"Kill Site"

"Kill site."

At dinner with new friends last night I stopped the table.

 "Wait, WHAT? What did you JUST SAY?"

"Kill site."

I guess it's self-explanatory.
Everyone there knew the term. I can say with complete certainty that I have never heard those two words together in my life.

Kill site.

Definition: A place where people kill animals and grind them up.

So this is why I work a little job, with little children; To take up the space in my head that is consumed with anxiety, and a touch of sadness.

My grandfather worked at the Armour meat packing plant in Mason City, Iowa. He never worked when I knew him; he was already retired. I assumed he worked behind a desk. But he had an 8th grade education, and today I realized; He did not work behind a desk.

I never considered my mom's words when she told me, wryly and in an offhand way, that my grandfather never ate Armour hot dogs because "he knows what goes into them."

As many older people do, my grandfather often reminisced about life in his early 20s. I loved his story of how, in the 1920s, my grandfather courted my grandmother. He took the electric trolley from Mason City to Clear Lake, and then took the paddleboat ferry across to the south shore. They would walk to one of the dancehalls on the lake and make an evening of it. If my grandfather missed the ferry back to the other side, he either had to walk or sleep in the woods until morning.

He never talked about his time at Armour and I never asked. What I do know is that my mother said my grandfather was a changed person when he retired.

 She told me that when she was young, he often came home in a horrible temper. He was abusive to my grandmother in a way that was just shy of physical.

I saw none of this. I only knew my grandfather to be kind, funny, and friendly. He was patient with me. He took me fishing. He taught me how to play pool, and how to drive on the country roads.

Today, with some sadness and guilt, I wonder what it must have been like to have had that job.

I never asked. and anyway, he would have never told a child such as myself these things.