Their Entitlement To America, Part Five

"Pigs, Cows, Tobacco & Water"

When I was growing up in the neighborhood, the streetcar tracks were still present on our street, but there were no longer any streetcars to use them. Those tracks passed right by our house and made the big turn at the end of the street as they continued over to the next street, which was a mix of commercial and residential. The red brick street, with many a cracked and uneven brick, was eventually paved over, just as was many another such street all over the country. There were railroad tracks only about a block east from where we lived, and more tracks a couple of blocks west, right along the top of the banks of the Ohio River. I saw the changing of the guard, as the old smoke-belching locomotives gave way to the newer model engines, and we kids would stand and wave to the engineers on the old locomotives, just to get them to blow the whistle and toot the horn as they passed by. Then they were gone, forever.

We kids spent a good deal of time watching the trucks pull into the slaughterhouse to unload their doomed cargo of cattle and pigs. The cattle were unloaded on the west side of the slaughterhouse, but the pigs were unloaded just down at the end of our street. The squealing pigs went down a ramp into pens inside the building. Any hog that decided to procrastinate was given a shock by a prod that was hooked up to a battery. We would climb up to the windows of the building to see the pigs enter the pens. They went in as “pigs,” but came out as “pork.” (The meat went right across an alleyway to their packing plant) We knew almost all of the people who worked at the slaughterhouse, and, on occasion, they would hand us some real pork rinds, made right inside. Old Walter was one of the guys who helped unload the animals. We’d go to Walter to find out when the next shipment of animals was due. He wore a cap like a railroad engineer and he had a watch on a chain, which he would pull out, flip open, and say in his own way (Walter had a speech impediment), “Well, the next hogs are due in about an hour.” We kept Walter company on many a day, although as I got older, I realized that he didn’t always see us as “company.” People in the neighborhood didn’t like the smell that emanated from the animals, but eventually the smell was gone, as the slaughterhouse closed. I don’t remember exactly what happened to our old buddy Walter, but I’m sure he’s somewhere at this very moment opening his watch to see how long of a wait he has until the next truckload of pigs or cattle arrives.

In the morning and again twice in the afternoon (five minutes apart) a whistle could be heard all over the entire area. That whistle came from the nearby tobacco plant, just a few blocks away, and it was the sound that work was starting in the morning, and that it was ending in the afternoon. (They made chewing tobacco and pipe tobacco) A lot of people from the neighborhood worked there, and it was common to see people just walking to work with their lunchboxes in hand and a newspaper under their arm. The plant had this huge whistle way atop the building, like on an ocean liner, and the steam that made it sound shrouded the big metal whistle, until the vapor slowly joined the sky. The whistle itself didn’t really bother the people in the area, as everyone was accustomed to it, but the dogs, oh my! Their sensitive ears must have been aching, as every dog in the neighborhood would sit on its hind legs, look skyward, and howwwwwwwwwllllll!!!

The large tobacco plant had a natural spring beneath it. The company had spring water running throughout the plant for their workers, and outside, on the south side of the plant, they had like a big metal sink with running water for the public. People came from miles around with all sorts of bottles, pots and jugs to take water home with them. It was common to have to wait in line to get water there, and when we played baseball at a field just a few blocks away, we’d head over after our games to quench our thirst before heading home, as unlike regular tap water, this water was cool. I don’t know what, if anything, the company did to filter the water, but years later, I believe it was the local health department that made the company turn off the tap. At the moment I can’t recall if some people got sick, but for whatever reason, the water was shut off and the lines of thirsty people were no more. Even years after that, the locally owned company was bought out by a bigger company, and like the people waiting to fill their bottles with spring water, the jobs began to disappear. (A “Word History” is below)

WORD HISTORY:
As-(Just one "s"!) This common word, closely related to "also," developed in the 1300s from Old English "alswa," (also, "eallswa," depending upon dialect) which had a long "a" sound at the end, and meant "just in this way or in the same way." The Old English word was actually a compound consisting of "all," which meant "exactly," and "swa," which meant "so." Eventually the "l" sound died out, although German, a close relative of English, still has "als," and another close relative, Dutch, also has "als." Low German Saxon has "as," and so does West Frisian. Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Icelandic have forms, but they are more closely related to "also."