Rumbles From The Vent: AUGIE’S GONE

My brother called me yesterday and told me he read about the passing of Augie. Side note here, my brother is always the first one to find out about people we know passing to the other side. I don’t know why he checks the obits so much unless he is just making sure he is not listed before he goes and starts his day.

Anyway he gave me the info wanting to make sure it was who he thought it was. I verified that it was indeed the 82 year old father of an old running buddy of mine (Joe) from the” old daze”.

I always liked Augie, I hadn’t seen him very much if the last several decades. Seeing how the last time I saw Joe was his 50^th birthday party about 5 years ago, that’s not surprising.

I don’t live very close to my old friends and I kind of miss not seeing them very much, but like the song goes, “all my rowdy friends have settled down”, including me.

If you can’t run with the big dogs, it’s best to just stay on the porch.

Joe’s family was very German and very old school, their family originally came from Jasper Indiana, a town that is so German, that the McDonalds there serves beer, not only that there are people living there with the last name Hitler! No shit.

Augie’s income was not derived from farming, but he farmed his small parcel of land to feed his family. A garden, chickens, cows did the job nicely and Augie also did his own butchering.

Augie was “very careful with money” as was Joe, so there was no need to take the cows to have the butchering done by a slaughterhouse.

I used to go help them when it was time to slaughter one of the cows at the behest of my buddy Joe. I didn’t mind doing it, I was familiar with cleaning birds, rabbits, squirrels and such so, I found it interesting to see how such a large animal was processed by this family and the Germans were known for drinking a few beers.

‘Nothing goes to waste” was the banner cry of this very German family.

The hide was rolled up and sold for 15 bucks, the head meat was all removed and eaten, even the guts were recycled.

We would hang the cow from the backyard tree, push a wheelbarrow underneath.

Then open the cow from the tail to the neck (after it had been bled out) and pull the innards out and more than fill the contractors sized wheelbarrow. Joe would push it to the chicken pen and go all Dexter on the guts with a butcher knife and the chickens would gobble up their yearly feast with much glee. The sight of chickens eating fresh cow guts was a little macabre, the chickens didn’t complain though.

This was always done in the late fall so the beef could be quartered and hung in the now cold garage for 4 days and we would return and cut the quarters up into steaks, pan fry, hamburger, liver, head meat.

When all the work was done, Augie would say “thanks Riley, you wanna take home some of this liver?’ Augie would be holding up the huge quivering mass of the bile-producing organ, knowing I hated liver; like I said, Augie was very careful with money.

“No I’m good Augie, thanks anyway”, I would smile and walk out of the garage wondering what the hell would Augie do if I would have said “sure Augie, cut me a big slice of that shit”, I could have taken it home and fed it to my dog.

I was always impressed with was the overall efficiency of this family operation. Even the assassination of the cow had to be done in a certain way.

“These things have be done delicately”, as the wicked witch said.

Augies cows were used to him coming to the gate and hand feeding them on a regular basis, so we all had to hide behind the shed and Augie would call the cow to the gate with one hand behind his back. The cow thinking, oh boy, my ol buddy Augie has a treat for me. Only this time instead of a handful of grain for the cow, Augie would be packing heat. Before the cow figured out that something was amiss, Augie pulled his gun out and put a hit on the cow that would make Tony Soprano proud.

Augie liked his meat relaxed and close to the gate.