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No More Bull
Young boys are eager to learn new and exciting things. Sometimes these experiences can be both very pleasurable and unhappy.
One such experience will be with me forever. This concerns Jiggs.
As I recall, Jiggs was a huge black bull. He was so big and threatening to a young boy like me. My uncle Otto owned Jiggs.
He had permanently inserted a large ring in poor Jiggs's nose, to which a long chain with big links was hooked. The explanation
given was that this was done to control the bull when he wasn't cooperating.
I thought Uncle Otto's boys, my older cousins, were very mean to old Jiggs. I saw them taunting and teasing Jiggs many times.
Otherwise Jiggs had a good life with plenty of hay and, most importantly, he was constantly sought after to breed with neighbor's
cows. Every time I went with my father to visit my Tante Anna, I would rush out to gaze at Jiggs. I thought he was the most
striking animal I had ever seen.
Finally, there arrived a very sad announcement: Jiggs was going to be butchered! I was devastated. How could they do that
to Jiggs? According to them, Jiggs was going to provide them with meals in the future. We had been invited to come over and
help with the meat processing and cooking. I was too young to help using a butcher knife to cut the meat from poor old Jiggs's
body. I wanted no part of that! It took all day to finish the butchering.
The saddest part of this story was those older cousins telling how they killed Jiggs. One of the cousins, Herbert, took a
large sledgehammer, had Jiggs kneel on his forelegs as he had been taught to do, and then struck a mighty blow to his forehead.
I thought that to be the worst thing that could have happened. I vowed never to eat any of that meat and hoped it would be
so tough they wouldn't enjoy eating it.
Not until many years later did I learn that the preferred way to kill cattle in the Chicago slaughterhouses was to use sledgehammers.
And I don't recall how long my vow not to eat any of that meat lasted. Probably not very long.
Ralph Bodemann
Aransas Pass, Texas
Published:
January 23,
2006
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