A Butcher's Boy

The 80-year-old author looks back over his growing-up years as the son of a small-town butcher. "I was a willing assistant to my father. Just about every day, we killed something to meet the needs of our customers. We slaughtered cattle in a one-room, unheated slaughterhouse. In winter, wearing blood encrusted coveralls, we kept our hands warm handling steaming entrails. In summer, we worked bare-chested when scalding hogs." He recalls his father's passion for hunting fox and raccoon. And his da