Memories

Kevin Woods

Uploaded: 29/01/2017

Making Sausages in 1953
Sawdust was scattered on the terrazzo floor and a roll of white string hung from the ceiling its end dangling on to the marble slab where the meat was laid out and beside it was a wide roll of brown paper. My Uncle Willie tore a piece off it, lifted 6 lamb chops from the counter and whistling through his teeth as he worked - wrapped them. Taking the string- he tied the parcel and with a deft flick of the wrist and fingers he broke the cord with a skill that obviously took years to perfect. The parcel was named and addressed and placed in a large wicker basket for delivery to Cooley or for dispatch to the post office, who in return would deliver it by post.
This was 1953 in Woods’ butcher shop in Newry St. Carlingford. I was 9.
If you could get to the back door of the butcher shop without being noticed that was the place you really wanted to be. There was a sausage machine there. Large bowls of minced sausage meat were ready to be stuffed into what looked like a hollow canon with a hollow narrow barrel at the end of it. Beside the minced sausage meat was a glass jar full of sheep’s gut immersed in water that had been cleaned of whatever it contained the previous day: only now can I imagine!
The first job in the process of sausage making was to take a long piece of gut and work it all down the hollow narrow barrel of the machine. That done: you picked up handfuls of the sausage meat and stuffed as much of it as you could into the hollow canon. You sealed the back of the canon with a steel clamp attached to a handle, which when turned forced the meat through the canon down through the narrow barrel. With your hand holding one end of the sheep’s gut you were ready to go.
Your heart would be in your mouth for you knew that if you were caught you could get a ‘thick ear’ but the temptation of been able to make the biggest sausage in the world was to great and always overruled caution.
By gently turning the handle the meat would ooze into the sheep gut spluttering and spitting trapped air as it did. It would quickly pass the 12 inches long mark but inexperienced hands left it with gaps where pockets of air were trapped, together with wide and narrow circumferences of meat that soon stretched longer than five feet in length. It looked nothing like a sausage but took on a life of its own twisting and turning like a deformed snake out of control. My young mind always knew when to make a run for it and there was no more opportune time than at that moment. In seconds I was gone. I never knew who cleaned up after me. I was never caught and I never did master the art.