DEAN, MY UNLIKELY MENTOR
This picture looks like my friend Dean and brings back memories. The cold bite of refrigeration, the smell of fresh meat, sawdust and the strong smell of Maxwell House coffee in the 30 cup percolator. Dean added the additional aroma of filterless Pall Mall cigarettes, stale Miller beer and Wild turkey. He was my meat cutting mentor and friend.
I was in High School when I started an apprenticeship at a local grocery store called Persky's. It was a locally owned chain of five full sized stores and a dozen early convenience stores. Dean came from a large religious family. They owned a farm near Canton Ohio. In the 1930's it became one of the early meat processors in the area. They began slaughtering and processing local live stock then expanded to smoked meats, lunch meats and sausage products. Like most local farms in those days the entire family worked so Dean was nine years old when he started working in the family slaughterhouse hog kill shaving hogs.
He was the family black sheep because of his love for fast cars, motorcycles, alcohol and a rough lifestyle. I heard plenty of stories over the years but mostly from other people. When I asked him he would just smile and change the subject. The local Sheriff did arrest him at work one day, I'm still not sure why. Things like that were not my business, I never asked and he never said.
Because of his lifestyle he didn't get involved in running the business. Instead he stayed on the kill floor and became a legend as a skinner. In those days the high demand for leather made cattle hides extremely valuable. 90% of producing a grade "A" hide with no holes or thin spots relied on the skill of the skinner. Eventually automation took over and the need for this skill vanished overnight. Dean was known locally as the best there ever was.
Eventually the business was forced to close because of changing regulations so Dean, after 30 years in the slaughterhouse became a grocery store meat cutter. Dean was skilled at sharpening and keeping a knife edge, he was ambidextrous and was the master of the efficiency of movement. He taught me these skills, except for being ambidextrous but he taught me a few things that weren't as helpful.
The meat industry was a drinking industry so there was a whisky bottle in every cooler. Many of us came to work hung over and almost everyone drank their lunch. Using equipment specifically designed to cut off hands and fingers after a shots and beers lunch was an everyday thing. I learned to begin my day with strong black coffee, a few filterless Lucky Strike cigarettes and a 7 AM snort of Wild Turkey.
The apprenticeship was old school, I got all of the crap jobs. I unloaded all of the trucks, including the swinging beef, did all the trim, cleaned all of the equipment and caught the blame for everything that went wrong. I was shown no mercy, I got harassed and hazed from the moment I got there to the moment I left. I could have quit but I learned to give as good as I got, I became part of a crew that over the years became closer then most families. In those days this rough and tumble ritual was an endearing guy thing. Being mentored by Dean wasn't all bad, he taught me a few valuable life lessons.
At that time everything was processed in house. We received our beef in quarters, whole carcass lamb and veal, pork loins and shoulders, cut all of our chickens and made all of our grinds and sausages. There were large crews and plenty of work.
Being a meat cutter was never my dream job, I was a bag boy with a punk attitude hired before the holidays. They were about to lay me off when they opened up an apprenticeship in several of their stores. I was cleaning the meat department and they thought I was doing a good job so I was selected. I had just turned seventeen.
At first I enjoyed the job but it soon became a boring miserable job. It did allow me to have a new car and eventually rent my own apartment. I got married and when the job market narrowed I had fewer and fewer options. For several reasons I became stuck doing the same mindless and miserable job for almost forty years. Even though I was stuck I did my job well and earned my money.
My attitude about my work was bolstered by what Martin Luther King Jr said: "No work is insignificant. All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence." I also watched this played out by the men and women I worked with and my parents.
There were large windows that ran the length of our self serve counter. As the customers shopped they could watch us work. At first it made me self conscious but Dean told be that I had to decide who was watching who. He said "We aren't in the fish tank, they are". So from that day on I was no longer in the fish tank. This actually changes how I enter a room today, I rarely feel self conscious. I'm even comfortable in front of crowds, except when I have to read but that’s another story.
Locally the steel mills were closing along with the steel related industries. There was a massive movement to the sunbelt for jobs. The grocery business suffered severely because of the loss of customers. Unemployment was over 20% so if you had a job you had to keep it.
There were thousands out of work willing to take your job. Vietnam veterans were returning, our national economy was inflated which made our local economy even worse. During the ten years I worked in the same Perskey building it was owned by five different companies. Dozens of management people with their different management styles came in but soon left with all of their crap in a cardboard box. We went through two years of bankruptcy that ended in the store closing.
Dean got me through those years by telling me during the reign of a particularly tyrannical owner. He said "These people only have the power you give them, suit up and show up, do a days work but don't kiss their ass. You're smart you'll get another job, how you look at yourself in the mirror in twenty years is what matters." That piece of wisdom changed my life.
The last thing he told me was to stay away from money, keys and bring your lunch, that's what they use to fire people. I watched dozens of cashiers, managers, department heads and employees fired for these. I didn't bring my lunch but I was extremely cautious about anything I touched.
Dean had a few drunk driving tickets, one was thirty days in county jail. He had a heart attack, had half of his stomach removed, got divorced and remarried his wife again for the third time.
We became good friends but over the years we lost touch. The last time I saw Dean was in Arizona. I saw him walk past my meat case. He was visiting a daughter who had moved to Arizona. We had lunch, by then I was sober but Dean in his late seventies had this usual three beer lunch.
I never heard what happened to Dean, if he is alive he would be in his late nineties, but I won't count him out. Dean is the toughest man I have ever met. Sure I learned some really bad things but I learned some valuable lessons. He toughened me up and helped me to be my own man.
