin’ you another penny they’d grow to bacon size on the corn that got buried in the flood. If I was in your boots I’d put a few old sows in there too; they’ll root far enough down to turn up the deepest-buried ears, and the shoats’ll learn from ’em.”

Irene broke in to tell me, “There’s lots of corners you could cut if livestock prices was to go up on you. You can’t hardly give beef suet away, but you could render it right along with your hog lard and it would make plenty good enough short’nin’ for a railroad crew or anybody else. The Kansas City packers generally always put some suet in their bucket lard, and the price is the same as for straight leaf lard out of a barrel, but lots of folks buy it anyways; it makes just as good biscuits and pie crust, and the bucket comes in handy. Suet renders out kind of yellowish, but if you only use one pound to three of hog fat, and simmer raw patata peelings in it a few minutes to clarify it, there can’t scarcely anybody notice it. Then again if you could sell enough lard you wouldn’t need to use so many high-priced bacon hogs. Sow fatback makes good lard, and a little of it helps hamburger, specially if the beef is real lean and a bit dry.”

“In a pinch, fatback and cow beef will make pretty good sausage too,” I told her.

Irene only looked skeptical, but George told me, “I’m from Missouri on that one; you’d have to show me. But like I was sayin’, if I was in your boots I’d go on over to Oberlin and have a talk with Charley Frickey. Take along your book so’s to show him how you and Bob come out on the bacon hogs and heifers you butchered, and if you have a mind to you can tell him what I figure it’ll cost to fix the place up for handlin’ the railroad job. He can’t no more than turn you down, and if he does you’ll be no worse off than what you are now.”

I gulped down my lemonade, thanked George and Irene, and headed for Oberlin, stopping at home only long enough to pick up my butchering book.

Mr. Frickey seemed glad to see me and let me tell him the whole story. If he was surprised he didn’t show it, but asked, “Would you plan to bid seventeen and a half cents a pound?”

“Yes, sir,” I said, “or a shade less if it seemed necessary.”

“Don’t you think it would be a pretty big undertaking for a boy of your age with no more experience than you’ve had in the butchering business?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” I answered again, “but from what Rudy Schneider said I don’t believe anybody else has figured it out well enough to make a profit on the contract, and George Miner thinks I could hire plenty of good meat cutters at five dollars a day.”

Mr. Frickey locked his fingers together behind his neck and rocked his chair back and forth a few times with his face turned up toward the ceiling. Then he looked back at me and said, “Both of you are probably right, but it’s still a big undertaking for a boy with your experience. Do you have an idea how much financing it would take to handle that contract?”

“Well,” I said, “besides the thousand dollars for fixing up the place and getting a delivery truck, I’d probably need another thousand for butchering stock and meeting payrolls until the checks started coming in from the railroad.”

“That’s the rub,” he told me. “Railroads are mighty slow pay and you could have several thousand dollars on the books before you collected a dime.”

“Couldn’t I give the bank an assignment of the amounts due me as security for loans?” I asked.

“Because of the judgment against you, that’s the only way I could make you a loan of any amount,” he said; “that and a mortgage on the equipment and butchering stock. I’ll think it over, but in competition with established butchers I really don’t believe you’d have much chance of getting that contract anyway. How long before you’d have to mail in your bid?”

“I’m not going to mail one in,” I said. “This weekend I’m taking two carloads of hogs to Omaha. If I could get the financing I’d go to see the buyer for the railroad’s commissary department on Tuesday and try to make a deal with him. That’s why I need to know about the loan this afternoon.”

Mr. Frickey rocked and looked at the ceiling another minute or two, then he let his chair come down with a thump and told me, “Go ahead and see what you can do. I doubt you’ll get to first base, but it won’t cost anything to try, and if you can get that contract at a profitable figure the bank will finance you up to five thousand dollars. That’s the best I can do.”

I thanked him, hurried to the depot, changed the routing on my cars to Omaha, and wired my agent there that I’d arrive on Fourth of July morning with two hundred prime bacon hogs.

17

Mother’s Sausage

M
Y HOG CARS
had been spotted at the shipping pens, so I thought it would be better to put water barrels into them before going home, rather than having to fuss with them next day. Besides, I was anxious to find out if John Bivans was going to bid on the railroad contract, so I drove up to his market for the barrels.

I didn’t like to come right out and ask John if he was going to bid, so while he was helping me load the barrels into the Maxwell I said, “I’ll sure be glad when I can ship out of Cedar Bluffs again, and it shouldn’t be too long now. I hear the railroad’s putting its whole construction crew into Beaver Valley next month to rebuild the line.”

“That’s right,” he said, “and they’re going to contract locally for steak and chops to feed the crew, but I don’t aim to bid. My trade would buy the left-over hams and sidemeat if it wasn’t too fat, and farmers will always take sausage if it’s good and tasty, but I’d be stuck with tons of fatback and tough cow beef that I couldn’t get rid of. I like to gamble as well as any other man, but this is one poker game I’ll stay out of.”

I’d realized from the start that I’d probably lose the friendship of the butchers who had been my livestock customers if I were to underbid them and get the railroad contract, but John Bivans was the only one I really cared about. It was a big relief to have him tell me he was going to stay out of the game. The Maxwell’s gears always clattered before they’d mesh, and she backfired a couple of times when I warmed up the engine for a start. Over the racket I called out, “Thanks for the barrels, John. Mind if I sit in and draw a hand in your place?”

I don’t think he understood that I meant to bid on the contract, but as I pulled away he shouted, “Sit right in and have fun, Bud, but don’t try to fill any belly straights.”

John’s saying that farmers would always buy sausage if it was good and tasty set me to recalling my boyhood, and as I lugged water to fill the barrels I found myself going over every detail of the first sausage-making I could remember.

1907 was not only the gold-panic year, but Colorado had a crop failure. The officers at Fort Logan were the only people in our area who had any money to spend, and their wives would buy only the choicest cuts of meat, so our storekeeper couldn’t take whole sides of beef or pork from farmers. Like our neighbors, we had to let our grocery bill pile up a little that spring and summer, but in the fall my father butchered our three hogs and turned the loins, hams, and bacon over to the storekeeper to settle our bill. At the same time, our nearest neighbor butchered a young cow and turned the rounds, loins, rib roasts, and shoulder clods in on his bill. His family was left with no meat for the winter except shortribs and stew beef, while we had only pork shoulders, fatback, and trimmings. So that both families might have a little variety, my father traded two pork shoulders for the beef neck. Then my mother did some experimenting.

The neck was tough and dry, and the fatback almost pure fat. Neither was very good eating, but Mother thought it might make fairly good sausage if moistened and highly seasoned. She sent me to Fort Logan for all the stale baker’s bread the grocer had, a pound of bulk sage, half a pound of ground black pepper, an ounce of cayenne, and two ounces of ginger. That evening we set to work making sausage, using half fatback and the other half a mixture of beef neck and lean pork trimmings. Each time Father ground a dishpanful Mother soaked a five-cent loaf of bread in water and crumbled it, dripping wet, onto the meat, then added what seemed to me a tremendous amount of sage, salt, and black pepper, along with a generous pinch of cayenne and two of ginger. After she’d mixed the mass thoroughly she had Father put it through the grinder again, using the finest cutting disks we had. My older sister and I shaped the reground meat into patties, fried them, packed them in stone crocks, and covered them with hot fat from the frying, so they’d be sealed airtight and would keep all winter.

I thought that was the best-tasting sausage ever made, and I wasn’t alone in thinking so. Before the week was out, every neighbor within miles had been to our house for Mother’s recipe. More than a thousand pounds of sausage were made by it that fall, fried, and packed away in fat for the winter.

Since Colorado farmers had liked that kind of sausage, it seemed to me that Kansas farmers might like it too. If they did, and I got the railroad contract, it would not only give me an extra market for beef leftovers but would also make it possible to use a considerably cheaper grade of hogs. By the time the barrels were filled I’d decided to try making some of that sausage myself. Knowing I’d have a lot of experimenting to do, I bought sixty pounds of the same ingredients Mother had used, a meat grinder, scales, large pans, and a big block of ice.

George was doing his evening chores when I passed the Miner place, so I just stopped in the road a minute and called to him that Mr. Frickey would make me a loan if I got the contract, and that I’d be over in the morning to tell him about it. I got home at sunset, and it was nearly dawn before I’d made a batch of sausage that seemed to have the same flavor and texture that my mother’s used to have. I’d kept careful records of what I’d put into each batch, right down to an eighth-ounce of salt, so there was no great trick to working out a recipe for making a hundred-pound batch like my best one.

I totaled the exact amount of each ingredient in all the rejects, put them together, and added just enough more of each to make up the amount needed for a fifty-pound batch according to my recipe. After regrinding, the sausage was a bit finer grained than my mother’s used to be, but the flavor seemed very close to the same. I divided the batch into packages, according to the family size of each man who would be bringing me hogs that day, then buried them in a tub of chipped ice.

As soon as I’d finished with the sausage I diced three pounds of fatback and one of beef suet, rendered it slowly, and simmered potato peelings in it. Then I strained a quart jar of the hot fat through a clean cloth, and it cooled out nearly as white as leaf lard.

It was sunup by the time I’d set the shortening to cool; too early for Effie to have the switchboard open, but we could reach any other phone on our line by cranking the right combination of rings. I knew that George would already be at his morning chores, and that Irene would be starting to put breakfast on the stove in a few minutes. So would every other farmer’s wife up and down Beaver Valley, and every one of them would run to pick up the receiver if anybody else on the line had a phone call, so one had to be careful what he said.

I shaped a dozen sausage patties from the last experimental batch I’d made, put them on to fry slowly, and cranked the Miner’s ring combination. Irene was a bit stout and not as fast on her feet as some of the younger women, so I’d heard seven or eight receivers come off the hooks before she answered.

“Had breakfast yet?” I asked.

“Land sakes, no,” she exclaimed; “it ain’t a quarter to five yet. George won’t be in from his chores for another twenty minutes, and I just now put the biscuits in the oven.”

“You know, I’m shipping hogs today and won’t be back till the middle of next week,” I said, “so I didn’t get in any groceries. Could I bum a bite of breakfast if I came over?”

“Outside of eggs, I don’t know what in the world I’ve got that you could eat,” she told me, “but come right on over. Breakfast will be on the table in twenty minutes, and leastways there’ll be some good hot coffee.”

When I came back from the telephone the sausage patties were sizzling in their own fat, the bunkhouse was fragrant with the smell of sage, and the bottoms of the patties were a light golden-brown when I turned them over, just as Mother’s used to be. I stowed my jar of shortening and a sample of the raw sausage in the Maxwell, then started the engine and went to feed old Kitten while it warmed up. With everything ready to go, I drained most of the fat from the frying pan, covered it with a clean dishtowel, and drove to the Miner place.

George was washing his face and hands at a basin on the back stoop when I turned into the dooryard, and Irene called to me from the kitchen doorway, “You’re right on time; I just now put breakfast on the table.”

I climbed out of the Maxwell, reached for the frying pan, and called back, “I’m sure much obliged to you, and I brought along what I could with me.”

“There was no need of you doing that,” she told me. “There’s plenty of eggs and milk, and I warmed up some chicken fricassee left from last night’s supper.”

As I started up the walk George splashed a double handful of cold water over his face, then straightened up to dry it vigorously with a rough towel. When I passed him he sang out, “By jingo, that sausage smells good, son! Where’d you get it?”

“At Norton,” I told him. “I went over there after I’d talked to Mr. Frickey.”

Then I passed the frying pan to Irene and said, “I believe I’ll use a little of that soap and water myself. Come to think of it, I haven’t washed my face yet this morning.”

George flung the water out of the basin, rinsed it with more from the bucket, and told me, “Help yourself, and then come on in to breakfast; I’m curious to hear what Charley Frickey had to say to you.”

When I went in the table looked more as if it were set for dinner than breakfast. My sausage patties, seven or eight fried eggs, and as many thick strips of bacon were on a big platter at the center. A smaller one was mounded with hashed brown potatoes. Beside them sat a bowl with browned pieces of chicken peeping through creamy yellow gravy. There was a heaping plate of hot biscuits, a bowl of applesauce, a pound or more of butter, a pitcher of milk, another of cream, a jug of syrup, and a half-gallon pot of steaming coffee.

We were no sooner seated than Irene passed me the bowl of chicken, saying, “There was only half of the breast and one thigh left, but along with some eggs and milk maybe you can make out. My lands, I don’t know what keeps you from starving to death! Always on the run like there was a fire someplace, and no good solid meat to eat or potatas and biscuits and the likes.”

“Don’t you worry about me,” I told her. “I’ve been on this diet for two and a half years, and I’m a lot stouter now than when I went on it.”

While I spooned out the chicken George helped himself to a couple of fried eggs, a couple of sausage cakes, a mound of potatoes, a biscuit, and a wedge of butter. As Irene poured the coffee he cut off a bite-sized piece of sausage, balanced a quarter of a fried egg on top of it, and said, “It didn’t surprise me none to hear that Charley Frickey would back you on that railroad contract, but I’m kind of curious to hear what he had to say about it.”

I was telling about showing Mr. Frickey my book when George put the forkful into his mouth, but before I could finish the sentence he broke in, “By jingo, I never tasted sausage the likes of this before. Where’d you say you bought it?”

“At the new butcher shop that opened next to the department store over at Norton,” I said. “Do you like it?”

“Tain’t bad,” he said. “Kind of hot tastin’ and sagey, but it ain’t bad at all. It must be that butcher’s Eyetalian, or maybe Mexican. Both of ’em like their grub spicy.”

I didn’t make any comment, but went on from where George had interrupted me, repeating almost word for word the conversation I’d had with Mr. Frickey. As I talked both George and Irene finished their first sausage pattie and started on another. George seemed intent on every word I said, but I couldn’t help seeing that Irene could hardly wait for me to finish. The moment I did, she told us, “I’d bet a cookie there’s chili powder in this sausage, and it seems like I taste a smidgen of ginger in it too.”

“I wouldn’t doubt me,” George told her, then turned back to me and said, “By gosh, I didn’t suppose railroads would be slow pay, not the way they make us farmers come through the rye for freight bills almost before a car’s unloaded, but Charley wouldn’t have told you that without he knew what he was talkin’ about. That does make it a horse of a different color, don’t it? A bill could pile up awful fast on five hundred pounds of meat a day, and you could find yourself squeezed by that limit of five thousand. The hog cycle bein’ where it’s at right now, and you havin’ all that buried corn over there that’s bound to sprout and go to ruin before long, you’d ought to have leastways a thousand dollars that you could put into young shoats right off the bat. Then, like you told Charley, besides what it costs to fix up the place and get a truck, you’d need another thousand for heifers and payrolls and one thing another. But if the railroad’s liable to let your bill run up . . . What did Charley say when you told him you might shade that seventeen-and-a-half-cent price if you had to?”

“Nothing,” I told him. “He just nodded his head as if he thought it would be all right.”

“You’re better at doin’ sums in your head than what I am,” he said. “If you could get the railroad to pay your bills at the end of every week do you reckon you could afford to shade that price as much as a cent?”

“I could if I got all the lard business for the job at a fair price,” I said, “and if Kansas farmers would buy the kind of sausage you’re eating.”

“Of course they’d buy it,” he told me just a bit irritably, “but what’s that got to do with the railroad contract?”

“Plenty,” I said. “That’s cow-beef-and-fatback sausage; the kind I told you about yesterday. Irene’s right about there being ginger in it, but it’s cayenne pepper instead of chili powder that gives it most of the hot taste.”

I told them about my mother’s inventing that kind of sausage the year Colorado had the crop failure, and of our neighbors liking it so well that they made hundreds of pounds by her recipe. Then I recited the whole conversation I’d had with John Bivans, and said, “It seemed to me that if John’s farm customers preferred tasty sausage to hamburger they might like the highly-seasoned kind that Colorado farmers used to like, so I went over to Norton for the makings and spent all night experimenting to find the right combination. If I could sell a fairly good amount of it I could use a cheaper grade of hogs as well as getting rid of my least salable beef leftovers, so I could easily cut the railroad bid a cent, or even more if I could get lard compound included in the contract.”