Blood on My Hands By Jack Scott Preamble November 11, 1997 My purpose in writing "Blood on My Hands" is to tell my children, grandchildren, and on down the line, that I grew up, and lived, in a world that was not the sanitized one of our world today. I lived close to the earth, and life, death, and blood were all part of living. There was "Blood on My Hands." i Blood was a part of living on a farm when I started out 75 years ago. Killing a chicken was almost an everyday occurrence, and hog-killing time was a festive occasion. Just before Christmas, or sooner, it got cold enough to be "hog-killing weather." We usually planned on killing enough hogs to last the year; about three or four was our usual number. They would weigh about three hundred pounds (as lard was needed in those days). At our place, Uncle Fletcher, Cousin Gill Wright, one colored man, and Lizzie would be there to help, plus Mom, Dad, all seven of us kids, and the hired man from the tenant house. We had a large iron kettle, used for clothes washing, and we usually borrowed a second one from Granny's place. In addition, we had an old barrel used for scalding the hair off the hogs. We set up the work site just outside the back gate in the path toward the spring. A stout pole was cut and placed in the forks of two trees to hang the hogs on. The two kettles were set on rocks at the site and wood was stacked nearby to feed the fires. A barrel of water was hauled, by a sled, from the spring, to have plenty of water to heat for scalding the hogs. Plenty of lye soap was on hand. Knives were sharpened and scrapers prepared. The hogs were penned in the team nearby. The sausage grinder was set up a stump in the yard. Stone- ware jars and half-gallon glass jars were scalded and ready. Old lard buckets were brought out of the smoke house. On killing day, the fires under the iron kettles were started before daylight. Breakfast and milking were finished early and just after daylight the first hog was brought out. It was stunned by a blow on the head from a ball pin hammer and then a vertical slit was made in the throat for bleeding and a single tree was attached each rear leg through a slot cut in the tendons. With a block and tackle the hog was quickly hoisted to the pole that had been prepared so all of the blood would drain out and be saved. Lye soap was put in the scalding kettle of water and the water put in a large barrel. The hog was then dipped quickly in and out of the water and lowered to a wooden platform for scraping the hair and grime off. With many working at this, you soon had a clean, gleaming white carcass that was again hoisted to the pole where it was gutted and the head severed. Nothing was wasted--the blood had been saved in a kettle for blood pudding, and the heart, liver and tongue were put aside, for the choice eating. The blacks quickly cleaned and washed the intestines to prepare for a chitling feast on the hill. All the head meat and jowls were taken off for making grapple and the pig feet carefully cleaned and saved for pigs-foot jelly. The carcass was cut into two hams and two shoulders for trimming carefully before being salted and put away to later be smoked for the coming summer The fat bellies were cut into cubes for making lard and the two sides were trimmed for bacon. The back and loins were trimmed and cut up for grinding into sausage. All excess fat was used for lard. In those days of no refrigeration, everything had to be properly prepared. The lean meat and fat used for sausage was ground and salt, pepper, and sage ("from the garden") were mixed in. It was formed into sausage patties, feed, and packed into stone or glass jars with hot lard poured over it while packing. The tops were sealed with lard. The whole process was repeated that day and the next until all the hogs were put away. While the work was going on, fresh liver and other choice meats, along with hot biscuits and cold milk, were brought to the workers to keep them going. The lard was rendered in one of the large kettles and put in cans and buckets. The cracklings were stored to be used in cornbread all during the year. After two days, everything was safely stored in the large smokehouse. We seldom killed a calf or steer as the meat was harder to keep. We usually went in with several neighbors and used the meat while it was fresh. Later on I'll go into my beef-killing days. By the time I went to school, I knew how to kill, pick, and cut up a chicken. I would catch the one I wanted to kill and take it out in the yard. There I would step on the head and hold it tightly with my foot while pulling the chicken from the head then I would toss the carcass in the grass. My foot and leg were usually bloody. I would either bring hot water from the house or heat some in a kettle outside. The chicken would be dipped in the water to loosen the feathers, after which I would pluck them out. The tiny pinfeathers would be seared off with a burning piece of paper. With a sharp knife I would cut the chicken up, with two legs, two thighs, the wings, the wishbone, two pieces of breast meat, plus the liver and gizzard. Early in life, Dad taught us to hunt for rabbits and squirrel. to supplement the meat supplies when the pork ran low in early fall. You skinned, gutted, and cut these up for eating without a second thought. When I was eight, I took up trapping to have some cash for the great necessities of life, such as a twenty- two rifle. I borrowed some traps from Uncle Fletcher and Dad taught me where and how to set them. Skunk fur was in demand for fur coats then and would bring two to three dollars at Burnett's Store. I was so excited when I caught my first skunk that I didn't mind the smell. I knocked it in the head with a stick to kill it and brought it proudly home to skin and cure the hide. I did this outside the yard and got the pelt neatly tacked to a board that I hung under the eaves of the corn crib. Then I had to build a fire under the yard kettle and wash myself and the clothes in the cold air outdoors before going to school. I was late and still smelly, so the teacher made me sit in the very back of the school. That fall I was to catch another skunk plus some rabbits (the skins brought 25 cents at the time) so I was able to order my Stevens "Crack Shot" twenty-two rifle. Was I ever grown up Standards of cleanliness were different in those days. We always took a bath Saturday night, by the kitchen stove. My clothes got so dirty with my hunting and trapping they had to be boiled in the kettle in the yard and scrubbed with homemade lye soap. Everyone else was pretty dirty, too, so I didn't smell much more than they did. We did have to wash our feet every night when we went barefoot. After high school graduation in l940 and a feeble attempt to go to college, I came back to Brandenburg after two weeks away so I could be with Minnie Alice. The old Bud Price store had been run in the past few years by Mr. Bennett, the Meade County High School principal, and Mr. Bewley, who had been teaching. They decided to sell out, so Mom and I decided to buy the store in June of 1940. The store had a good business selling beef and pork along with the groceries. There was a refrigerated meat case with a sloping glass front where the cut- up meat could be displayed. The surplus and larger cuts of meat were stored in the space underneath. The meat was purchased from Fisher Packing Company in Louisville. The salesman called on us each Monday and the meat was delivered by refrigerated truck on Thursday for the Friday and Saturday weekend trade. The beef was shipped in whole sides and then had to be cut into usable pieces and the trimmings ground into ground beef. The salesman taught me how to cut up the sides, (called breaking a side) and to prepare the retail cuts of steaks, chuck roasts, and so on. In those days, a lot of round steaks were used, as well as the loin and t-bone steaks. I soon got the hang of it and knew how to cut up beef. The pork could be bought in sides, but also in hams and loins. The bacon was cured in slabs that had to be sliced. Pork chops were cut to order, as were ham steaks and shoulder roasts. The chickens came in dressed as a whole chicken, and could be cut up for the customer, if needed, though most people cut up their own. After the war, I went to Ag college at U of K, and worked for the professor that taught butchering and ran the meat lab. I helped with the butchering and sold meat on Saturdays. I became quite good at stunning a 1200 pound steer and getting his throat cut by the time he hit the ground. I could also skin and gut him, and saw the halves in two through the middle of the back. The meat was quickly in the cooler. I learned the best way to butcher sheep and lambs. I would hold the lamb's head, stick the knife through the throat with the blade out, and sever the head except for the spinal cord. I would then snap the head back to break the cord. The pelt of the lamb could be removed by "fisting" it off. I would slit the pelt down the belly and put my hand under the skin at the shoulder. This way, most of the pelt could be removed without a knife. I did some special study projects on comparison of Kentucky spring lamb to the larger western corn-fed lamb. We ate lots of lamb in those days. I also learned the best way to dock a lamb (remove the tail)--by using a sharp knife and a hot iron to cauterize the stub and stop the bleeding. The male lambs had to be castrated. I cut off the lip of the scrotum and with one hand would push the testicles down and try to pull them out with the other. They were bloody and slick and hard to pull out. Herald Barker, the old Scotch shepherd taught me the old Scotch easy way. Working in a pair, one partner would grasp the lamb by the hind legs and hold it against his chest by the rear legs. The other would cut off the scrotum, push out the testicles, grasp them with his teeth, and jerk them out. I became quite an expert at this. Another short cut I learned had to do with killing hogs. The blood was no longer saved for blood pudding, and with hogs being killed at a lighter weight (200 to 250 pounds), I would roll the hog over on its back and stick the hog vertically into the jugular vein. The hog would then be released and pump all the blood out while wandering around. They seemed to feel no pain. Other practices I learned were to castrate pigs low on either side. After removing the testicles, the cavity would drain easier. Old farmers tended to make the slit higher up, frequently resulting in swelling from infection. Calves had normally been castrated by making a slit on each side of the scrotum and removing the testicles, but about this time clamps were first put to use. The clamps were a heavy duty pair of jaws that would lock shut when fully compressed. To have a bloodless castration of calves, I would clamp the cord at the upper end of the scrotum, one at a time, on each side and pull down on the testicle to make sure it was severed. Good results were obtained when you were careful. I graduated with considerable veterinarian and butchering skills. When I taught the veteran farm classes in Irvington in 1948 and '49, the closest veterinarian was in Elizabethown. I was in demand for working with the hogs and cattle in the area. I also helped when calving was difficult. Butchering was my greatest skill. This was before the days of rural and small town slaughter houses and the work was still done on the farm after cold weather had set in. I put on several butchering demonstrations for veteran classes in both Breckinridge and Meade Counties for both hogs and cattle. One day we were dressing a steer at Gerards with quite a group around. Ed and Phil were little boys and they and several of their friends were watching. When gutting the steer the liver with the spleen attached is removed and then the spleen stripped off and thrown away (the spleen is full of a nasty green bile). The boys had been getting in the way, as boys can do. When I stripped off the spleen, I tossed it at them. Ed caught it, and it broke, splattering the green bile all over him. One day, when putting on a butchering demonstration in Meade County, I had knocked a rangy, 1200 pound steer in the head and it had fallen to the ground. As I leaned over the steer and was cutting his throat so it would bleed well, the steer revived and got up with me hanging over its neck and finishing the throat cutting job. I was then able to get off while the steer finished bleeding. It was hung up for gutting and, later, skinning. The Blanford Brothers were in my class and lived with their parents on a farm near Bewleyville. One night, about dark, they called and asked me to hurry down. A nice 600 pound heifer had gotten into the alfalfa patch, overeaten, was bloated, and was down. I kept a Trocar in the car for such times. It's a tube with a round knife that fits inside. When a cow is bloated, you plunge the Trocar with the knife into the cows stomach, just in the front of the hip bone, and then take the knife out. This releases the gas pressure and usually works. When I got to the farm, the heifer had already died. I told them if we let the gas out, cut the throat, gutted and hung the heifer up immediately, the meat would be good. They were skeptical, but said it was okay to go ahead. I got the gutting and skinning done, and the sides of beef hung up. The meat looked good, as the heifer had been warm enough to bleed well. They were still dubious, so they insisted I take half the beef home with me. I hung the side of beef in the barn and it was as good as we ever ate. With almost 200 pounds of meat and no refrigerator, we were very generous with our relatives, friends, and neighbors. In those days, you could hang a side of beef in a smokehouse or barn, and it would keep three to four weeks, in cool weather. Hair (actually mold that resembled hair) would cover the outside, but when trimmed off, the meat would be well aged and excellent eating. After we moved to western Kentucky and lived in Marion, my butchering days continued. In addition to the chickens, which we ate often, I got into the turkey business with Bill Lloyd in the early fifties. That's a story in itself. When driving out in the fields to feed the half- grown turkeys, they would flock around the old jeep and trailer we fed from. Occasionally one would get run over, and I would pull off its head and hang it in the jeep till I got back to the house, where I could scald, pick, gut, and cut up the turkey. About Thanksgiving, Bill and I would rent the cannery the school had built for food preservation in W.W.II, and hire four or five middle- aged farm women to help dress the turkeys. We would use a funnel- metal pan that we hung on a rack above a sink. We would insert the live turkey in it with head and neck sticking out tile end. Using a small, sharp, narrow knife, I would open the turkey's mouth, insert the knife up, and into the brain. This would cause the feathers to loosen so more of them could be picked before scalding. The turkeys were then gutted and cleaned and the giblets put back inside. We then put them in tight-fitting plastic bags and took them to stores in the Paducah area to sell. There was also a locker plant in Marion where turkeys, not sold fresh for Thanksgiving or Christmas, could be frozen. The turkey business was not one of the very best endeavors. I dressed turkeys all night long many a night and went to work the next day. It didn't pay off well, and I got out of it after two years. In the fall of '53, when Bill was born, I took a few days off from work to care for Joan, Rachel, and John On that December 10th, after Alice and Bill were settled in the hospital and doing well, I took the older children to Salem and brought a lamb. We took it down in the field, by the creek behind the chicken house, and I showed them how to dress the lamb. We then took it to a local barbecue place and had it barbecued so we would have plenty of good meat while Alice and Bill were in the hospital. I was criticized by some who thought that it was an odd way to entertain the children. When we moved to the Henderson farm in January '58, there was a good smokehouse. Mr. Leek, my predecessor, had been having Ed Taylor, who lived on the farm, cure hams for himself and the Hogues, who owned the farm. I continued the tradition and in 1958 started curing and smoking hams which I've done for the past forty years. I've greatly enjoyed this hobby. My other butchering days sort of slowed down with St. Louis and the E'town Bank. In the late 60's, life was getting pretty tame. A friend from Louisville, Dick Burnett, had a friend, at a sporting goods shop in East Louisville, who had been hunting for Grizzly and Mountain Goats in British Columbia. The area was high up in the Rockies in northern British Columbia near the Yukon line where the headwaters of the Peace River form. We got the address of a guide who lived there. Under Canadian law a guide must accompany each hunter, hunting for big game. Jim Thompson was a Scotch immigrant to Canada in his mid- forties who lived with his wife and two grown sons high up in a mountain valley. He kept several horses, and was a professional guide. About a mile up the valley from his house, he had cleared a small air strip where a very small plane could land in pretty weather. Dick and I spent the summer getting ready for the trip. I purchased a 270 caliber rifle with a scope and an ample supply of ammunition. I got the scope zeroed in and practiced on my shooting skills. I had to have Bob Milby, at the shoe shop, make me a rifle scabbard for the saddle and purchase a case to use for the gun on the plane. We would be in the high Rockies of Northern Canada in late September and early October, so warmer clothes had to be bought. Also, a thick pad for sleeping. We were each to have a packhorse so weight wasn't the problem it is in backpacking. Plane tickets were purchased to Seattle and then on to Prince George, Canada. There a small plane would fly us into the mountains. I bought books on bears and mountain goats and North- west Canada, and tried to know my lesson well. Early in the last week in September, we got into Prince George, B.C. late in the afternoon. We spent the night there, and were ready to fly out early the next morning I had brought one of my country hams along to give to Mrs. Thompson, my guide Jim's, wife. The plane was built for two people, the pilot and one passenger. We managed to store all of our luggage behind the seat, and then I crawled in the back and lay down on top of it. Dick and the pilot rode in the seats. After taking off, we flew west by north-west, into the foothills of the mountain range. It was rugged, unspoiled country. After two hours of flying, we made an uneventful landing in a small strip in the mountains. Jim Thompson, his two sons, and a string of horses were waiting at the air strip. The plane headed back to civilization while we sorted our gear at their base camp nearby. They were furnishing all the food, cooking gear, and tarpoleums to be used as tents. Everything, except the clothes we were wearing, and our guns, was packed for carrying on the pack horses. We spent the rest of that day around camp just getting acquainted. The older son was to guide for Dick, and Jim for me younger son took the ham back down the valley to the homestead. I caught a couple of fish the first night, which we cooked for supper. Just before dark, a large black bear came near the camp. We didn't have a permit for black bear, so he was safe. We did run him away so he wouldn't bother the horses that night. The next day, we started for the higher country. The weather cooperated and the scenery was beautiful. Nights talking and eating around the campfire with the lean-to at our backs carried us to another world. They told of a trapper who camped in the area in the dead of winter. One night he went out of his tent to check on things. There was a wolf standing by a tree nearby. As he jumped back startled, he realized the wolf had frozen while standing there and was propped against the tree. Early in the two week trip we rode high in the mountains near the base of a glacier. Through telescopes we spotted two rams high above the glacier. We fastened the horses in a grove of aspen and climbed over four hours by a roundabout animal path until we were above the glacier and the goats. Dick and I each selected the one we would kill and our shots hit their mark. The practice had paid off. We made our way gingerly down the slope to the goats. I cut the head off mine for mounting and skinned the goat, keeping the pelt and feet. I also took the liver and heart, plus a few choice cuts of meat. Mr. Thompson carried the meat while I bundled the head and feet in the goat skin and tied it securely on my back. It was getting late and after the long climb, the kill, and the skinning job, my euphoria had worn off and I was dead tired. The quickest way back to the horses was down over the glacier. I was too tired to notice the danger, but all of us did get back down safely. We rode back near a small mountain stream, and made camp in the dark. I had been out nearly a week and I was so bloody and dirty I couldn't stand myself. After the sun came up the next day, I stripped off my clothes, and ignoring the frosty air, jumped in the icy stream flowing from the glacier. I came up sputtering and shivering, but managed to get back by the fire and get some clothes on that were, at least, cleaner inside. In the last few days we had seen lots of grizzly sign on trees here and there. Now that we each had our mountain goat, we would concentrate on Grizzly. Dick was feeling a little under the weather from the arduous day before, so he and his guide decided to take things a little easier. Jim and I and two pack horses decided to go off on our own for the next three or four days hunting Grizzly. We crossed shale slopes where even the sure-footed horsed were nervous. We rode into bogs in the mountains where the berries the bear liked, grew. We saw lots of moose and caribou, and even a wolverine. While we saw lots of bear sign, we saw no bear. We got lost, and had to swim the horses across a river to get where we thought we should be. We were wet and cold, so we set up camp by the river, put up the lean-to, and built a big fire to dry out our clothes. We had to chase off a moose cow with her calf that wanted the spot, too. We finally rejoined Dick and Jim's son, and rode back down in the valley to their home. It was a glorious two weeks. We got out okay, and stopped over in Seattle to leave heads and pelts for mounting, and curing at Jonas' Brothers. We parted ways there and I flew to San Francisco to meet Alice and to congratulate her on winning the "Gold Coin Award" for the best small bank advertising in the world. Life was good. Sometimes, though, I am a slow learner. In 1977 I guess I forgot my turkey experience, and went into the veal business. That's another story, but I'll talk about the butchering aspect of the business. It was a Kosher veal business, so I had to take the calves to a Kosher kill plant in Mentone, Indiana. The rabbi would come out from Chicago to slaughter the calves according to Jewish custom. The calves were penned in the plant and killing started immediately on arrival. One rear leg of the calf was hooked to a chain and the calf suspended over the killing floor. The rabbi then cut the calf's throat and jugular vein, and let it bleed. The chain assembly line then passed on to where the calf was gutted and inspected by another rabbi. In the forty years I've been curing hams, things have usually gone well. Bill Rickett, Bud Seymour, and others wanted in on the ham curing, and always helped. We would order country cut, fresh hams from Fisher Packing, and they are delivered about January 10th each year. It is usually the coldest day of the year and snowing. I had built a small smokehouse at the 200 Logan Avenue place in the sixties, and after Jolly bought the place, he still let me use the smokehouse. The hams come in early in the morning and are brought to the house in the pickup. We have plenty of salt on hand. We usually work outside trimming the hams, and they are brought into the smokehouse and packed in the larger wooden salt-boxes built into the building. First, a good layer of salt is put down. The hams are carefully rubbed with salt and packed in layers, with salt between each ham and each layer. We would normally put up about 110 hams. We leave the hams in the salt until mid-February, "30 days or so," Then the hams are taken out of the salt and hung outside a few minutes for washing. A strong wire is placed in the hock of each ham, and they are then dipped in a borax solution (the borax solution keeps skippers out of the hams) before being hung in the smokehouse. You need to be careful that the hanging hams do not touch. After they are dried about a week, the hams are smoked with hickory chips and sawdust over a smoldering heat that does not flame up. They are smoked two to three weeks to get the right color (no cooking takes place). They stay in the smokehouse through the heat of summer and will lose about twenty percent of their weight. This is an important part of the curing process. By Thanksgiving, they are ready to use, and keep another year or so. A few years ago a younger reporter, for tile News Enterprise, wanted to do a story on our ham curing. It was cold in the smokehouse, mice had been in on the floor, and their droppings were about. I told her, in jest, that the secret of curing good hams was to have few mice droppings around, and that your nose should be running and dripping in the salt. If all else went well, you would have the perfect Kentucky Country Ham. She put all of this "word-for-word" in the newspaper and people still wanted some of them. The hams cannot be sold, as the work is not done under U.S.D.A. inspection. The hams have always made great gifts and door prizes. In other times a Kentucky Country Ham was used to get political favors. I hope the story of "Blood on My Hands " hasn't been too gory, and that all of you will appreciate the days that have gone before. The Story Still Goes On... Saturday, December 6, 1997 I thought "Blood" was put to rest, and ready for final copies to be given out. However, I got up at 5 a.m. this cold December morning. There was about a half an inch of snow on the ground, and it was a cold 20 degrees outside.. The night before, I had sharpened the large hunting knife Alice had given me a few years ago, laid out long underwear to go under my jeans and shirt, and put the scabbard for the knife on my belt. At 5:45 a.m. I left the house to go kill and dress out an eight hundred pound Angus heifer for Harry. He was ready to go, so we got out the tractor and went to the small barn where the heifer was penned. Harry had asked a brother-in-law and another man to help, but they said they had no stomach for that kind of job. Harry was also sentimental, so I shot the heifer in the head with Harry's .357 Magnum pistol. (My left ear is still ringing at 9 p.m. tonight.) As the heifer died, we put a log chain on a rear leg and drug it out of the barn and onto the grass and snow with the tractor. It was pitch dark, so we worked by the tractors rear lights. I cut the throat and jugular vein so the carcass would bleed. Then I slit each rear leg just above the hock and put a single tree in so we could raise the carcass. We had a come- along on a large limb beside the barn, so we raised the carcass until I could sever the head completely. Cutting through cow hide is a tough job on a dark and cold morning. However, the blood and guts do keep your fingers warm. I then cut through the belly, very carefully, so as not to puncture the stomach or intestines. The next job was to cut and saw through the Aitch bone in order to separate the rear legs. I was then able to cut around the lung hole and start removing it, the intestines, and the stomach as we raised the carcass up. We soon had the entire job done and the carcass was ready to load on the truck and take to the slaughter house for hanging the sides for cooling and aging before cutting into steaks, roasts, and burger. I was on a high for the rest of the day, feeling that at 75, I was reliving my somewhat gory past. I spent much of the rest of the day with John in Louisville at an office furniture auction, and went to Cave City to join Alice. I do have a few sore muscles plus a ringing ear. The pistol was a heavy one, so I put my left hand under the barrel and cylinder to steady it. I now have powder burns on my left thumb and finger.