It was called a 'delivery bike'. It was very heavy with a large carrier in front, a wicker basket fitted neatly in the carrier and was usually full of meat packages. I wore the uniform of a 'butcher's boy', an almost white apron. At 14 years of age I was skinny, fast-moving and always hungry. This was my first full-time job.
Two things had just ended for me: school and my paper route. The latter had been a morning and night delivery every day for two years. I had left school one day, then was working the next. Never had holidays, in my family anyhow. The four shillings a week from the paper route had helped supplement a larger that all too often contained merely sugar, a little jam, a loaf of bread and a small pat of butter.
I don't remember how I came to work for Mr. Barrett. His shop was all of four streets away and our gang rarely had cause to stray that far from our lively ghetto in the working district of my hometown in the midlands of England. The fact that a bike went with the job clinched it for me. Since nobody in our gang had one, I sensed prestige here, because once in the saddle of this rugged machine I became a grinning, whistling, humming expert in the delivery of top quality meats.
My new boss was 'Mr. Barrett'. No first name. Just Mr. Barrett. He was tallish, dark and steady in all his motions. He rarely got excited and smiling was not in his nature, though once he surprised me with a broad grin after I had slipped on a grease spot, skinning my bare knees. He always seemed to have very clean pink hands, with tobacco stains on the inside of his fingers. His wife was stocky and kind of round, with large friendly eyes. I remember her legs were sort of curved too. But I liked it when she smiled occasionally. It seemed to make up for the unchanging mask he wore.
Since neither of them had first names I would sometimes test a few out on them. But no matter how hard I tried, nothing seemed to fit. All the names I could think up sounded out of place, contrived. I was never to learn their full names.
The shop was quite small. It was actually a converted front room of their home, one of hundreds of row houses in the neighbourhood. Each week there would be sold the equivalent of one cow, pig and lamb. No more, no less. On the inside wall a small spy window gave a view of the shop to the Barretts from their living room, including knowledge of my activities as well as customer presence
Making deliveries was my specialty. There was such total freedom as I, humming and whistling, pushed those heavy wheels through narrow streets and back lanes, through the varied seasons. When I knocked on customers' doors I nearly always had a high expectation of someone friendly answering. The meat would be handed over as I said "Good morning, Mrs. Browning. Best of meat today" and she might say "Thank you, sorry. Do drive careful now". Such pleasant little rewards acknowledging my performance that to me was important work and I was a natural at. Quite different to all my chums in the gang who worked in a die casting shop in the next street where it always smelled of burnt metal and cutting oil from the lathes. Not working there meant a bit of a wedge between them and me. But having rides on my delivery bike helped to bridge it.
I remember the first time I was allowed to take the bike home I couldn't wait to see the reaction of my chums on the street corner. From a distance they looked a little bored and in need of some distraction other than smoking cheap cigarettes and whistling at the local girls, who always ignored them. Seeing me approaching on this strange cross between a tractor and an iron bed they hooted with delight.
It was my turn to howl later, standing back watching each in turn trying to manhandle the metal brute. Unknown to them the front forks were badly out of alignment from some previous accident, making the steering utterly lethal to handle. It required two hands all the time to counter the pull to one side. My chums were falling all over the road in their frustration to make it run straight and level. It took quite a while for them all to tame this beast... Years later, riding a normal healthy bike was a scary experience with steering that was too accurate.
Monday was clean up day at the shop. The neat sign on the door said 'Closed', and I felt a little smug being the only one allowed in besides Mr. Barrett. "You can start on the chopping block first" he said. This thick wooden table was the very heart of the action, a kind of sacrificial altar. Its wave-worn surface was covered with stains, while some of the deeper cuts in the top could only have come from poor chopper skills of apprentices like me.
"What do I need to work this thing?" I asked. "Over there" the chief said, pointing to a small bowl of sawdust and a heavy wire scrubbing brush. So with the stiff brush and wetted sawdust spread all over I attacked the worn hills and valleys until eventually I got a grudging pass mark from Inspector Barrett.
Counters, windows and floors were then all attended to by me to his reluctant satisfaction. I don't remember what he did other than supervising too well. And then it was time for some special action in the backyard.
Mrs. Barrett did her laundry there in the open. I would watch as she bent over her tub, shaking the wet clothes up and down. Her small breasts moved in step and I gazed in awe.
"Come on now, look sharp" cried the chief, breaking up a perfectly good day dream centered around naked breasts, and we marched past the laundry with knives and choppers in hand. We thus approached a vintage sandstone sharpening wheel with a large handle. It was easy to guess my part in this operation.
I looked in amazement at the worn curved shapes of the cutting edges of the tools. They must have been sharpened scores of times... I cranked and cranked and switched hands and shifted body weight and threw water on the wheel. I also tried to see how the bent body of Mrs. Barrett was doing as she swished away up and down. Meanwhile each deadly weapon had to pass Mr. Barrett's careful thumb test. When I day-dreamt too much, a sharp bark from the master had the wheel back to speed.
My last job on Monday was out of the shop. Great! Free at last again. "You can take the bones to the glue factory now" was the order. "And don't mess up the clean basket." He was always so thoughtful about his equipment...
The factory itself was situated a mile or so away in the middle of a working class district. I gathered together a couple of big shin bones, some breast bones and a section of tough looking fat. The bones were totally naked of meat-- razor-sharp knives and Mr. Barrett's close scrutiny had seen to that.
I loaded them into my basket and sped in the direction of the factory. The smell from several blocks away was strong, while inside it seemed harmful to breathing. Steam rose from greasy vats, and walls and floor were covered in grease. Somewhere in the background the bone grinder machine was, as usual, working at full blast with noise and violence like a cascade of rocks on a tin roof. The workers wore rubber aprons and hob-nailed boots, their faces red and sweaty as they slid more than walked. The smell from the cookers was almost physical and stayed with me and my clothes so long that I only nibbled at food that evening.
The basket was taken from me, bones carefully weighed, results noted and a quick calculation made. Then a few pennies were handed to me. And that was that. No names, no words. I would make a hurried exit and cycle back with them in my hand.
One afternoon when I handed Mr. Barrett the money he continued to hold out his clean pink hand. He looked mournful and definitely disappointed. He jiggled them a bit, then said "Is this all?" in a quiet voice, the ash falling from his cork-tipped cigarette. I nodded and shrugged. Being dishonest never entered my head. And certainly not with my employer. Wasn't everybody around here poor like our family? He shook the coins again emphasizing their barrenness. Removing his cigarette he repeated "Only two pennies?"
This was the first time I had been questioned about money. I stood in dazed silence. The shop till was as safe from me as if it belonged to the King of England. But his hand seemed to remain outstretched forever. His face became sterner and his cigarette was down to the cork tip. He seemed to be searching me for a confession and I was grateful when at last he went to the till and straight-armed the coins inside. My over-developed innocence had frustrated him.
Very gradually with time I had been allowed to serve a few customers. "You can handle some of the meat sales you know" he had said. But he failed to show me how, so I started on pieces already cut or simple stuff like sausages or liver. And as I expected, difficulty came when a customer asked for pork or lamb chops. The broad bladed chopper would be waved around too much in my hand and the misses would lacerate the meat and splinter the bones. With my back to the customer I would try to patch the wounds as best I could.
But creating chops was nothing in comparison to cutting a hung animal into quarters. This was a major task for even the most skilled. For me this event came much later in my career, in fact just about ending it right there!
The animal would be hung by the legs which in turn were spread wide apart. Chopping was then started at the crotch and hopefully finishing at the neck. A perfect job done by the Mr. Barrett himself would see the white cord of the spinal marrow split evenly on each quarter.
"Here you see how its done" he said, without any theory words to support the demonstration, "so have a go." Again no words of caution or finesse. I was allowed only one attempt at this high level task as Mr. Barrett shook his head in disbelief at the slaughter and rescued the scarred splintered mess part way through. He would never have agreed with Thoreau who said "I think we may safely trust more than we do
As always, pedalling the route was my real life with the weather never an issue. I don't seem to remember it ever raining. My fitness and hunger made parallel gains as time went by. Only at home did problems exist as my small contribution of twelve shillings a week only brought a small benefit to a family of four, with my father out of work most of the time. We couldn't afford to buy our meat from Mr. Barrett and, in my year and a half of service with him, he had never offered any as a treat. In fact I would have been puzzled had he done so... But one time he did surprise me when he suddenly said "Here!" and thrust in my hands a small cutting of beef lungs which we called 'lights'. "Give this to your cat" he added.
Our family shopped at the local open market for meat, fish and vegetables. This was done the very last thing on a Saturday afternoon. Since the merchants didn't want to keep the produce over the weekend, we bought the cheap cuts they auctioned off. The suppliers were aggressive and angry, grudgingly wrapping the fish or meat in newspaper, convincing us they were giving the food away. Our best meals at home were on the weekend.
Forty years later, on a return visit to my hometown, I called at the Barretts. The shop had been converted back to a living room and, when the door opened to my persistent knocking, a person I took to be Mrs. Barrett said, very quickly, "No thank you!" and hurriedly closed the door.
To compensate, I decided to walk my old route. Very little seemed to have changed in all those years. And I hummed a delivery boy's tune of long ago.
I walked slowly, wondering how much of it all had been real... So little was left in my memory as I recalled someone once saying 'The older you get, the faster you ran when you were a kid
Written by Jayce
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