Bacon is hot: Meet the guys who helped save bacon's bacon

     Sometimes pulling the thread on a single question can lead to an unexpected story. Here, I was trying to find out when precooked bacon came into being, and happened upon its largely unknown genesis. If after reading this, you just have to visit a pig slaughterhouse, one of Chicago's last, you can do so here.

     My mother never cooked a pork chop. Never once did a holiday ham grace the table of our modest suburban home. For a simple reason: we're Jewish, and such things are forbidden.
     But bacon was another matter. We had bacon all the time. With eggs of course, but also piled high on BLTs, the wheat toast smeared with mayonnaise. She served hot dogs wrapped in bacon.
     Faith is fine, but bacon is "the most beautiful thing on earth," as comedian Jim Gaffigan put it during a routine on the beloved cured meat. "Bacon's the best!"
     Isn't it though? The public agrees. Bacon sales have surged over the past decade. Bacon prices are up 20 percent this year, with supplies at their lowest in 60 years, stripped by voracious consumer demand for everything from bacon donuts to bacon-infused vodka.
     Amazingly, not long ago bacon was in decline. I was examining historical data and found myself reading the bacon entry in The Encyclopedia of Meat Sciences. It noted that in the late 1970s bacon was wilting; a study found that female heads of households were consuming far less bacon, due to cost, the bother of preparation and the trend toward quick, simple breakfasts.
     "As late as 1989," the encyclopedia noted, it was believed "bacon consumption is evidently in a long-term eroding trend."
     What happened? One problem with bacon was that you had to cook it, a messy process. It spattered and popped in the pan. You had to scrub your stovetop or microwave every time you cooked bacon.

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Chicago might not be hog butcher to the world, but it still butchers hogs

Market in Florence, Italy

     Over the weekend I was researching bacon, writing for Monday. Which made me remember my visit 10 years ago to Park Packing, still in business today, one of three remaining slaughterhouses in Chicago. The article came about because I used to print a joke at the end of every column, and the USDA inspector at Park sent one in. I thought I should link to the story in my bacon piece tomorrow. Only I never posted it here. Now I have. A warning: not for the squeamish. And as a reward, tomorrow we'll have bacon. 

     Nine pigs are driven into a small pen. The metal door clangs shut and a man in green rubber boots and a yellow smock goes to work.
     First he takes a hose and washes the pigs down. They seem to like that. Then he reaches for the instrument of death. It is an appropriately crude device: a short metal T-shaped pole, wrapped in electrical tape, with a cable running out one end and two round electrodes protruding from the other.
     The worker —named Daniel—presses the electrodes to the back of a pig's neck and down it goes, kicking and convulsing.
     Pigs are smart animals, and the others instantly realize something bad is happening, and begin scrambling over each other, squealing and shrieking, eyes wide, trying to get away, back through the metal door.
     But there is no escape.
     When two pigs are down, Daniel binds their twitching hind legs together with a chain, and hoists the pigs into the air with a winch. He moves them over a square metal trough. With a deft thrust, he jams a thin knife into the throat of each pig, and berry-red blood gushes out into the trough. Though the pigs are stunned, it is important they still be alive. Otherwise, the blood won't drain properly.
     "Once they've been stunned, they're brain dead," says Ray Ramsey, the Illinois Department of Agriculture inspector monitoring the process at Park Packing, 4107 S. Ashland. "It supposedly makes them insensible to pain. But they never come back to tell me whether it's true or not."
     I met Ramsey after he sent me a pig joke and mentioned where he works. My reaction, like that of everybody else I've told about the plant, was amazement that pigs are still slaughtered within the city limits. The greatness of Chicago was built on the processing of animals—"Hog Butcher for the World" as Carl Sandburg famously wrote.
     But the stockyards closed in 1970, and finding live Iowa pigs trucked daily into Chicago to begin their conversion into sausage is like discovering Al Capone still getting a hot lather shave every morning at the Lexington Hotel.
     "There's not too many left," admits Tom Bairaktaris, owner of Park Packing, which caters mostly to smaller mom and pop stores.
     Park Packing employs 40 people and, today, will butcher 182 pigs, two by two. After their lifeblood drains away, the pigs are lowered into scalding water.
     "I have to spot check everywhere," says Ramsey. "They can't go into the water while still alive."

1 TO 2 PERCENT TOO ILL TO EAT

      From the water, the pigs are shunted to a large device, made of curved ribs of metal. The device tumbles the pigs to remove their hair. Each pig weighs 185 pounds, about the size of a human, and is a pinkish hue very similar to Caucasian flesh. Pigs can sunburn. The sight of a pair of large, wet, freshly killed pigs loudly tumbling around and around is not pleasant.
     After, their hooves are removed and the back legs are attached to a gambrel—a metal armature—and the pigs are hoisted up. They are conveyed from station to station along an overhead track, an invention that revolutionized meatpacking a century ago.
     The remaining hair is burned off with a torch, the pig is shaved, and the process of cutting apart the pig begins. The rectum is removed—they call it "dropping the bung"—and the pig is split to the chin.
     Ramsey draws a knife, reaches into a hog carcass, and begins slicing up a large, bean-shaped bulb of flesh—the mandibular lymph node.
     "We're supposed to cut them as many times as we can," he says, making thin slices. "I'm looking for inflammation, hemorrhaging."
     The innards are taken out, a wet, sloppy sack, liquid still sloshing around within the translucent yellow intestines. They're dumped on a metal table. Ramsey palpates the purplish brown liver with his fingers.
     "Sometimes you find worms," he says.
     One or two in 100 pigs are rejected as too ill to eat; most have ailments that don't affect their edibility.
     "About 80 percent of the pigs have bronchitis or pneumonia," he said. "That doesn't mean the meat is unusable."
     Loud Spanish music plays—except for Ramsey, the workers are Hispanic, many related, most from the same city, Guanajuato.

ALL PARTS CAN BE BOUGHT

     A living pig's temperature is slightly higher than a human's—about 102. It takes six hours for the pigs to cool to 37 degrees. That's when Ramsey stamps them with an Illinois-shaped stamp; the purple ink is really blueberry juice.
     Then the pigs are cut apart—heads off, torsos divided into loins, shoulders, ribs and hams —by workers using band saws, cutting so quickly it makes your fingers tingle just to watch.
     The pigs go out like that—customers divide the large sections into individual chops and ribs. The plant also has a small retail store, stocked with every pig part imaginable, and if you are in the market for pigskin, perhaps to make your own football, it's 49 cents a pound. Pig blood is $45 for a 5-gallon bucket, enough for your backyard production of "Carrie."
      Ramsey's job can be seen as a balancing act. He is charged with enforcing a stack of regulations a foot thick, rules that would give him justification to shut the plant down at any given moment, were that his goal.
     "Our overall mission is to make sure the meat from here is safe," he says. "You have to make a judgment. You have to pick your battles."
     He ends up giving the plant four or five citations a month, demanding that a restroom be cleaned, or that carcasses not be removed until they are sufficiently cooled.
     "You become the bad guy," he says. "But by lunchtime, you're friends again."
     Ramsey is 32, married for the second time, and has found his life's work.
     "I'll probably do it as long as I can," he says.
     It's lunchtime when I finish my tour, so I step across the street to a Mexican diner and order a pork chop sandwich. It seems the thing to do.

     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Aug. 10, 2007

Saturday fun activity: Where IS this?

     The moment I stepped into this distinctive lobby I smiled and thought, "Ooo, Saturday fun activity time!" It's spare, but telling, and while I imagine it is solvable—they always are—it might take some careful cogitation.
     Where is this rather ship-like tableau? What vastly-interesting place is it the portal for? I was there Friday, preparing a story for the paper. I can't imagine many readers find their way there.
     A suitable prize is in order—since this spartan assemblage is located in Chicago, a signed copy of my memoir, "You Were Never in Chicago." And just in case people are stumped until this afternoon—my fervent hope—then I will post a photograph of what was on the coffee table in this particular room, as a hint, so you might want to return then. 
    Good luck. Please place your guesses below. 

Shhh, go to bed. Nothing to see here.

     It's midnight, I know. But tomorrow I'm posting a surprise, one-time return of the Saturday fun activity, which as you might recall traditionally posts at 7 a.m., in order that non-night owls might get a chance to solve one.
      So go to bed. Nothing to see here for seven hours. And if you simply must think about something, look at the above picture, and wonder why I posted that image and not another. It's fairly plain. G'night. 

Trump isn't the problem; it's that people support him

     So I go to the corner to buy a racing form. On my way home, a neighbor runs up, shouting: "Your house is on fire!" I smile and tell him that no, it can't be on fire. He is just trying to alarm me, reflecting his lingering malice because my tea roses placed higher than his in the All-Cook County Tea Rose Competition last summer.
     "No!" he cries. "Look at the smoke!" And sure enough, big billows of black smoke are rising from the direction of my house, a couple blocks away.
     "That's not smoke," I chuckle. "That's just dark clouds. Or if it's smoke, how do I know it's not the house behind mine that's burning? Eh? Besides, what's so bad about a little fire? Happens all the time."
     Welcome to America, 2017. As satire does not always scan in a daily newspaper, I hasten to observe that I do not buy the daily racing form, nor cultivate tea roses, and my house did not burn.
     It's our nation that is burning. Try to find an area that isn't on fire. Congress pours gasoline on health care for millions of the neediest Americans and keeps striking matches, hoping for a bonfire that'll warm rich people. Our recent presidential election was manipulated by our staunchest enemy. Our nation is grilled by global ridicule, our institutions smeared with soot. The president set in power by that corrupted electoral process is a liar, bully and fraud — and since readers sometimes object at that trio of terms, let me point out that they are not insults, nor even disrespect for the office of president, but dry journalistic description, supported by facts. By "liar," I mean a man who continually tells untruths. By "bully," I mean someone who continually abuses those too weak to defend themselves. And by "fraud," someone who represents himself, again and again, now and in the past, as something he is not, profiting from the gullible, selling empty promises that he cannot fulfill.
     If you don't like that description, well, I'm sorry. I don't like it either. But what I like, and what is actually going on in life are two very different things, and it is possible to perceive situations at odds with what you wish were true.
     For instance: I wish I could get excited about the revelations regarding Russian conspiracy. The media, which can be fairly thick, has been intent on the drip-drip-drip of new developments, of Trump’s son Donald meeting with Russian officials promising dirt on Hillary Clinton.
     That is what we do — dig up pertinent facts and confront those involved. But as reporters go through the elaborate kabuki ritual of uncovering scandal, I can’t help but suspect it is a colorful pageant put on for an audience so sharply divided they aren’t seeing the same show. Those who are stunned by the news were stunned already; those who have torched their morality and conscience and patriotism enough to support Donald Trump in the first place aren’t going to renew it now in order to feel outrage.
     “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters, ” Trump said on Jan. 23, 2016.
     It was true then,, even truer now. Give the man credit — he is as he has always been. Trump is a problem, but he’s not the problem. He is a symptom. The problem is that 53 million Americans voted for him, and support him still, no matter what. They have created a closed system where contrary information can be shrugged off as “fake news.” Science is a lie. Courts are dubious if they rule against you.
     Getting rid of Trump will solve a problem, but not the problem. The problem is people support him and will continue to do so, no matter the cost.
     We began with a metaphor, let’s end with one.
     Your doctor says, “I have bad news. Look at this X-ray. This blotch is a cancerous tumor on your lung.”
     You jerk the x-ray away, crumple it into a ball and drop it in the trash.
     “Problem solved,” you say. “The tumor’s gone.”

Radio Flyer turns 100

    Once I pulled a little red wagon down the center of Sheridan Road.
    OK, there was more to it than that. It was the WOOGMS Parade, an eccentric East Lakeview neighborhood event marking Memorial Day and the beginning of summer. Sheridan Road was closed; my boys were perched within the wagon. I'm sure I have an unwatched video of it, somewhere.
    The wagon was a Radio Flyer, a gift, mirabile dictu, of the newspaper, which once upon a time distributed catalogues to employees so they could select presents to mark their various work anniversaries. On my fifth I chose the proverbial set of steak knives. For my 10th, the wagon. For the past decade or so, your gift is you keep your job.
    The wagon proved very useful in carting boys. Not the metal wagon of my youth, but the less aesthetic plastic. Still, it had a certain fat, pleasing roundness, and a compartment inside for storing things. I did not mind it. 
    Radio Flyer is marking its centennial this year. The venerable Chicago company doesn't construct its little red wagons here anymore—production moved to China in 2004— but at least it still makes them, which is cause for celebration. If you are reading this Thursday, July 13, you can join the fun from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Pioneer Court, the plaza just south of Tribune Tower. Radio Flyer will have their World's Largest Wagon, somehow fitting outside what once imagined itself the World's Greatest Newspaper. 
      Strolling out to the garage to snap the above, I reflected how sentimental it is to keep the wagon. The boys certainly aren't going to ride in it again, and by the time grandchildren arrive, if they ever do, they'll have wagons that hover, and no doubt the tykes will demand them, as tykes do.
    This is probably enough for one day but, in case you are interested in the history of Radio Flyer -- such as why a wagon company has a form of communication in its name — I explain that in this late 1990s Christmas story on toys that originated in Chicago. I've left the other toys in, though the entirety, like old toys themselves, tends toward woodenness. 

      Furby may be hot now, but just wait. Odds are he won't stand the test of time. Someday, the babbling little furball may be as desirable a Christmas present as a Hula Hoop; or a Pet Rock is today.
     But certain toys keep their appeal. While they may never have created the intense -- and passing -- mania that the Tickle Me Elmos of the world once inspired, they've done something that is perhaps more incredible: They've survived (though some just barely) and become classics, delighting generation after generation of children who found them under their Christmas trees.
    Here is a roundup of some cherished toys which originated in the Chicago area.

     The Radio Flyer: The definitive "little red wagon" is manufactured on the West Side of Chicago, and has been for more than 80 years.
     In 1917, an Italian immigrant cabinet maker named Antonio Pasin founded The Liberty Coaster Wagon Co., named for the Statue of Liberty. Originally the wagons were wood, but when metal stamping became popular for cars in the 1920s, he borrowed the technology for wagons, rolling the edges so they wouldn't cut little fingers.
     In the 1920s, the company took to naming its wagons after popular figures and phenomena. There was the Lindy Flyer, in honor of Charles Lindbergh, and the Radio Flyer, named for the hot new communications medium. That wagon was particularly popular, and in 1930 the company renamed itself the Radio Steel & Manufacturing Co. (It officially adopted the name "Radio Flyer" in 1987).
     The wagons are still made in Chicago, of wood, steel and plastic, and the company is still owned and operated by the Pasin family. And they still name their products after the latest wave of pop culture: Recent wagons have mimicked burly all-terrain vehicles and been given brawny, sports-utility-vehicle-like names such as "Voyager" and "Navigator."
     Lionel trains: For decades, no Christmas tree was complete without a Lionel train circling the base. The trains were the brainchild of Joshua Lionel Cowen, who, in one of those amazing quirks of history, also invented the flashlight.
     He put a small electric motor in a model train, and began selling them by catalog in 1903. The company had some close calls over the years. It nearly went bankrupt during the Great Depression, then came up with an offering that hit the public fancy: a handcar pumped by a Mickey Mouse character. The handcar was the top toy in the nation in 1934, and it saved the company. Today a large part of Lionel's business is the adult hobby market -- a basic set runs a hefty $ 150 or so -- but nostalgic adults still buy their kids Lionel trains at Christmas, whether the children want them or not.
     Raggedy Ann: Like the first teddy bear, the first Raggedy Ann doll was promoting something else. Johnny Gruelle, a political cartoonist in Downstate Arcola, had created the Raggedy Ann character (named for James Whitcomb Riley's poems "The Raggedy Man" and "Little Orphan Annie") to amuse his daughter, Marcella.
     But he also had the foresight to patent the Raggedy Ann image in 1915. His book on the red-yarn-haired beauty, Raggedy Ann Stories, was published in 1918.
     Marshall Field's created the first Raggedy Ann doll to place in its window to promote the book, but customers wanted both the book and the doll. Raggedy Andy showed up two years later, when a friend of Gruelle's mother handmade a brother.
     Ironically, after 80 years, Field's once again isn't selling Raggedy Ann. It has stopped carrying the dolls.
     Tinkertoys; : An Evanston stonecutter named Charles Pajeau was disillusioned with the gravestone trade. Fishing around for a new line of work, he noticed how children played, for hours, with pencils and wooden spools from thread. A classic toy was born.
     He formed the Toy Tinkers Co. in Evanston and introduced the product at the New York Toy Fair in 1913 (the same year another classic, now faded, was introduced: A.C. Gilbert's Erector Set). Tinkertoys were an instant hit -- selling nearly a million sets in 1915, the first year it went national.
     Tinkertoys sold millions of sets, with almost no advertising. And not only kids played with them. Illinois Bell used Tinkertoys to test skills of job candidates; Harvard University bought the sets, in bulk, to study executive decision-making.
     Tinkertoy has been buffeted, in recent years, by construction sets with more flash and sizzle. But it still carries on, its wooden dowels and hubs replaced with plastic, manufactured by Hasbro.
—Originally published in the Chicago Sun-Times, Dec. 24, 1998

Henry David Thoreau: More to the man than a shack by a pond

Walden Pond (Photo by Tony Galati)

     As much as I enjoyed researching and writing this, I enjoyed even more reading Pond Scum, a 2015 New Yorker article on Thoreau by Kathryn Schulz that longtime friend Bob Goebel shared with me Wednesday morning. I don't know how I missed it, but I did, and if you are interested in the perspectives I touch upon here you should consider reading her piece. It's excellent.

     Henry David Thoreau's father owned a pencil factory.
     In between failing as a teacher and a writer, Thoreau worked in that factory. From the day in 1845 he moved to Walden Pond, where his fans will flock Wednesday to mark the bicentennial of his birth on July 12, 1817, to the day he left, J. Thoreau and Co. churned out high quality pencils.

      There is an irony here. Thoreau is remembered best as an early bard of appreciating nature. On Sunday, the New York Times described a line he uttered in a speech—"In wilderness is the preservation of the world"—as "eight words that in coming decades helped save that Maine woods, Cape Cod, Yosemite and other treasured American landscapes."
     They ignored the pencils that underwrote his work. I know why. It spoils the cherished image, to have Thoreau calling for preservation of trees out of one corner of his mouth and promoting the transformation of trees into pencils out of the other.
     Or does it?
     Do the two values, conservation and business, have to contradict? Our government certainly thinks so. The Trump administration began with a wholesale slaughter of environmental regulations. Dropping out of the Paris climate change accords is only the most visible. Clean water rules—that keep mining and metal companies from pouring waste into streams—are being relaxed Ditto for clean air regulations. And we don't have to worry about alarming increases in pollution statistics, since the EPA, now headed by one of its fiercest critics, is going to stop collecting certain air quality data.
     Thoreau describes the type perfectly—"He knows nature but as a robber."
     Thoreau had a gift for piercing concision. That is why I like him, despite his frequent descent into piety. He used his own experience. You need to be in line to inherit a pencil factory to write a sentence like: "I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of."

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Photo by Tony Galati