Louisville Magazine

JUL 2017

Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.

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LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 7.17 71 Parker mentions that people come by all the time trying to buy her house, which isn't for sale. "We got a big check waiting for you," they'll say. She never did ask how much they'd offer. Cora Hardin lives down the road. She's 86, and in the '50s her now-deceased husband worked at the packinghouse. "But he got arthritis, so he had to quit," she says. Her stone address plaque features a little blue butcher with his knife, a sitting pig beside. On North Wenzel, Stacey Mattingly Jr., 24, says he was raised in Butchertown. "Grew up playing basketball, picking crab apples off the trees," he says. "e smell never bothered me. Don't remember a time of my life without the smell. Know I'm coming home when I smell it." Whitney Rhorer, living on Washington Street since September 2015, notices the smell, says, "e warm weather exacerbates it." But that didn't stop her and her fiancé from moving to Butchertown. She's seen changes since they've moved in, like the installation of a "No Truck" sign. "I've been stuck behind a pig truck and it's not my favorite thing," the 32-year-old says. "Sometimes I can see their tails sticking out of the trailer slots. Makes me think twice about meat-eating." Kim and Sandie Torres-Griffin live in the neighborhood and share the concerns about traffic and pollution, but appreciate the historical component. "Stockyards have always been a part of Butchertown," Kim says. "For me, we're so separated as a culture from our food sources that I like being reminded where bacon comes from. So when people are like, 'Ah, it smells bad in Butchertown!' I'm like, 'Well, your bacon...' is is a real thing, happening all over the country. If we put it farther from our cities, that just makes it more invisible. Where (JBS) is, they're being held to a high level of scrutiny and accountability. I don't consider that a bad thing." Kim isn't a fan of the gentrification of Butchertown, doesn't want to see the demo- graphic circle derive from the legacy of the working class. Kim and Sandie started a food pantry for folks living in a homeless encampment down the road. ey pop over to Freddy's Market for drinks or dog food. Sandie says: "If you lived near the airport, you'll hear planes flying overhead all the time. Or if you live near Churchill Downs, you're going to deal with heavy traffic certain times of year. You chose your neighborhood with its good and bad." Soft pink flecks litter Joseph omas' face shield as he drags his saw across the loin, cutting the spine off the bone for baby-back ribs. e debris covers a tall Plexiglas wall divider behind him. A good blade prevents a shower like this, doesn't spit so bad if it's sharp, isn't such a struggle to pull. Over the years, omas has suffered "the battle wounds": pulled muscles, a pinched neck nerve, a torn rotator cuff. "Some days, I feel like I'm going to break in half," the 56-year- old says. Recently, omas switched to the less physically demanding job of bagging loins. He remembers his first weeks at JBS 14 years ago, how at night he'd have to pry his fingers from the stiff fist they'd curve into, stuck. e grip around the knife was an acquired feeling. Building strength in the hand, all these repeated motions — three or four knife swipes to trim one ham's fat — eight hours straight, sometimes overtime. Errors in ergonomics. Now, new hires perform required stretches before a shift. Sometimes omas will go to the occu- pational nurse station in the plant, where he may meet Chantel Mack. She offers compression gloves, provides a 15-minute ice-therapy treatment on the affected area, followed by Biofreeze, which is like an aerosol Bengay that heats up the sore areas, whether that be hands, shoulders, knees. "ey love that Biofreeze spray," the 48-year-old says with a Southern lilt. "ey'll come down here and say, 'Menthol! Menthol!'" On average, Mack will see 50 to 100 people a day. Mack had only seen one serious injury in her first six months. "First day I started — and I came from psych nursing, OK? Nothing like this. No blood — and a guy came in with the top of his index finger gone!" she says. Shocked into instinct, she iced the finger and the tip, to try to save it. Put an antiseptic solution on his finger. Wrapped it tight, tight, tight. She used the on-site emergency vehicle to take him to the hospital. e employee remained calm all the while, though he was a little upset he'd messed up. "Couldn't save the tip," Mack says. "He made it through, though. He's still here." After something like that, most people would be out. Heck, a lot are gone after a few days, even with worker's compensa- tion and the United Food and Commer- cial Workers 227 Union health coverage. e union, though, is now threatened by right-to-work legislation, which has passed in Kentucky and dismisses the requirement for workers to join unions and pay dues. (One employee says that's $7 per weekly paycheck.) "Twenty-eight years ago, people were lined out the door to work here," Wallin says. "Now people are in and out every other week." (Amazon is JBS's top com- petitor for employees.) Wallin knows the packinghouse isn't the only job in town. Isn't the most glamorous, or the highest-paying like it used to be. "In the old days, people would get a job in the packinghouse and stay their whole lives. at doesn't happen anymore," he says. Sometimes it does. Anthony Ellis knows the day he started off the top of his head: March 3, 1984. "When I started, they were only doing 3,800 pigs in eight to 10 hours" — about 7,000 fewer than now. Sixty-five-year-old omas Ravencroft, aka Cat Daddy, says, "People want me to retire because I'm old. But I ain't gonna do it. I'll tell you why. I've worked here all my life. What am I going to do if I retire? It's hard to find a part-time job when you're 65. I don't care where you go. What am I going to do if I retire? Go to the mountains? What would I go to the mountains for? Click a picture?" Joseph omas has no plans of leaving either. Fourteen years ago he cut every piece of meat going by, saw sharp or not. "Wasn't trying to look lazy," he says. "You know, I was on paper, fresh out of the penitentiary, parole officers on my back." Continued on page 94 The older man scoffed. "Inhumane. Hog's a hog. You bring it here to kill it. It's gonna die either way. What's it matter how you do it?"

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