Warning If you’re a vegan or a PETA member or simply don’t want to think about where your filet mignon comes from, you might not want to read the following.
The highest point in the Fargo-Moorhead area is the manure pile outside the Union Stockyards in West Fargo. It was huge, they drove big dump trucks on it. It had roads up it’s sides. It’s still there. Settled a bit and overgrown with vegetation, probably the most fertile soil in an area known for it’s fertile soil. The soil in the Red River Valley is amazing. The silt from the bottom of prehistoric Lake Agassiz. Black as oil, perfect growing anything, especially sugar beets.
In the early sixties, Siouxland Dressed Beef built a new state of the art packing plant across the road from the stockyards. Designed to kill cattle, sheep and hogs it was at that time one of the highest volume livestock packing operations in the world. That wouldn’t last long because that was a time when the size and efficiency of such operations was growing at an amazing pace. But at that time it was a showcase. The offices were on one side of the building, next to the kill floor. They were lined with windows so the office workers and plant managers could look out and admire the operation. Unfortunately the architects or engineers made a slight miscalculation. The conveyor for the sheep kill brought the freshly slaughtered sheep carcasses right past the window. They were swinging as they came around a corner on the line. They hit the window. So these windows that were put in so the white collar folks could admire the efficiency of their high tech plant were constantly covered by a disgusting film of sheep blood and gore. My dad was extremely amused by this.
Hmmm, maybe the architect just had an, um, interesting sense of humour, like the butcher in my neighbourhood who does wondrous things with skinned goat heads and offal for his window display every Hallowe’en.
When I was at the Jeruselum Market last week I noticed a couple of heads staring out at me from the freezer compartment.
Troy McClure: “Oh, don’t get upset, the killing floor is not really a killing floor, it’s more of a grate.”
It dawns on me that many of you won’t be surprised that I grew up in a town whose highest point was a pile of bullshit.
we’re just surprised that it’s taller than you are.
Haha, I’m amused by it too. That’s how it should be. And complimentary copies of The Jungle should be a fringe benefit. I’m glad my meat whacking days weren’t spent in a large operation like that.
None of us are surprised that your meat whacking days were not spent with a large operation.
Sounds like the perfect design!
I was going to post a serious reply.. well, serious for me, but then rache and history_pig ruined it, like they are wont to do.
I’m a wuss. I don’t want to see animal carcasses fling past my windows. That’s just gross.
great comeback, Bob!
sheep blood and gore. sounds like a satanic meat whacking operation, if you ask me.
That is rather humorous. At least the supervisors get a better idea what happens on the kill floor.
Red stains, yuck!
I don’t mind thinking about where my yummy meat slabs originated, or how, as long as it ain’t people, ya know?