The Neighborhood Abattoir

Shortly after I arrived home, my mom asked me to go to Lyndel McGowen's for some sausage. I asked who Lyndel was and why we might go to his home for sausage. She informed me that he used to be the butcher at Piggly Wiggly before it became a Choctaw Casino and that now he was working out of his home butcher shop.

We drove approximately 2 blocks east and two blocks south before pulling up to his home. As I surveyed the peeling paint, Dr. Pepper machine and shed out back, recognition dawned on me. This was the house that always had deer hanging up out front during deer season. My mother confirmed this as we knocked on the shed door. Out comes this rather tall man clearly of the strong Scottish heritage his name suggested. He was dressed in a rubber apron and boots. "Oh, Hi Nita, you will want to go into the other door down there, I am in the middle of dressing three hogs and there is a lot blood--go down there and I will be through in a moment." I gaze past his shoulder at a pig hanging on hooks. I realize the strong smell permeating the air is pig's blood. The hanging pig seems to be gazing back at me so I move quickly to the other door.

We enter, Lynden comes through--globules of blood still on the toes of his boots, smears of the same on his white coat. My mom confirms that she wants to buy all the sausage he has--five pounds and that it is $1.50 a pound. The smell is not even marginally better in this room. As I dig $7.50 out of my wallet I feel completely out of my element. Somewhere along the way suburban sensiblities became instilled.

Lyndel returns with five white paper wrapped pounds of sausage in a black garbage bag. Wasn't this a scene in Pulp Fiction? If not it should have been. After what seemed like hours of small talk about daughters, grandchildren, plans for the sausage and me becoming increasingly light headed, we leave.

The next morning, I enter the kitchen and immediately notice the aroma of the frying sausage. At first, I was unsure that I would be able to eat the sausage, considering how bruised my psyche was from the buying experience. But the smell enticed me to take a bite and as my mother promised, it now ranks as the best damn sausage I have ever eaten. It is amazing how much your tastebuds sing when the product doesn't have all the fillers, the sulfites, and what ever else they put in commerical sausages--re-read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle for details. Believe it or not, the best thing of all is that my mom actually had to add some fat to cook this sausage--that is how lean it was!

We had one more morning of Lyndel's sausage before I left. By the time it was ready, I had a Pavlovian response going. Honestly, I don't really like sausage that much. I eat sausage maybe 2 or 3 times a year, but as I ate Lyndel's sausage I wondered how I could get a supply of his sausage to California.