"KICKING PIGS IN THE REAR END FOR A LIVING"

My first contact with the Stock Yards must have been in 1943. We had moved to East St. Louis from Springfield in the summer of 1942. My cousin, Jim Mueller, worked at the Yards driving sheep at night, and I went to work with him on a few occasions. They say that once you get manure on your shoes it never wears off. The next summer (in 1944) I got a job with theYard Company driving cattle. This didn't last too long as I was nearly killed by a big bull, which was my own fault. I also had to work on the cleanup gang some days and this was a dirty, smelly job. It consisted of shoveling manure into carts to be hauled away. Although I was just fifteen and you were supposed to be age sixteen to work, the war was in full swing so they didn't ask too many questions. Manpower was very scarce.

After my near tragic accident, I quit the Yard Company. One of my best friends, Joe Marty, was working in the sheep house for Gant Commission Co. I went over there to tell him that I had quit. He said the other boy who was working with him just had an argument with the boss and left that same morning. The boss was Ollie Schmidt. Ollie hired me on the spot and I started the next morning. Joe and I worked together for three summers. In 1947 1 graduated from high school and intended to get a job at the stock yards post office. I ran into Bill Gant who told me that he was looking for a yardman. He offered me a job and I took it. The salary for my summer work had been $25 a week. I was now full time and earned twice that amount.

All of the young men who worked there owed a lot to Jess Peck as he was willing to break you in and show you the He sometimes worked the night shift. People who drove sheep to the pens at night included Jim Mueller, Tom Kearns, Dick Nealon, Bob Dineen, Joe Marty and Bud Steward. Working nights was a great experience and a lot of fun. We got the work done but also had time to fool around. Thursday night was usually slow and we would go over to the hog house and kill rats to pass the time. We put a hose in the boxes that held the water pipes, turned it on and waited for the rats to come scurrying out. It was a game to see who could kill the most. So many in a night made you an "Ace." Others who worked in the sheep house included Joe Kokotovich, Ralph Dekum, Paul Brown and Eddie James.

In 1949 1 began working for a different firm called Producer's Live Stock. The head salesman was Charlie Sage, sow salesman Don Murphy and boar salesman Tom McTigue. The yardmen were Luke Hunt, Bill Carmichael, Mike Lundy, Louie Pearse, Ralph Heepke and Mike Bakay. There was one particular time when I sold 3,000 hogs in a day - a once in a lifetirne event. Back in those days the Yard was getting runs from anywhere to 10,000 to 20,000 hogs a day. At the same time there would be 4,000 to 9,000 cattle and 2,000 to 5,000 sheep. When I went to work at the yards there were over forty commission firms. They belonged to the Live Stock Exchange which controlled most facets of buying and selling. Buyers for the packing firms included: LeFlore Harris, Harry Radel, Jim Fenton, George Gentsch, Gant Redman, Harry Nichols. Bob Jezierski, Harry Putnam, Gene Doyle, Bob Rice, Tom Clark, Elmer Ralston, Rollie Mayes, Frank Foxx. Frank Mulcahay; Larry Feaman, Guy Kramer, Gene Heiser. Order Buyers included: Murray Watkins, Wally Potts, Byron Gillock. Hoot Gillock. Fred Maddux, H. L. Sparks, Ed Divine, Brod Simpson, Bill Kenny, Dutch Conrad, Jake Knapp, Bill Pearse, John Delmore, Dave Ganey, Jack Ganey, Clyde Landrum, Bob Miller, Bud Steward. Speculators or traders included: Hank Green, Monk Shields, Tony Hegger, Al Hegger, Henry Hegger, Vern Evans, Ray Gousha, Steve Doyle, Wally Farrow, Joe Sutter, Charles Ganey, Austin Murphy, Bart Murphy, Paul Deems, Jesse Deems, Barney Benson, Frank Benson, and Fred Munger. Commission Firms included: John Clay; Woodson Fennewald; Harrison; Buechler; Hensley-Andrews; Moody; Stewart-Carson-White; C. C. Carter; W. E. Gant; Hog Commission; National; Wilson-Shields; McNeilly Brothers; Pool; Skeets Rodgers-, RogersNichols; Cassidy Southwest; Marshall; Louie Daniels; Harry Daniels; Bill Penny; Rigney; Caudle; Leiner; Cecil; Creson, Underwood, McPherson-Sutter and Robertson; Wooten Faddis and Dillinger; McClure; Sanford.

The yards opened for business in 1873 and with the exception of the Hotel and Exchange Building, it was -wooden construction. The cattle yards' flooring was originally cypress planking and later paved over with brick. The sheep barn was of heavy timber and the rafters and beams were joined by wooden pegs. The hog house I worked in was built during the Depression with ten-cents-an-hour labor. It was of poured reinforced concrete. There were three floors but the top level was never completed. I heard that this was taxed as an incomplete building which saved money.

In its heyday, the bank was a clearing house for the Federal Reserve Bank in St. Louis. Everything at the bank was livestock - no home mortgages or auto loans. The yards were originally built for railroad deliveries and all gates opened toward the rail chutes. As truck deliveries replaced the railroads, a whole new receiving system had to be built. By the time I left in 1974, everything coming in was by truck.

There were all sorts of support business at the yards including lumber companies, farm supply stores, fertilizer plants, bars. clothing stores and rendering operations. Mere boys of eleven or twelve years of age delivered telegrams on bicycles. I loved to sit and listen to old-timers talk about the old days - about fortunes made and lost in the trading process, and the time when Jack Dempsey (the boxer) used to work there as a laborer.

Most of the dealing at the yards was honest and reputable, except for some shady black market operations during World War II. A good many young men went to work there right out of high school. Brother Henry Heidemann from Central Catholic used to get disgusted that so few boys went on to college. He once said: "Instead of awarding diplomas we should give these boys a bus token and a map of the Stock Yards."

Like many businesses, the Yards had a lingo all its own. A jackpot was a drove of stock which had more than one owner; sorting was the process of separating the livestock according to ownership, weight and grade; weighed-up meant being finished for the day working the country meant going to the farms to solicit business; feeders were animals that had not attained full weight and maturity; culls were defective animals who had perhaps an injury or an open wound. These were sent to the rendering plant. This was the only part of the yards that I never visited because I couldn't stand the stench. Phillips 66 hogs were animals that came from the South and had been fed a poor diet, resulting in inferior meat. Razorbacks were hogs that had never been around humans until rounded up and sent to the Yards. With their sharp tusks, they could easily rip you open. Monk Smith was once cut by a boar and one hundred stitches were needed to close the wound.

The commission men then came to their "alleys" and went through a sorting process to show the stock to best advantage. The market opened at 8:00 a.m. The prospective buyers would then begin to trade with the salesmen trying to secure a high price and the buyer trying to get a discounted price. The dickering went back and forth until there was a "meeting of the minds." It then became the obligation of the seller to weigh and deliver the stock at the agreed on price. Some of the animals were bought by local packing houses which immediately sent the animals to be slaughtered. Others were purchased and shipped to various slaughter houses throughout the country. The commission company then prepared a bill that was given to the buyer. It was expected to be paid within twenty-four hours. This was done on the honor system with your "word" being your bond. If a buyer or seller tried to renege on a deal, their reputation was ruined. Naturally, some minor disputes arose but they were usually settled quickly and amicably. Old-timers called this the Danish System. You never heard the ring of a cash register. Everything operated on a system of trust.

This doesn't mean that the place was free of deception. Since the brick floors of the hog pens were uneven, some pens showed animals differently than others. This was important since at one time "light" hogs (roughly 2 10 pounds) sold better than "heavy" hogs (around 225 pounds). At other times heavy hogs were in big demand. Sellers used different pens to make prospective buyers think that animals were either slightly heavier than they appeared, or somewhat lighter, depending on what was selling well at the time. Although accurate scales were later used to determine the exact amount of the bill, animals were originally bought by sight according to perceived quality and weight. A livestock man's reputation depended on his honesty, but puffery was part of the process and buyers reciprocated by using every device they knew to buy at a lesser amount.

Some of the other people that I can remember at the Stock Yards include: Lee Divine, Don Weber, Fred Johnson, Gordon Gillispie, Knox McClinton, Oliver Baker, Harry Kent, Frank McKeon, Bill Beihl, Hugh Waldron, Clarence Burton, Dick Denhan, Buck Graves, Bob Amos, Burford Shores, Danny Powell, Bill Swancutt, Walter Cich, Kenny Uhl, Clarence Moore, Bart Floyd, Skip Mauer, Lloyd Littrell, Harry Wright, Art Weber, Bud Steward, Bob Landrum, Arley Farrell, Frank Tucker, John Sprous, Bill Forhan, Cliff Peludat, Bob Lindberg, Ed Smith, Women include: Margaret Donovan, Gloria Von Brock, Mrs. Wilson, Catherine Teahan, Doris Vogt, Ellen Healy, Jean Heepke and Liz Smith.