Old Old Story

This is one of the oldest stories that I have to tell. This goes way back to the 70's, or nearly as far back as my memory goes. And before you read any further, let me tell you, for most of you this is a gross story. As you may or may not know, my father is a retired butcher. And I doubt their are many who were better at it than my father. From time to time when I was growing up my father would slaughter and butcher cattle for farmers in the area that we grew up in. At the age of 6 or 7 there really wasn't much that was cooler for me than watching my dad slaughter a cow. But the opportunity to go along with my dad rarely arose. I had come home from school that day at nearly the same time that my dad had gotten home from an 8 hour day of standing on a hard concrete floor in a cold meat department cutting meat for the store that he worked at. The phone rang and it was the farmer who lived next door, Hal Roberts. Apparently one of the kids while driving around one of the barns had accidentally ran over one of their cows and broke one of it's legs. Hal wanted to know if my dad could come over and butcher it up for him. My dad agreed. He sat back down on the fireplace and laced his work boots back up. Then headed to the garage to get a couple of knives. He went to the gun case and pulled out his shot gun or rifle. (I know about as much about guns as I do about fish, so I had no idea which he was going to use to kill this cow, and I still don't.) At this point, my brother, Jeff, and I are begging my dad to let us come along. He said no, like he almost always did. Then we finally told him, that if he didn't let us come with him that we were just going to walk over there anyway, so he agreed to let us come along. We hopped into my dad's old green ford pick up. I am sure my sister and brothers remember that truck. Jeff was holding on to my dad's shot gun or rifle. I got to hold on to the bullets. I was as excited as if it was Christmas morning. My dad pulled the truck into Hal's driveway and as he did we noticed two of Hal's kids washing off a chain saw with the garden hose. What is going on here? We get out of the truck and Hal meets us and then walked us over to the cow, which was now laying on the ground in a large pool of blood, dead as a door nail. We were a couple minutes late to what would have been an even better slaughter than what my dad had had in store. Apparently the kids put the cow out of it's misery buy slitting it's throat with a chain saw. So while I didn't get to witness the killing, I did stick around and watch my dad at least gut the cow. I can still recall the image of the cow getting raised off the ground by the hind legs that were chained to the front end loader of the tractor and my dad pulling all of the guts out. And that hot smell of the cows insides as they dropped to the ground. I think they ended up burying the guts in one of the fields. But that smell of hots guts is a smell you never forget.
I stopped by my parents this past weekend. And on the way over, I drove past Robert's farm and grabbed this picture. Right here in front of the milk shed is where they slaughtered and then my dad gutted that cow.