The Meat Cleaver

When Jimmy’s aunt, Cecelia Elder died the family had an auction sale to dispense with the belongings of her estate.  That included items that also belonged to her late husband, Fred.    The family really didn’t divvy them up, there were so many kids and grandkids and great-grandkids.  So the decision was made to have an auction and if you wanted something you had to buy it.  That happened to some extent when Jimmy’s mom died.  The kids all got something they wanted but then the rest was put up for auction and if you wanted it you had to buy it.

Jimmy had been looking forward to the auction.  He had bought something from each of his uncle’s auctions and this one was no different.  He had probably spent as much time with Uncle Fred as he did with any.  He was the closest uncle in distance and one of his dad’s favorite brothers.  Plus, Uncle Fred grew sorghum and made molasses.  Jimmy wanted something from that process.  And as the last remaining brother Fred had probably ended up with items from the brothers through the years, especially the ones who had never married.

I didn’t go with Jimmy that day.  It was a nasty day and I didn’t think it was going to be much of a sale.  So I was real surprised when he came home with all of his treasures.

He bought a sorghum molasses can.  This was an empty can that had never had any molasses in it.  It didn’t have a label or any markings on it.  It was just a new, empty can.  Jimmy wanted it because it was the type of can that Uncle Fred used when he made sorghum molasses.  He was very well known for his molasses.  Jimmy tells a story, that Uncle Fred used to tell, about the molasses.  Uncle Fred’s farm is on Hwy 121 in Graves County.  Back before there were interstates this is the highway that anyone would use if they were going through this area into Missouri or Illinois.  A lot of people coming in from Tennessee would go this route also.  Well, back in that time, when there wasn’t a lot of television, country music singers used to go on the road a lot.  They would take short trips into Illinois and Missouri.  And to get there they would drive right by Uncle Fred’s place.  Year after year Uncle Fred would have the same customers who came through the area stop to get some sorghum.  If it was that time of year, they would stop.  Porter Waggoner was a famous country singer and he had a band that did road shows.  One of his backup singers, and girl singer (as they were called then) was Dolly Parton.  Every year Porter Waggoner would drive through this little stretch of Kentucky to get to his shows in Missouri.  Every year they would stop at Uncle Fred’s place to get some molasses.  Now the way Uncle Fred told it was that Dolly Parton was just a nice looking girl.  But over the years she developed into a beautiful, full-figured woman.  Uncle Fred always told people that it was his molasses that gave Dolly her curves.  That was his claim to fame.

Jimmy also bought a suitcase at the auction.  It was an old, beat up suitcase.  I just looked at him strange.  But in this suitcase were parts of the military uniforms that were worn by his uncles during World War II.  There were hats and jackets.  But the thing that got me was there were these little “Catholic Soldier Kits”.  These kits, which were so tiny they could fit easily in any pocket, had a small prayer card, a small relic, and a very small statue of the child Jesus.  It was so cool.  There were other things in the suitcase as well but those little kits were just precious.  There was a beat up Bible in the suitcase too.  Years later, we took the suitcase to a family reunion and found out that that Bible had belonged to Jimmy’s cousin who had become a priest.  We quickly gave it to him.  It had been so beaten up that it didn’t have a cover on it.  If we had known it was his we would have given it to him way before that day.

There was a hat box that Jimmy bid on.  He knew that it contained the hat that Uncle Fred wore to church.  He didn’t know if anyone else knew that.  He bought it.  Then he gave it to his cousin who couldn’t be at the sale that day.  He thought the hat should remain with one of the boys, and this one would value it more than most.

Uncle Fred loved to collect arrowheads and such.  And he had a good collection of those.  A lot of people hunt arrowheads in our area.  They’ll walk creeks after a big rain to see what they can find.  Uncle Fred didn’t have to do much of that.  While he was in the field farming it seemed that he always found arrowheads or axe heads or something else.  One day Jimmy was out in the field with him and he found this prized arrowhead.  It was pretty big and nearly perfect.  You can easily find pieces of arrowheads, or small ones, but this one was a pretty good size.  Jimmy bought that at the auction.  I think it went with a couple of other smaller ones because he brought those home too.  He said he had to pay for that one because there were several bidding against him.

But the piece that we have come to be most proud of was the meat cleaver.  For generations, the Elders have worked the meat stand at the Fancy Farm Picnic.  It’s our job.  We know it.  We know how to do it.  Every year, Picnic week, the men go out to Fancy Farm and clean out the building that will turn into the meat stand.  Several years ago the Picnic committee concreted the floor.  Before that, the stand was just dirt.  Every year our nephews, now, make the tables where we bone and chop the BBQ pork and mutton that we sell by the pound.  But before them their fathers did that work and their fathers before them.  Every year we round up the aprons and the knives and the fly spray and have it all ready for when we get out to the Picnic.  We collect the aprons over the years and we collect the knives over the years.  Some of the aprons mean something, like Danny’s Kroger apron.

We hang that one up.  No one wears that.  But other than that if you want to wear a special apron you had better bring it from home.  It’s pretty funny to see a big burley man with a meat cleaver in his hand wearing an apron that says something sissy.  But, the knives.  Most of the knives have been around for generations.  If you get a good one that makes it easy to dig into a pork shoulder and get those bones out of there then you need to hang onto that all day long.  Or if you’re chopping meat you want to make sure you get hold of a cleaver that won’t slip and has a good fit to it.  Nothing’s worse than to develop a blister while you’re chopping meat.

But years ago, they didn’t bone out the meat.  If you wanted a hind quarter of a mutton then that’s what you got.  They would chop that off, wrap it up and weigh it for you.  That’s just how it was done.  When you got home you would bone it out.  Through the years it became obvious that people didn’t want it that way so now we bone it out.  It’s easier to handle and when you get it home you don’t have to do anything else.  I’m sure through the years that people would complain that all they got was bone when they got home.  It seems like someone always has to complain about something.  But years ago, if you ordered a half of a shoulder, then that’s what you got.  They took this huge meat cleaver and chopped that shoulder in half, wrapped it up, weighed it, and sent you on your way.  Jimmy remembers his dad using the cleaver, and his Uncle Fred.

He didn’t know that Uncle Fred had it.  He figured it was at someone’s house but he didn’t know where.  When it came up for auction one of his cousins who was there commented that it was Uncle John’s meat cleaver.  This was one of Jimmy’s older cousins and he remembered that it was Jimmy’s dad who brought that to the meat stand every year.  Jimmy didn’t care.  He knew that he wanted it and he was intent on buying it.  He figured if he bought it at the sale then it was his, no matter what.  So he brought it home.

We have a few antiques in our house.  In fact, most of the things that are farm related have a place of pride over our kitchen cabinets.  That’s sort of our curio cabinet.  But all I could think of was “what would happen if that thing fell down off of those cabinets?”  It could kill somebody or at least destroy my countertop.  Jimmy propped it into a corner next to the refrigerator.  I didn’t like that spot much either but it was better than overhead.

Later that year, the night before Picnic, Jimmy’s brother Danny died.  It was very unexpected and so sad for all of us.  We made up our minds that we were going to work in the meat stand anyway.  That’s what we did Picnic day and that’s what we were going to do.  Actually, we walked around like zombies most of the day but our community had stepped up and we had more than enough help in the meat stand so we could work if we wanted or we could be in shock if we needed.  Danny’s son, Matthew worked.  He chopped meat like a champ.  He thought he was using the cleaver that his dad used but it wasn’t.  It was the cleaver that his grandfather and great-uncles had used.  It was that big meat cleaver.  How that boy handled that cleaver all day long I’ll never know.  His dad’s meat cleaver had not made it down to the meat stand before Danny’s death.  Danny always brought the cleaver and his Kroger apron with him when he pulled up to the meat stand about 6AM Picnic day.  But at the end of the day Matthew took that meat cleaver home with him.  Jimmy never said a word to him.  He knew that Matthew needed that cleaver a lot more than we did.  He figured he would get it later.

And he did.  The next summer we were at Danny’s house and we asked his widow about the meat cleavers.  She said that the one Danny always used was in the basement where he kept it and that the one Matthew brought home from the Picnic was out in the carport, leaning up against the house.  That’s where he had left it after Picnic and she didn’t know who it belonged to because it wasn’t Danny’s.  Jimmy took both meat cleavers.  We used Danny’s at Picnic that year but the big one needed to be cleaned up real good because it had rusted through the year.

The next summer Jimmy found somebody who could clean up knives real good.  It was an Amish guy who would show up at Trade Day about once a month.  Jimmy had checked him out and really liked the work he did.  He approached him about cleaning up the knife and the guy agreed.  The next month Jimmy took it to him.  It took a couple of months before the guy showed up again.  When he did he had the cleaver.  He asked Jimmy if it was for sale.  Jimmy wasn’t mean about it he just said that it wasn’t.  The guy then told him he had done a little research on it and found that the cleaver dated back to the 1830’s.  And it had the original handle.

The cleaver’s handle was wrapped in electrical tape.  That kept it from slipping while they were chopping meat.  Chopping meat is pretty greasy.  The Amish guy didn’t remove the tape but from everything he saw about the cleaver it had the original handle.  On the way back to the truck a guy stopped Jimmy and asked if he was interested in selling that cleaver.  Jimmy told him no.  The guy asked if he could look at it a minute.  After he checked it out he told Jimmy that he collected knives and cleavers and such.  He had one just like this one but it didn’t have its original handle.  This was definitely the original handle and he told Jimmy that it did date back to the 1830’s.

The Fancy Farm Picnic is a pretty big deal.  We had been contacted by the Southern Food and Beverage Museum about putting a display together at their new museum.  It was going to be a permanent display.  They were looking for artifacts.  Jimmy and I had talked about loaning them the meat cleaver.  I will tell you that night, after he told me all about the cleaver, we made the decision that it wasn’t going to leave our house.  No way would we even loan it out.  I did send them a picture though and they agreed it would not be a good artifact for the museum.   They asked for a picture, which we sent, and they were going to attempt to make a 3D copy.  That satisfied both of us.

So attending family auctions have yielded a lot of treasures, and a lot of history.  I don’t know if the Elders were in Fancy Farm yet in the 1830’s.  If not that means that they brought this cleaver with them.  Either way, sometimes I just sit back and wonder what their life had to be like and how they used tools like this.  I am so grateful that I have that history and to be part of this family and this community.