Horse of a Different Color: Reminiscences of a Kansas Drover

by Ralph Moody

  I told him that I saw, but not what I saw, then got out of there and drove to the Miner place as fast as I could make it over the roads, still in bad shape from the spring rains. The temperature was well above 100 degrees, and when I pulled into the dooryard George was sitting on the vine-covered porch. “Goin’ to be a scorcher,” he called out. “Come on in and sit a spell. I just fetched some ice and lemons home from Oberlin, and Irene’s whackin’ up a pitcher of cold lemonade.”

  “Can’t think of anything that would go better on a day like this,” I called back as I climbed out of the old Maxwell and started up the walk, “It sure won’t be a very good weekend for shipping if this hot spell holds.”

  “Still aimin’ to ship out them two carloads of bacon hogs tomorrow?” he asked.

  “I’ll just about have to,” I told him; “they were all bought for delivery at Oberlin on July second.”

  “Don’t reckon you’re makin’ no mis——Sit over here in the shade, son. Irene, she’ll fetch another chair. Irregardless of the hot spell, I have a notion you’re on the right track. I wouldn’t doubt me that the day-after-the-Fourth hog market will be good enough to more’n make up the extra cost and shrinkage. But if I was in your boots I believe I’d go along with my hogs, and I’d put a water barrel in each deck of both cars, so I could heave a bucket or two over their backs whenever I got a chance. A wet hog won’t shrink in hot weather half as much as a dry one.”

  “I was planning to go along with them,” I said, “but I sure wouldn’t have thought about putting water barrels in the cars. I’ll do it, and I’m much obliged to you for the idea.”

  “I can’t claim much credit for it,” he told me. “It used to be in the old days that a man wouldn’t think of shippin’ hogs in the summertime without he went along to market with ’em and took a barrel or two of . . . ”

  He was interrupted by Irene’s coming out of the house, carrying a napkin-covered tray with three or four tall glasses and a big pitcher of lemonade—chunks of ice and slices of lemon floating on top. George held a brimming glassful out to me, lifted his own, and said, “Here’s lookin’ at you,” took a big swallow, and sang out, “Good gosh a’mighty! That stuff’s sour enough to make a pig squeal! You didn’t make it that way a-purpose, did you Irene?”

  “Of course I made it that way a-purpose,” she told him. “You know Ralph can’t have sugar, but if you’ll hold your horses a minute I’ll fetch the bowl.” As she went for it she sputtered, “My lands, I never seen a man with such a sweet tooth!”

  With a wink at me George sputtered back, “Sweet tooth! By jingo, there ain’t a tooth in my head—exceptin’ only the bought ones—that ain’t stingin’ like a frost-bit ear.”

  Then, as he stirred two spoonfuls of sugar into his lemonade, he asked, “Well, son, what did Doc DeMay tell you this mornin’?”

  “That sugar’s down a bit from what it was a couple of weeks ago,” I said, “but he still thinks I’m cheating on my diet. I haven’t been, though it doesn’t seem to make much difference. But I heard some really good news. On August first the CB&Q is sending its whole construction crew to rebuild the track through Beaver Valley and raise the grade high enough that floods won’t wash it out again. They’re asking bids for five hundred pounds of meat a day to feed the crew through November.”

  “Where’d you get hold of that?” he asked. “Over the radio?”

  “No,” I said. “I was trying to sell Rudy Schneider some hogs when the McCook depot agent came in and told us about it.”

  “Did Rudy let on what price he aims to bid?” George asked.

  “He isn’t going to bid,” I told him. “He said he wouldn’t waste postage to Omaha on it.”

  George’s head came up with a jerk and he demanded, “What’s the matter with that bullheaded Dutchman? Five hundred pounds of meat a day for four months is a lot of business to talk about wastin’ two cents’ worth of postage on.”

  “He said he’d bet that every other butcher within fifty miles would bid no more than twenty cents a pound, but that he wouldn’t touch the contract for less than thirty cents.”

  “What’s wrong with a twenty-cent price when butchers can buy old sows and canner cows for a nickel a pound? That kind of meat’s good enough for fillin’ a railroad-crew contract.”

  “The bids are to be for nothing but beefsteak, pork chops, and pork sausage,” I told him. “Rudy says that whoever takes the contract will have to butcher a dozen hogs and two cows a day, and will have a ton and a half of leftovers that he’ll be lucky to get rid of it any price.”

  “Well,” George said slowly, “that does make it a horse of a different color, don’t it?”

  “I think the butchers are figuring on the wrong grade of hogs and cattle,” I told him. “I kept books on every animal Bob and I butchered last winter; that’s how we found out which grades paid out best. Toward the last we used nothing but eight-hundred-pound hay-fat heifers and top-grade two-hundred-and-a-quarter-pound bacon hogs. The heifers cost only two dollars a hundredweight more than canner cows would have, and the hogs only two and a half more than lardy old sows. Out of the average heifer we got four hundred and forty pounds of beef; three hundred of them good juicy steak, most of it as tender as steer beef. The hogs dressed out to a hundred and forty-five pounds apiece, and out of the shoulders, hams, and loins we could cut seventy pounds of cutlets that were a whale of a lot better eating than sow pork chops. The rest of the carcass was about twenty-five pounds each of lard, sidemeat, and fatback—besides the by-products—but the fatback in those lightweight bacon hogs was lean enough that people were glad to take it as sidemeat.

  “If a man used that grade of butchering stock for this contract and could get pork cutlets included, he’d have to kill only one beef and three hogs a day, and he’d have only seventy-five pounds of lard and three hundred of leftovers to get rid of. Don’t you think that a butcher with a shop in a city as big as McCook or Oberlin could easily sell that much good-quality stew beef, hamburger, sidemeat, and sausage a day at no less than two pounds for a quarter?”

  “I don’t reckon he’d have too much trouble,” George told me, “leastways not in the summertime when it’s too hot for farmers to do their own butcherin’. Why? What you drivin’ at, son?”

  “Most farmer folks like fresh sidemeat better’n smoked bacon,” Irene cut in, “and they use a heap of lard in harvest and thrashing time. Besides that, if there’s going to be men enough on that railroad job to eat five hundred pounds of meat, it’ll take leastways a hundred pounds of lard a day for making biscuits and pie crusts, and frying patatas and doughnuts and the likes of that.”

  “Well, now, I wouldn’t have thought about that,” George told her, “but let’s hold on a minute till we hear what kind of a bee the boy’s got buzzin’ in his bonnet.”

  “This may sound crazy,” I told them, “but I’ve been thinking I might try to get some butcher to send in a bid on supplying top-grade pork cutlets and heifer steak, and to give me a quarter of the net profit—if he got the contract—for showing him what kind of butchering stock would make the most money, and for selling it to him at cost. All I could lose would be a little feed and the time it took to buy and handle the stock. If he could get close to twenty cents a pound, I’m sure a lot of money could be made on the contract—that is, if his overhead wasn’t too high and there’s no big rise in the price of cattle and hogs between now and fall. What would you think about it?”

  “Ain’t you about fed up on partnerships?” George asked.

  “This wouldn’t be a partnership,” I told him. “The business would be entirely the butcher’s; I’d just be getting a quarter of the net profit for the idea and finding him the right kind of butchering livestock.”

  “How do you reckon a butcher with enough shop trade to get rid of that much leftovers could keep the income and outgo on the railroad contract separate from the rest of his business?”

  “He could keep books on it,” I said, “the
way I did when Bob and I were butchering.”

  “Butchers ain’t bookkeepers,” he told me. “Most of ’em does well to keep track of what they owe and what’s owed to ’em, and net profit is a tricky figure to get down to. I’d bet a hat you couldn’t figure out what the net profit was on that butcherin’ you and Bob done.”

  “No, I couldn’t,” I told him, “but only because most of the meat was traded for corn, chickens, butter, and eggs. I don’t know how much Bivans allowed on the butter and eggs that were turned in on the grocery bill, and we gave the same amount of meat for every bushel of corn brought in, though the best of it was worth as much as a dime a bushel more than the poorest. But I can tell you what the net profit would have been if we’d sold the steak and cutlets for twenty cents a pound and the rest at two pounds for a quarter. The heifers cost us thirty-five dollars apiece, and the meat would have brought in eighty-seven dollars and a half. A bacon hog cost thirteen-fifty, and the meat would have sold for twenty-three and a half. We didn’t have any overhead expenses, except about fifty cents for paper and twine, so the net profit would have been . . . ”

  “Gosh a’mighty!” George exploded. “That would be eighty-two dollars a day if a man was to butcher one heifer and three hogs, and his overhead hadn’t ought to run more’n half that much. By jingo, if I was in your boots, son, I believe I’d mail in a bid on that contract my own self. No I wouldn’t neither! I’d go right on down there to Omaha where I could talk to the head man in the buyin’ department, and I’d take along some cutlet samples out of a nice lean young bacon hog to show him. They’d keep all right if you packed ’em in a tub of ice. And come to think about it, I have a notion you’d be better to ship your hogs to Omaha anyways. The hog market up there’s been runnin’ a nickel or more above Kansas City the last few days, and bein’ further north the weather hadn’t ought to be so hot, so you’d prob’ly have less shrinkage.”

  “I think you’re right about shipping to Omaha,” I told him, “but what would I do with the meat contract if I got it? I’m not only broke but up to my ears in debt, and all I know about meat cutting is what little I learned from Bob. To handle a job like that railroad contract a man would need to be a first-class butcher and have a well-equipped shop with a walk-in icebox, and in a city big enough that he could get rid of his leftovers.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” George told me. “Around McCook and Oberlin I have a notion you could hire all the meat cutters you’d have any use for, and at not over five dollars a day. As for you bein’ broke, if you was to talk to Charley Frickey like you just talked to Irene and me—tellin’ him the railroad was askin’ for bids on a big meat contract here in the valley, and what Rudy Schneider had to say about leftovers, and about the kind of heifers and hogs you and Bob butchered along towards the last of it, and you keepin’ book on ’em, and what you’d have made at twenty-cent and two-for-a-quarter prices—it wouldn’t surprise me none if he’d lend you enough so’s you could set up to handle the railroad business; that is, of course, if you was to get the contract at a price anywheres near twenty cents a pound and it called for pork cutlets instead of chops.”

  “Big as the contract will be, it’s only a four-months’ job,” I said. “Wouldn’t it cost too much to build and equip a new butcher shop for that short a time, and after the job is done would either McCook or Oberlin support another . . . ”

  “Hold your horse a minute,” George broke in. “Why in tunket would you put a shop in McCook or Oberlin? The job’s goin’ to be right here in Beaver Valley, ain’t it?”

  “Sure it is,” I said, “but when it’s finished there wouldn’t be enough butcher business in Cedar Bluffs to . . . ”

  “How much trouble did you and Bob have in gettin’ rid of meat last winter?” he asked.

  “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 w
ouldn’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.”