I  often find myself quite the novelty in my age group when I mention a little-known fact from my childhood.

We never had store-bought meat at my house until I was on my way to high school. Don’t get me wrong. We ate meat at every meal. We just never bought ours from a store.

We raised our pork, beef, poultry and even catfish at my grandparents’ place. When our freezers got skimpy, the whole family gathered for a busy weekend at the butcher block.

Those gatherings were like Easter and Thanksgiving rolled into one. My boyhood as the only child on a farm could sometimes border on lonely, so having everyone come — especially my young cousins — was a treat.

Favorite days

Hog-killing days were some of my favorites.

They began early. No matter how I tried, I could never wake when Dad and Grandpa did. It was always cold and dark outside, but I could find them down by the smokehouse.

Barely illuminated by a fresh flicker of flames, they sipped scalding cups of black coffee, with their breath hanging like specters about their nostrils.

At first light, the carcass was hung and the initial stages begun. As a scrawny child, my brawn was hardly helpful. So I tended the fire for the coals that would be needed later in the day.

Everyone else then joined in. Some worked the saw, carving chops, roasts and bacon. Others manned the sausage maker, prepping the mechanicals and cleaning casings.

Others would tend the kitchen, making meals for the crew and fixings for the homemade sausage that would fill the smokehouse rafters in sleek rows by nightfall.

We kids performed mostly gofer duties, but our job with the grown folks — long before doctors forbid such diets — was carving fat into chunks, which ultimately landed in a huge black kettle for lard and cracklins, my favorite.

As a father of my own scrawny kids today, I often wish my children had such memories.

Unfortunately, our equipment has long been put to pasture. Most of the folks who knew the process or carried those wonderful mental recipes have been laid to rest.

Magazine article

Imagine my elation recently when I found an article in Time magazine about meat cutters in New York offering courses on their craft to do-it-yourself enthusiasts. Leave it to some Yankee writer from Time to moralize on meat cutting or blame home butchering on hard economic times.

But some of my family’s best times were born of butchering day.

Sure, those days were heaps of work. They involved skills many of us don’t possess anymore. And I’m certain those concerned with safety would freak at our food-preparation methods and tools.

But no one ever got sick, skills were learned and we were never strangers to hard work.

Admittedly, I’m no complainer when it comes to ready-filled, mile-long store meat counters.

Such conveniences not only make my meals today possible, but they also are a tribute to people who are devoted to raising livestock and getting it to the public in the safest, most efficient means possible.

Still, what I wouldn’t give for one of those fresh sausage patties we always ate on butchering day.

And I’d jump at the chance to switch my paper-thin, boxed bacon slices for one of those hand-hewn hunks we would fry up months afterward from the stocks in our freezers.

It might be an acquired taste, but I sure wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Bobby Horecka lives in China Spring with his wife and three children. He writes for the Texas Farm Bureau’s print publications, online news service and video projects.