First Impressions

There are few jobs that bring daily stories right into a writer's lap. I mean, ones that you don't even have to stretch for. Skilled writers can, of course, make even something as mundane as a bottle cap interesting...but I am not of that caliber. So I consider myself lucky and, up to this point, wasteful of the bounty that I receive in a constant flow. Don't even ask me why easy conversations with strangers happen so frequently over a generator, but so it is. So, for the next little while, I will try to capture the moments that make this manual labor occupation a feast of stories.

This morning brought us to the middle of nowhere north of Reklaw (the town that wanted to be Walker, TX but, since that was already taken, just spelled it backwards). Usually, we can find where we are supposed to go by looking for the biggest house in the area since these machines generally necessitate a certain level of wealth. This particular rural pocket, however, had no houses that even hinted at such luxury. The road was pretty typical of rural East Texas though: half the houses abandoned and falling down and yards filled with the bikes and tires and cars and trash of generations of hoarders. Right past one such hollowed-out clutter we finally saw the unit sitting right off the road and in front of a tidy pier-and-beam, patched up Craftsman kit house.

The customer came out her door as we drove up and beamed a smile of welcome to us that allayed the fears that tend to lace the backwoods of East Texas. I can no longer hold on my hand the number of times we've been told we better call before we come next time because we'll be shot first and asked questions later (almost the same wording every time). This woman had told my mom her disturbing tale of tragedy when she called for our service, so I already knew enough to imagine that she had every right to join the ranks of the paranoid and preemptively aggressive so common around these Texas backroads. But her smile and the colorful banners waving “Welcome” along her drive stated emphatically that she was fighting her demons in a different way. Her great-granddaughter skipped down the steps as we drove in, completing the picture of wholesome vitality in the midst of the surrounding decay.

I immediately looked to the house at the end of the line next door, since I had been told that this was the source of our customer's nightmare history. The unkempt shack had housed her husband's murderer. I looked back at her open radiance and tried to imagine her opening her door to the inch-deep blood she had described. The neighbor had been a young meth addict that came looking for money one midnight when this woman's husband was alone. When the husband told the man that he could have money but not for drugs, the man grabbed a pry bar and beat him to death. Looking at the little girl, she told us that her great-granddaughter was in her house down the road that night and she sat up in bed at midnight, looked out her window with her special-for-Grandpapa smile, and waved goodbye.

The old woman and the little girl planted flowers together as we worked on the generator. There were only moments where the agony bled through. “This is what keeps me going,” she said as she caught me watching the two of them, and her smile was the saddest joy I think I have ever seen.

***

In the afternoon, we went even deeper in the sticks to a family-run meat-processing business. Anyone who has read my Thanksgiving post (mostly about Eating Animals...as in, not eating them) will know that I was not terribly excited about doing any sort of maintenance for a business that I consider close to whatever evil there is. Usually these places have their own feed lot and the stink of misery and filth is overwhelming even from a distance. As we drove up to this place, however, the first thing I saw was a herd of pigs...outside. If you know anything about the pig (sorry...”pork”) industry today, you know that most pigs that are killed and eaten are not capable of surviving out of a highly regimented confinement. They do not breed; they do not root; they don't lay in the mud or the shade...No. They are kept in cells about the size of their body. The females are especially hated as they are kept in “gestation crates” (tiny cells in which they are inseminated, give birth, and almost unilaterally go insane). Often, the sows will gnaw on the bars as they lose their minds, the blood pooling on the ground. All of this is especially heinous when you consider the natural sentience of a pig. They play; they form intricate social bonds; they are also one of the few mammals that have sex for pleasure itself. So, having watched and read so much about these creatures' torture, to see them lounging under the pine trees was a pleasure I had not hoped for. Next to the pigs (10 acres we were later told), was a pasture for the cows. Not a feed lot. There was hay and grass and cows of all different ages grazing together. At this point, I started feeling greedy and began looking around for chickens or turkeys, but apparently the good of this business had reached its limit before the fowl. To my knowledge, there is still not a decent place to find one of these birds that lives a natural life and dies a humane and sanitary death. Still, there was plenty of reason for excitement, and none of the grime that covers our factory farm industry.

The butcher was everything you would think of when you imagine the butchers of two generations ago. He was rotund and red-cheeked and all smiles and Southern charm. He watched and talked as we set the valves and changed the oil on his sap-speckled generator. When we were done, he took us on a tour of his little slaughterhouse. It was a little shocking when he opened the cooler doors, pridefully showing us the rows of hanging carcasses. The smell of fresh blood was slightly nauseating, but I also was quick to appreciate the clean flesh of the bodies and the pristine floor of the cooler. The big question still loomed: how did he run the killing floor? He took us there next and, again, I was surprised by the lack of gore or even dirt. When I made this comment, the butcher smiled and said that they spent just about as much time cleaning as butchering. I saw the hoist for draining the bodies, but I couldn't find the killing tool which was my biggest concern. Finally, I apologized for being so curious, but I had to know what his slaughtering process was. “We shoot them. Well, I have a guy that shoots them. Just can't bring myself to do it.” He pointed to the metal gate behind me and told me that was where the animals were brought in and shot. It should be and is horrifying, but not when compared to the industry standard. Often the animal is not even unconscious when its throat is slit and it's hoisted up to bleed out. This can take minutes, for which the animal is aware and suffering. There are numerous stories of outright torture even (again, especially for pigs) where the killing floor employees cut off pieces of the animal before dealing any sort of lethal wound. So, yeah, a bullet in the calming confinement of the metal chute sounds pretty damn humane to me.

I was glad to shake this man's hand as we left. Who could have guessed that a butcher simply doing his job well could be a hero of sorts.