Teenie-Weenie Pork Chops

I left home at 17 and moved south a thousand miles to attend a small private college in northeast Florida. Needing to pay my way through school, I sought a full-time job. I was lucky to get one quickly, at a Winn-Dixie grocery store near campus.

Roy Touchton, the regional manager, sized me up and asked, “What do you know about the meat business?”

“Beef is red and chickens have wings. Other than that, not much.”

He laughed. “Willing to learn it?”

“Yessir. I’m open to just about anything.”

Within 90 days I was a tradesman, a certified meatcutter.

It was a great job. I worked hard, ate well, was fairly paid, and learned more life lessons than I realized at the time. The first two weeks, I walked to work. When I got paid I purchased a bicycle. Within a year I a bought a little Toyota. Thanks to the car, romance would follow. Courtship is difficult with a bike, impossible on foot. The car created possibilities.

I was a typical freshman, living with the sense and sensibilities of a wild-eyed kid with teachers for parole officers. I went to class every morning, sat up front, and paid attention. I worked all afternoon and returned to the dorm around 9:30 PM. I fell asleep each night with a book across my chest. For two years I lived in a tiny dorm room barely large enough for beds, dreadfully cheap beer, a stereo won in a card game, and a mountain of rumpled t-shirts. All else was scattered on the floor, piled in a closet, or tacked to a wall. Laundry I attended to during every full moon.

Working in a grocery store was super for two reasons: it required cashiers (girls), and everyone must eat (more girls). The meat department had three swinging metal doors with holes at eye level. The doors were constructed that way for cooling and safety but the eye-holes proved quite convenient. Our record was four meatcutters squinting out the same door at a passing pretty girl, a mark tied many times.

Since our store was near a college, our clientele was relatively young but we also had shoplifters. I caught many and had them arrested. One sat three rows across from me in one of my classes. We never spoke.

I was an average student, a repetitious learner, and preferred the outdoors to the classroom. Before college much of I’d learned about life (and death) was learned in the woods, a swamp, or on the water. In college I got a lot of advice my co-workers, blue-collar meatcutters, grocery business lifers. I was destined for four years passing through.

My job saved me during my freshman biology final. A required course, the exam was straightforward: Each of us was assigned a dissection pan with a fetal pig, along with a numbered list, 20 small wood-handled, needle-pointed spears (also numbered), and a small scalpel to cut and reveal whatever we needed to find. We were to locate and harpoon specific things like the pyloric valve, vena cava, carotid artery, and stuff like that. Basic stuff academicians take pride in knowing.

I scanned the list and panicked. I didn’t know any of that stuff and a quick glance around left me feeling very much alone. Others were harpooning happily.

As the clock ticked down I made a decision. I took my scalpel and cut up that fetal pig just like I would a full-sized one in the grocery store: teenie-weenie pork chops, teenie-weenie spare ribs, miniature hams, the whole deal. Had I been given a teenie-weenie apple, I’d have stuck it in his teenie-weenie mouth.

When the bell rang, I hid my dish as others took turns delivering theirs to racks at the front of the class. I went last. I handed mine to the instructor and shrugged.

“I don’t know where any of that stuff was you were asking for,” I admitted, “but I do know how a pig is put together.”

He studied the merchandised piglet for several seconds, then looked up beaming.

“I love it! Can I show it to the other guys?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “Does this mean I pass?”

He nodded and said, “I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll give you a C. But you have to promise not to take any more science classes.”

We shook on it. “Deal,” I agreed. “Not only will I never take science, you won’t ever see me again on this side of campus.”

I got my C and thus ended my science career.

The night before I graduated I reminisced about the road I’d traveled from wide-eyed rookie freshman to battle-scarred graduate. I’d cut up a quarter-million pork chops, 13,000 T-bone steaks, and could dismember a whole chicken into all nine pieces (wings, drumsticks, thighs, breasts, and a stripped-out back) in 24 seconds flat. I studied the hands that would clutch my diploma: 24 stitches’ worth of reminders on scarred, remodeled fingers. Four years of college had extracted its fair share of figurative and literal blood.

Lastly I thought back to freshman biology class and the fetal pig, and how an alternative solution navigated me from the scholastic wreckage of a seemingly hopeless dead-end to a very positive solution. That odd final exam provided a valuable life lesson that’s stayed with me ever since.

Whenever in life we seem dead-ended, we have a choice. We can roll over and give up, or think up an alternative solution—a different approach—and give it a shot. Sometimes a C is all we need to keep moving.