"The Rose Room" (short story about the stockyards in Minnesota)

The Rose Room
((The Stockyards of South St. Paul, Minnesota, 1966) (a Chick Evens Story))



Chick Evens went to work for the stockyards one summer in 1966, near the town-let of South Saint Paul, the summer was extremely hot, and you could bake an egg on the sidewalks.
His mother worked at Swift’s Meats (in the meatpacking department), the company which he now came to be employed at, made a deep impression on Chick’s mind and he never forgot the thoughts and experiences that came to him during those last months of that summer working at the stockyards inside a packing house (cutting up carcasses of hogs), and especially delivering animal waste to the Rose Room!

The traditional puffing forth smoke, which attracted attention to its tall chimneys as they rumbled along and burnt up the remains of pigs and cows, and sheep, and goats, slowly over miles of bones and animal waste, circulated the air, and drifted throughout the huge stockyards, second in the nation, only to Chicago’s.
One could see and smell at any section, division or corner of the town-let this putrid smoke, from the stockyards, all the way down to the Mississippi River, some five-miles away, and even across the Robert Street Bridge, to the other side of the river, where resided St. Paul, proper, the inner city, the downtown area; that dark to light gray smoke, rising into the clear morning sky.
Where some of this smoke came from was a dim lit, small room through which an employee brought in stacks of animal throw away, desecrated meats, from throughout the stockyards. From these stacks could be seen glowing and pale pus from hams, torn hides, discolored skin and unusable bones and infected guts, and so forth, nothing to please an appetite.
There was no wind, or windows in this room—this room they called ‘The Rose Room’, just an iron round plate on the floor, heavy as a Cadillac car, it was opened by pressing a yellow button, and machinery lifted this tonnage door about three feet up…then it stopped as if a person might fall or jump into this inferno pit, and there was hell’s fire. You could hear the crackling of the fire, feel the heat penetrating your pours, and smell the punishingly putrid stink therewithal, and near suffocating in the process: it all was close to gagging the lungs, to a point of collapsing.
The fire was equal to any spot in a blazing forest fire, it grew along the sides of the pit when the iron door was opened, like snakes running up its sides to escape.

∙

In the afternoons I went to what they called the Rose Room, opened up the door to the house of flames, it crackled and snapped under my feet, even the soul of my shoes got hot through the thick stone floor, the smell of this room was putrid, foul, sizzling. It made a man think about going back to school, it did me anyway, learn a real trade—it was a room I swear rented out by the devil or perhaps God Himself, to express where souls go to decay—the repentance abyss.
My mind captured such an image even before I set foot out of this room, the first time I brought in a wheelbarrow of animal waste—I remember I had little to say, looking into that abyss of flames, pouring my wheelbarrow of rotten animal carcasses, soft tissue, over the edge of the iron rounded door, watching the massive fire consume it even before it hit the bottom of the pot, boldly and freely.

∙

The fatty tissue, he poured down, into the pit, became inflamed almost instantly. This was a house with only one window—the fire window. When he had poured the waste over the edge of the opening, the fire leaped back up at him, swept over the rim of the frame that held the iron door in place, it swept all the way to his feet, he jumped back, stood against the wall looking into the hungered fire, as if it was a living beast trying to harm him, and a voice said something, a voice to the side of him, by the door that was usually shut to the room, except if someone else was waiting to commence in the same traditional work he had just finished…

∙

The Employee


Employee: Come on, come on! Let’s get going here sunny, I don’t have all day—give the rose a kiss and get the hell out of there so I can drop my load! (A laugh)

Chick Evens: It almost got me!

Employee: It’s a suicide escape! ((he declared shrewdly) (he comes to stand beside Evens)) It creeps in when you’re half sleeping, or daydreaming on the job, stay alert in this room kid—now move on out of here, go around my backside, give me some room to maneuver my wheelbarrow.


Note: the stockyards in South St. Paul, created and built the city of South Saint Paul, establishing it’s self in between, 1885-1887, and built by Gustavus Franklin Swift Jr., and prior to him, his father. Prior to Swift’s And Company, there was no city south of St. Paul, Minnesota. It was one of the largest stockyards in the world, and second only to Chicago in the United States. This story is dedicated to the Swift Family, who in their way contributed to the employment of so many people in some many areas of the United States, and especially, South Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Written 5-16-2009 ((No: 398) (SA/5ds))