Ep. 1 - From Slaughterhouse to Louisiana Landmark: 3rd Generation Butcher - Donald Bourgeois - Miracles in Meat

Episode Transcript
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Music.

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You're listening to the Miracles in Meat Podcast. I'm Shane Thibodaux,
a fourth-generation butcher at one of the oldest meat markets in the world.
My great-grandfather started this business by slaughtering one cow or pig at
a time and selling the cuts door-to-door on horse and buggy.
Today, our products are enjoyed across the globe.
I'll attempt to give you some insight as to how we got here and explore the

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challenges we've had along the way.
At Bourgeois, our mission is to preserve our heritage generation after generation
through legendary Cajun flavors and the development of relationships not customers.
Since 1891, Bourgeois has maintained age-old culinary traditions that fuel the
South Louisiana lifestyle.
Over the past 133 years our Cajun products have gained global recognition and

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for tens of thousands of folks around the world the Bourgeois Cajun Lady logo is a symbol of home.
Today the fourth generation butchers sit at the nine-foot maple block with loyal
loyal customers to discuss the adventures, skills, and passions that guide each of their legacies.
These conversations will become priceless resources for future generations of any industry.

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This is our way of maintaining the spirit, purpose, and traditions of our lost
arts in a world of change.
133 years, four generations. We're just getting started.
Music.
Hey there, here we go. Episode number one, or uno, if you are tuning in from

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Texas or further southwest.
This podcast has been something I've been putting off for a long time now,
at least a couple and a half months or three.
And I finally just kind of threw myself into the fire and got really uncomfortable.
But that's what I needed. I don't have a clue what I'm doing yet,

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but my curiosity often leads me into these uncomfortable situations and I kind
of just learned to love the dislearning process and that's what this is about. It's about learning.
I figured the best place to start would be with the third generation owner,
my uncle, Donald Boudreaux.
I've learned so much from him over the years and I really think we'd be doing

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our future generations a huge disservice if we couldn't provide them with as much.
Wisdom as we can from from this old breed
so here it is Donald bourgeois
so if you asked me why I was
doing this or why I felt like I needed to do it before
you ask that I would ask you why did y'all build super kite that's how I would

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answer if you were to ask me why I'm doing this I would say okay well why did
you build super kite that's what I would ask so let's start with super kite
and ask, I'm just going to ask what it is.
I know a little bit about it, but no one else does.
Yeah. Super kite. This is not, everybody's got a different recollection of it
and my memory is not the best, but best I can remember, it was me and Andy, my cousin Andy's idea.

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And then, you know, the brothers kind of joined in and jumped in with us and,
you know, they had, they were older and a lot more, you know,
had more knowledge and engineering, his big brother, Jimmy. Yeah.
And like I said, I could be very wrong about this, but my idea was to just,
I just wanted to build a, we used to fly kites.
Daddy, I mean, we used to build our own kites.
And it was fun. You know, usually just the spring, it wasn't something we did

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year round, but it's funny.
It's just the spring months, you know, April or so, May, we'd a lot,
you know, we didn't, we were a big family.
We didn't, you didn't have a Walmart on every other corner or,
you know, shopping center. So we built our own.
And that, you know, daddy, daddy will show us how kind of, you know,
the first couple of them.
And then from there we'd build our own. But we just wanted to build a really, really big one. Who?

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Why? Who needed it bigger?
I just don't know. We just wanted to build a big kite. Was Papa behind any of
that? Was he egging it on?
Not that I can remember. Like I said, I was pretty young. I'd say young. I was in high school.
I can vividly remember getting the paper we used to build the surface of it,

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the paper and all. We got a lot of it from high school.
From one of our teachers. They had it there and it wasn't doing anything.
So we used, I remember the red and blue stripe, we got that from the school.
And I think the white, we might've got what Biff was working at the time.
I think we might've got that there at Vita Paint.
And in terms of dimensions, what was the goal? And then what was the outcome?

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Just 25 foot. It was an easy number.
And I think the width is supposed to be a half the, I mean, a third of the height, I think.
So basically about an eight and a half foot width. total, I think. Or maybe...
And it's, it's, it's been a while. 25 feet long. I'm trying to remember the width of it.

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But daddy, daddy helped us with the bridle. I remember that.
We had to, that was a big concern, bridle and tail.
And that's where Jimmy came in with, with his, he was at LSU at the time working
on his engineering degree.
So he, he, he definitely had, had, had some help with that.
Cause I mean, think about a, a little two and a half foot kite that you build
and it needs, it needs about a, don't need a 10 foot tail, you know, eight to 10 foot tail.

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So start doing the math on a times 10, you know? So, yeah, I think we ended
up with 150 feet of tail on it.
And everyone was nervous, or no, was no one nervous.
Everyone was just excited. Yeah, we were just excited. We just wanted to see it fly.
Knowing that someone would break an arm. No, no, we never thought that.
It's a shame that the one thing flew, and it flew really good.

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It's just I was on the kite end, me and Andy, I guess because we had so much to do with it.
We were holding the kite. We were the actual ones that started running with it as it lifted.
We held the bottom end down until we couldn't anymore and ran with it. And what's pulling it?
Truck. A truck. Yeah, we had it. And something happened in the truck.
There's a lot of issues about the truck and they had it. Apparently they did not fasten it.

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I don't know why they didn't just tie it to a hitch or whatever,
they didn't. I don't know why.
I think they maybe wanted to put out more line in case they needed to.
So they had it to where they could release to, and it would,
But from what I understand, they had a, you know, the old trucks,
they had the, I don't know what they call it, the well, the hole wells in the sides of the beds.
And they had a pipe in there and they made some wraps with it around that pipe.

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But what happened, I don't know why I didn't think of this, but the pipe started
spinning, you know, because it wasn't anchored. They had a drag system on it.
Yeah, but they didn't think. They thought they could just, the pipe was just
going to stay there and not spin.
Right. And they could release line if they needed to after, you know,
after you spun it around about four, five, six times, you could,
you know, loosen it a little bit, but they didn't take into effect that it would spin.

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So what happened, it started doing that and they panicked at the truck.
And so the kite started, it was up pretty high. The tail was off the ground.
So it was up 150 feet at least. And how many people there to watch?
Mostly just off a bunch of our family. We had a lot of cousins,
you know. So that could be a hundred, that could be 50 to a hundred people.
Yeah. Easy 50, easy 50. Yeah. I'd say no less than 50. Yeah.

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And we got it on video. You know, we have some video, old video of it.
But so what ended up happening, and like I said,
I wasn't in a truck, but so when that's happened and somebody maybe
got thrown out the truck broke their arm and the
kite started falling so they hurt i think they finally made a
wrap around the hitch to save it yeah and daddy panicked and gunned it to get

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it back up to get it back up in the air and he panicked and he hit it too darn
hard and fast and it couldn't take the pressure of being pulled that fast such
a big kite you can't fly a kite that big and you know 15 20 only if y'all had an engineer on deck.
We'd have flown it more than once If that incident wouldn't have happened I
was convinced we would have flown it And flown it again,

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So it didn't stay in the air very long It stayed a while and it went straight
It was amazing how steady it was You think a kite would Especially handmade
ones they kind of rock back and forth And kind of erratic This thing just went
straight up just as pretty as could be
And I was convinced it was going to fly Or it did fly but I mean I was convinced
it would have stayed up if they could have got it up above the trees a little more.

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Above the trees. That's got to be the goal.
To get that steady breeze where it's not sporadic.
But it was pretty. I'm sure there's much more to that story and I'd like to
get a couple other people involved. Absolutely.
Everybody's got a different version of that story. We'll come back to that one
day. I don't remember John being there.
I'm sure he was, but not. Might've been in a car seat.

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He might've not been there. John B Maybe he might've been off with his buddies
or something. I'm not sure. No, he wasn't that little.
Well, we'll get another crew together and we'll get that whole story out.
Yeah, that would be interesting. We'll get artifacts and things and make plans for the next one.
Now, they did another one, Super Kite 2. I was not involved with that one at all. And it flew?

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No. Okay, good. No, they never even stood it up, I don't think.
Because our generation has plans for Super Kite 3 and we're going to do 50 foot.
So, we'll come back to that one day. Can I give you advice on that?
Yes. This is just my advice. Of course.
You know what? 30 foot's bigger than 25. Okay.
Which is fair. I just don't think structurally flat. You know what I'm talking about?

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Now, maybe a box kite, yeah, 50 feet. But that- A flat kite.
A flat kite like that. And I don't know the term they use for a flat kite, but-
I mean, to me personally, a box kite, it's cheating, but that's just me.
I think if you want to beat us, it has to be a flat surface kite, and 30-foot is doable.

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That's fair. We'll bring it up to the board. The 25, yeah, the 25 was very doable,
and the construction materials now are a lot better than what we had to work with.
So, yeah, 30-foot is very- A lot more expensive, I'm sure. Yeah,
but, I mean, you make a lot more money than I did. Right.
I got to remind you, I made $1.50 for a half a day's work working in the fields

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for purple. And that's just not enough.
In fact, Mr. Junior, I saw him on the outside coming over here, Junior Purkle.
His brothers, actually, I worked for Wilbert and LJ, the shallot farmers. Yeah.
Six in the morning till 11, you got $1.50. And then in the evening, you come back at four.
Well, we meet about three. So we get started about four, probably work till
dark. And that was $1.50.

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And that was our summertime job. Probably about 11 years old,
we started doing that. So think about this. You spent your whole career here.
And now that you're retired, you're back to doing what you started off doing,
which is farming. That's a good point. I never thought about that. And no one's paying you.
Well, I mean, I get food. You get enjoyment out of it, right?
Yeah, I get a lot of satisfaction.

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It's a good exercise. It's bad. Yeah, at this age, you need to keep moving for one thing.
But I mean, yeah, to do something and not get satisfaction or just,
it's nice to be able to work your butt off like you do in a garden and you reap rewards from it.
You know, in any job, I think you need to reap some type of reward,
whether it's personal or something, you know, some type of, gives you some type of joys inside.

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And yeah, yeah. And it's a double for me because I like to work hard and I like
the garden and then I get to eat what I grow.
So that's like double for me. I really like that. We talked about the family,
you know, a typical family gathering consisting of 50 to 100 people.
Absolutely. So you were raised one of seven. Yes.
Tell me all about that as it pertains to the business.

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So maybe earliest memories, you know, walking over here, all of that.
My best, I guess I have memories before, but what I remember,
we all had chores to do. We all had a chore on Saturday, especially.
Saturday mornings, mama didn't want us being lazy, and daddy too.
So my chore on Saturday mornings was to come out here and I had to clean up

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the parking lot. I had to rake up any, you know, trash, pick up any,
any thing like that, and then sweep the, the front area where the customers came in.
So that was kind of, you know, probably about when I was older and back then,
you know, it wasn't nearly as much traffic on the road as you have now.
It was a two lane road in front.
So probably about seven years old,
eight years old, probably I was coming across and starting to do that.
And, and, and John, you know, I don't remember what their chores were,

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but they, they all, we all had, had something like that.
That's probably my earliest memory, but I used to, man, I used to love coming
here. I missed Mr. Cleave and back then Raymond Jackson worked for us.
And they were both, as far as I know, they were raised on Johnson Ridge.
I know that's where they lived at the time for sure. But yeah,
they were just great mentors for me. Really, really just funny.

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Really loved what they did and instilled that love in me, I think.
Those two guys. You looked up to those guys.
Oh, absolutely. They were real men. They were tough.
The customers loved them. They had a way with people. They really had a special
gift with people. and I picked up on that, you know, and they were really good to me.
I mean, just, they didn't have to be, but they treated me with,

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you know, a lot of dignity and respect and just, they made me feel like a little
man kind of at times, you know, that was special for a little boy, you know.
I talk about that a lot with our guys, our managers and, you know,
the guys that have been here for 10 years on what kind of impact they put on
these high school 16-year-olds that are going to work back there for the summer.

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And I don't think they understand the impact over 20 years.
You know, you take that kid and he's now 30 and he's got kids.
I guarantee you he's going to pull some cards that you threw to him,
you know, on the boot and a table in the back.
And I don't think they do realize that. I realize it because I had the same experience.

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I was here with Calvin and Chris and Miss Karen and Jenny.
And I looked up to all of them. And I think it's powerful. I had some great
workers. I really did, man.
I loved them. Loved every one of them in their own special way.
They were all great. They really were.
So you worked for Pawpaw, fairly young age. But when did it get serious?

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High school, probably, you know, going into college.
I mean, college, I didn't, I loved high school. I had a blast in high school. I had fun.
College was tough. Didn't like it. Never liked it. I struggled going there.
But my first three semesters, some of these college kids look at me like I'm
nuts, but I took 21 hours and I worked.
I worked 40, 50, probably closer to 50 hours a week with the 21 hours at school.

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They think I was nuts doing that, but that's just how we were raised.
I didn't know any other way.
Yeah, it was just, you know, times are different, you know. And what was your
major? Business. Business.
Specifically for? General. For this? You know, no.
This is, y'all are probably going to laugh at me. But the reason why I picked business, my poor mama.

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My poor mama was a English teacher for many, many years.
And she used to try to help me with my English in high school and all.
And I just never could get it too good. I was really bad in English.
And that's how I picked my major.
That's how I picked my major. The one, it had the fewest Englishes.
I'll BS you not. I'll BS you not. It had the fewest Englishes of all the curriculums

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that I was somewhat interested in. I wonder if they still get asked that question.
That's the only reason. Well, back then you could see what classes you had to
take. I guess they still do that now in each curriculum.
So yeah, there was a handbook, but now I'm sure it's on a computer,
but I went through the handbook and I'm telling you, I searched.
I found all of them They had the fewest Englishes and business was the only
one that I felt a little bit interested in. So I'm like, well,

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I'm going to try this one.
But that being said, I'd learned, I made up my mind I was going to get a degree
because my oldest brother, Biff, brilliant, went to school.
My sister, Nancy, same thing, went to college. And both of them were within
one or two semesters of finishing and dropped out.
So I made up my mind I was going to get a degree. I didn't care what it was

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in. You know, so that's why, you know, one of the reasons why I picked that
one. I just, I wanted to make sure I got the degree, you know.
Harvard on the body. I did make it. And of course, I did have one of my Englishes
I squeaked by and I made a D.
Good. You tried. Yes. Oh, absolutely.

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So Nichols is known for business school. Yeah. You know why it's called Harvard
on the body? Tell me. Do you know? No.
So the same Harvard Business School is accredited by the same accreditation,
whatever, that Nichols is.
Okay. No, I didn't know that. Yeah, that's why. So, I mean, it's,
I don't know if it's true, but supposedly it's equivalent to their degree.

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You know, of course, people don't know that, but I mean, if it's accredited
by the same accreditation counselor or however they do that stuff.
So going through it, having been through it, what did it not prepare you for?
What's the course you would add to a Nichols business degree?
You know, I'd like, I had one professor that I, and actually it might've been an elective I took.

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I don't remember if it was an elective or if I had to take it, it was a night class.
Had a guy from, the instructor was from Baton Rouge. He'd come in once a week to teach this.
It was on real estate and he was a businessman and he just did this on the side.
Best instructor I ever had. I wished that perhaps some of these.
Instructors had some business back, you know, actual, because you just,

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you could teach it from a book, but man, until you live it, you know what I mean?
And it costs your pocket, especially if you're an entrepreneur a little bit,
you know, if you make a mistake, it costs you. The decision-making part of it. Yeah.
And you know, you can't teach that probably. You can't teach it.
I think it's ingrained. Some people are more risky, you know,
just take more risks than others.
But being a business or entrepreneur, it's risky and you got to be willing to

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take them. Some people are not, some are.
So, So I don't think you can teach that, you know, for whatever reason,
you know, and I've, I've owned several businesses over the years,
you know, different, I dabbled in several different things, but.
You remember the name of that professor?
I cannot, I cannot. He was good though, man.
He didn't just teach real estate, you know, he taught, he taught real life,

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you know, he had some really good examples.
Oh yeah, you're going to buy it for this, but what about this cost?
That cost, this cost, you know, and that's, that's little things that you don't
think And for him, that was fun.
Yeah, I think he enjoyed that class. I know I did. That really caught my attention on that class.
And that's why I ended up doing some real estate things in my entrepreneurial
life, I guess, if you want to call it that. that one of the first things he

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said in class really caught my attention.
He said, he said, let me see if I can word this right.
The number one investment that you can make in the whole country,
if you take all other investments combined and wherever you want to put your
money, whatever, business, whatever you want to be in,
he says, real estate investment is combined, beats them all.

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Like if you put them all together, brother, your investment return on it is bigger than any of them.
I'm not saying it right. I can't remember exactly how you said it,
but it really caught my attention. It really, it was, yeah.
So that's why I always wanted to own land or buy land, you know,
real estate. It is risky.
Well, yeah, but I mean, a stock market scares me to death, you know?

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You can do it with a high or a low degree of risk.
Yeah. Oh, absolutely. You got to do your homework. You got to do your homework.
And it's a long term. I've learned that, unfortunately. I've made errors with it.
I've bought stuff and got rid of it too soon.
I was young and wanting to make money fast, but real estate is not that.
It's usually, you got to buy it and wait time.

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Time pays off in real estate and be patient, very patient. What do you think
is happening to Thibodeau in terms of real estate?
Man, I'm out the loop on that now. I used to really, really, I mean, I was big.
I used to love, you know, keeping track of all that stuff, housing and just
anything went for sale, I'd research it and look at it and, you know,
seeing if it's a good deal, blah, blah, blah. But.

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I'm out of the loop on it. Now, what I do look at still a little bit is,
so I've got some property in Mississippi, you know, woodland,
you know, hunting land and stuff, but trees, you know, I didn't realize when
I bought it, the first piece I bought 12,
15 years ago, how good of an investment it is.
And so I keep track of that a little bit in my area where I'm at up in Mississippi,

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just whenever stuff goes for sale, I'll check it out just to keep track of,
get an idea what mine's worth and, you know.
But yeah, timber's a good investment, man. It's a slow, it's a long-term,
very long-term, but it's a good investment, not a bad investment.
All right. Speaking of taking risks, how old were you when you made some beef

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jerky for a guy, for a salesman, sort of behind Pawpaw's back?
Maybe he was on vacation. Yeah. And you made a guy some beef jerky,
and he loved it, and he came back for more, and he came back for more,
and he came back for more.
What happened when Pawpaw left for vacation? what
yeah why'd you take the risk so i

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had been making it sporadically i was we i played a
lot of softball adult softball on weekends with my buddies and all we had
pretty good teams over the years and i'm pretty sure i was still in college
when when uh and he man he was just one of those customers mr uh mr chick bro
god rest his soul great great loved him to death his son meanie is still with
us thank goodness he's he's not he's not that old he's a little older than me

(21:18):
He's a good guy. I mean, he's a chip off the old block, you know.
But yeah, Mr. Chick, he was just, he was an all-field salesman more or less.
And just one of those people you couldn't tell, he just wouldn't take no for an answer.
But he was a good customer too. He bought a lot of smoked sausage.
He did a lot of cooking for his company that he worked for. And they did a lot

(21:40):
of, he did a lot of entertaining.
So he would do a, I mean, he'd come get, it wasn't nothing to come get 100,
150 pounds of smoked sausage.
And jambalaya and God knows what all he did with it. Andouille,
he'd buy a lot of that. Fresh sausage, stuff like that, barbecuing and all.
But yeah, he was a good cuss. Daddy knew him well.
Like I said, I knew daddy liked him. That helped a lot for me starting to make it.

(22:03):
They had a good relationship. So yeah, daddy's on vacation. He's- Grand now. Nope.
Every so often, him and mom, they had a group of friends that they would go with to Las Vegas.
Okay. And of all times a year, he did this. This is the first time he probably
ever did this because it's a busy time of year. It was for Thanksgiving,
the week of Thanksgiving.

(22:24):
And Mr. Chick was in there probably the Friday after Thanksgiving.
Might've been the Wednesday. I think it was a Friday afternoon.
I was, I'd made some for my buddies for the weekend and he had tasted it a couple of times before.
And man, when it comes out the smokehouse in the afternoons,
you could smell it and he'd, you know, and he was, like I said,
he was like family almost, you know?
So at this point you already had what you would consider is the way you wanted

(22:48):
it when this happened? Or were you still playing around?
I mean, I was, yeah, I was making it the same way we're pretty much making it
now. Now, a little different, different cuts of meat, you know, different.
But every time. I experimented with the different cuts of meat,
which doesn't really matter that much, you know, unless you don't like chewing.
It just depends. There were more tender pieces that I've used over the years.
Seasoning was basically the same. Yeah. The same as what we do now.

(23:11):
And it looked the same. Well, yeah, we did it different. So now we,
I designed those sticks, by the way, with the nails that y'all use that I know y'all love.
Trust me, y'all would love what y'all got now compared to what we used to do.
Explain the stick. Explain the stick for someone who doesn't understand this.
Well, do we want to give away that information? It's all over. Okay.
It's all over. I was very, daddy was very secretive about everything he did.

(23:34):
He did not want anybody. What if people come over from the Philippines and they
want to see stuff like this? Yeah, I know.
Yeah, no one can replicate it, so. But anyway, yeah, it's just basically stainless
nails that I found at a boat shop that Bill's.
Wooden boats, and you basically drill, you have to drill holes and angle on,
aluminum angle on, and you got to get the right size bit where it's a press fit.

(23:57):
Basically, you have to don't need to drive them into the hole.
And I actually take them, and the nails are too long. I can't find short enough
ones, so we actually cut them. It's a lot of work to make them.
It takes a lot of work to make them.
But once they're made, they've lasted for a long time. They last.
But before that, so when I was making them, when Mr. Chick was doing it,
But we had, have you ever seen the old smoke rails we use?

(24:20):
They're like, if you look at them from the end, they're like a pyramid kind
of sorta, what you would call that.
And flares at the bottom, like a bell. They call it like a bell, a bell.
No, not those. No. No, that's after.
It's like a star. It's a, they're straight. A straight piece of angle on it.
Yeah, like this. And it kicks out. It's not really an angle on it.
It's, if you had three pieces, was that 33 degrees each?

(24:41):
Okay. So basically an upright one and then two that go out at the bottom. Okay.
So that's what we were smoking our sausage on. And I can't believe we don't
still have some of those sticks hanging around here somewhere.
But so yeah, we just hung the meat over that. So the meat that was underneath
the stick really didn't get that dark, pretty color.
It stayed kind of pink looking, which wasn't appetizing looking,

(25:02):
but it still, it didn't affect the taste at all. So that's the first,
that's how we made it back then for him. And that's how I was making it for myself.
So yeah, he comes in and he's like, man, Don, he says, y'all got to make me some of this.
He says, look, he says, I'm going to come back Monday, Monday afternoon,
and I want you to make me 20 pounds.
So I'm like, man, that's a chick. I was like, Daddy don't want to make this.

(25:25):
You know, Daddy was getting older. He was getting ready to retire.
And you asked him. He's getting closer to retirement. You already asked him, correct?
No, no, I never asked Dad. Okay. No, no. He just was reading his mind.
Mr. Chick may have, may have kind of talked to him about it a little bit. He may have.
Mr. Chick may have talked to daddy about it. And daddy, I think, turned him down maybe.
So yeah, he asked me to do it. I'm like, man, I told him, I tried to tell him no.

(25:48):
But he, like I said, he just, he wouldn't take no for an answer.
And he was, man, look, he was a good guy. I love Chick.
He was a great guy. And so anyway, I told him, I said, look.
So he said, man, look, Donald, don't worry about it. He said,
I'm going to talk to your daddy.
You don't worry about your daddy. I'm on that. And that's how he convinced me.
I'm like, all right, you got me. True salesman. I'm young and dumb.

(26:08):
So we come in Monday morning. Daddy's coming back like the Sunday,
I think. So he's going to be at work Monday.
So Monday morning, and you got to get in there early. And we smoke sausage Monday
mornings for sure, every Monday.
And back then, it was the summer months. I knew I was going to have room.
Usually in the summer, we don't smoke quite as much. I knew we were going to
have room to get in there.
So what I did, I just took some regular round steaks with the bone in and they

(26:29):
were $1.90 a pound at the time. I can remember that.
And I sliced them and raw weight 20 pounds is what he was buying.
So I weighed up 20 pounds and got a ticket and I didn't charge him nothing to
season it and smoke it and all that stuff because I knew it lost a lot of weight.
So I figured we're coming out all right. We're selling from that much anyway
and I got to smoke anyway. It's not costing me anything extra really.
So yeah. So anyway, I do that. I come in that morning and I slice them and I put them in there.

(26:53):
And Daddy, I don't know if Mr. Cleave gave Daddy the rundown of what was going
on behind my, not behind my back.
You know, Mr. Cleave never did nothing behind your back, but he might have kind
of let Daddy know what was happening because it was a lot more.
You know, I only did a few pieces, you know, usually when I did it for myself. I never did that much.
So I guess maybe he just figured out something's going on. But yeah,
he didn't say a word to me all day.

(27:15):
I mean, not nothing. Because he knew. Nothing.
He knew what had started. We take it in, and I think while we're taking it in,
Chick walks in the door, and as soon as he walks in the door,
Daddy's about a cooler right here.
He's like, you. He points at him, and he does like this with his finger.
Come see. Chick does that to Pawpaw, correct? No, Daddy does that. Pawpaw did it. Yeah.

(27:40):
So they'd go off on the side and they'd get to talking quiet.
I couldn't hear the conversation.
But by the time it was all over with, old Chick, he knew how to talk and he
knew how to not take no for an answer.
So daddy agreed we'd make every Monday and every Wednesday. That's what we did.
Monday afternoon, he picked up those 20 pounds. And then Wednesday afternoons, he picked up 20.
And we'd take it and we'd put about three or four pieces in a little piece of

(28:02):
paper and we'd wrap them. So he'd end up with, I don't know, maybe 20 packs.
And he's hitting the road. Yeah, he's going, he's going. And daddy tells him,
look, Chick. And he's sweet talking.
Yeah, well, daddy told him. He said, look, he said, I'm going to make it for
you, but you cannot tell anybody where you're getting it from.
In fact, he said, you tell people you're making it yourself.
That's what he told Chick. Okay. He told him, you tell people you're making it yourself.

(28:22):
So that went on, I guess, about six months. But I mean, when we took it out
in the evenings, man, that stuff smells good. What year was this?
My best guess, like I said, I'm pretty sure I was still in college.
So probably early 90s, 93-ish, give or take a year.
Best guess. Maybe a little later than that because daddy, might have been a
little bit later because daddy wasn't here long when we were making it.

(28:44):
He wasn't here that long. So it might have been mid, late 90s.
Because me and John bought out, I think, 91. In 90 or 91.
Okay. Yeah, I think 91 was our first year, I think.
So Mr. Chick's hitting the road with it, sweet-talking his clients or oil field
customers. Yeah, that's what he's doing. He's getting in the door with it. He's cutting the line.
He's cutting the line. Nice. They still do it today. Absolutely.

(29:06):
Absolutely. They know it works.
And that's funny. That's what a turkey cheese, a lot of them use,
and they use that for the secretaries, the boss's secretary that gets them in
with her because she's going to get him.
Yep. She's really the one that gets them in there. You got to flash it.
But I heard a story of a truck driver stacked up in line at a delivery.
He was running late, you know, whatever, two hours late. And there's five trucks ahead of him.

(29:30):
And he hung that package out the window. He hung the white butcher paper out the window.
And the guy at the gate seen it and flagged him around all the other trucks.
Nice. So it's still. Well, I've had some happenings like that. Still sweet talks.
So what about, all right, you're making it for Chick. and then how'd that evolve
to someone else walked in and said, I want some jerky.

(29:54):
Well, in the evenings when we took it out, it smells.
I mean, this place just smells so good.
And so I would, you know, we were a small business.
It wasn't but four of us behind the counter, I think at the time,
maybe five at the most that worked here in the whole place.
And from there, like, you know, we knew our customers.
We knew every one of them just about that walked in. So we did it.

(30:16):
Man, what is that? What is that? So we'd give them a little taste, you know, music.
Cut a little piece off, let them taste it. Oh, how much I'll sell it for? Oh, we don't sell that.
So, and that's pretty much what happened for, you know, six months or so,
you know, occasionally we'd give somebody a piece and they kept asking for it, kept asking for it.
So eventually we started making maybe about five extra pounds,
you know, and then it became 10 extra pounds and then 20 extra pounds.

(30:41):
And then it just kept growing.
And you remember the first year, when was the first year you knew it was something?
You knew you had something?
I think from the beginning, I kind of knew because all the ballplayers,
everybody at 80 loved it. I never met a person that didn't like it for the first quite a few years.

(31:01):
You know, I never did this.
It's hard to explain. I knew what I wanted to do when I was six years old.
I mean, how many six-year-olds really know what they want to do for a living?
I knew I wanted to work. I wanted this place so bad when I was six years old.
I used to cry about it because I never thought I did. I had two older brothers.
But I always, mostly because of Cleveland Raymond, I think. You know,
I just, I loved coming here. I absolutely love this place.

(31:24):
So I never did anything. I never thought of things that way.
I just, I just wanted to put out, let's put it this way.
Anybody out there that's listening, when you eat a really good steak or seafood,
any kind of good food, what do you do?
Pretty much every single human on the planet, when they eat something that they
really like, they smile, they're happy.

(31:45):
And that's what I loved about what I did all my life, providing the best stuff
I could do, or trying to anyway.
And yeah, seeing that smile on people's face. And that's why I did what I did all my life pretty much.
It was never about the money, never. And I mean, granted the money did come,
but I would have done it anyway, I think.
Because, I mean, I tell people and they think I'm nuts, but I couldn't wait.

(32:07):
When my eyes opened up in the morning, I couldn't wait. As soon as my feet hit
the floor, I was out of the house within 10 minutes.
I couldn't wait to come to work. I loved what I did. Loved what I did all my life.
So anyway, yep, that's pretty much how the jerky got started.
And then from there, we slowly evolved with different cuts of meat we've tried
over the years and different sticks.
The sticks we used not long when we started kind of growing a little bit at

(32:31):
the beginning. And we did do some smoking of wood sticks back then at times when we had to overflow.
So, yeah, we ended up taking wood sticks, one by two, I think it was.
And we took just regular old galvanized nails. And this is probably back in
the early 90s, mid 90s, I guess.
We drove it in at an angle and then we'd bend them like a hook kind of.

(32:52):
So, yeah. And that worked. Those worked good. They just, they didn't,
they were hard after you take the jerky off to clean them. They didn't clean real good.
Whereas the ones we got now clean really good. but it's stainless and aluminum,
you know? There's a lot to it. But we used those for quite a while.
There's a lot to it. What was it like working, let's say the,
I don't know, 10 years in, 10 years in, Papa's still there, correct?

(33:17):
Oh, after, when I started in high school? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. High school was
80, so yeah, yeah. It was towards the end, I mean, Papa was fixing to leave. What was that like?
So kind of what was- The transition, you mean? Yeah, what was his role here?
And what were y'all roles? Daddy was here most of the time.
His last year, year and a half maybe, he started playing golf a little bit.

(33:38):
So he was here a little bit less, not a lot.
But he was getting, he was ready. He was ready to get out. He was ready to get
out. Was he talking about it?
Not really. Not really talking about it. But, you know, he was getting tired of it.
He was getting old, you know. When you get old, you don't feel like working that hard, you know.
Because there's no doubt. I ain't got to tell you this. This is hard work.

(33:58):
You know, what we do. We're not doing with a whole lot of machines.
We're doing a lot of it by hand. Oh the way he did it You know wait grandpa
did people people realize that there's a lot of physical work to it And why not about hours?
Why not change it up and and take the easy way out and make the boudin with
no bones in it and use garlic powder Instead of garlic and green onions dry

(34:18):
green onions. Well, why not do all that Shane?
You tell me does it taste the same?
I know I want to hear I want to hear it out your mouth what I just told you
I said, I want to make the best possible. You don't smile.
Boudin is not a fancy product. You don't find it in fancy restaurants.
But I want to try to make the best boudin I can make or whatever it is that I'm cooking that day.

(34:39):
And that's something, I mean, most of the time when I was hands-on with anything
we were cooking or making, you know, vast majority of times.
So, but yeah, that's why. I mean, it makes a difference. I don't care what anybody says.
And if it doesn't make a difference, and not everybody's taste buds are perhaps
delicate as mine. But you know,
I know the difference and that's all that that's all that matters to me.

(34:59):
Mm-hmm, you know, but what stops what stops you from?
What's the difference between you and the guy that he knows if he just uses,
Garlic powder instead of garlic.
He could make a dollar more per pound. What what's the difference between those two guys? I,

(35:20):
That's a good question because I would, well, it comes back to what I just told
you. I never did it for the money.
I guess it's the money, you know, greed maybe. I don't know what you want to
call it, but best, I don't know. I guess that's it.
Or laziness maybe because it takes a lot of work. And look, for many,
many years, we peeled our own garlic.
We peeled it and chopped it by hand for many, many years. Up until,

(35:44):
I don't know, maybe, what, 20 years ago, maybe we could buy it where it was
already peeled. That's been nice.
But yeah, we don't even get it already minced anymore.
I mean, we never did it that way. We always get it whole and we do it by hand ourselves.
This is a great question. This is probably the best question I have.
And it doesn't come from me. It comes from someone else. Okay.

(36:04):
That works here and is related to you. Okay. They want to know.
Why does Brody want to do that? It's actually not Brody. It's actually Jeff. Jeff. Okay.
Oh, this is going to be good. I love Jeff. I told him I wouldn't say who it
was. Well, he's a chip off of the old block over there.
In Shreve over there.
Jeff wants to know why do customers come in here and they stand across the counter

(36:27):
and they say, I need a dollar worse-a something.
What's a dollar worse-a? What's it mean? When did it start?
Was that before you were here? Did you watch it happen? Oh, no,
I didn't. No, that's been since it's opened.
And people didn't have money. You got to realize, especially Daddy and Cleve
when they were here, people didn't have no money back then. Meat was a luxury.

(36:48):
Meat was a luxury back when they were growing up. Mr. Cleave didn't eat meat,
but once a week. So it's a here's my budget for sausage. Yeah, I got a dollar.
You better nail it or I'm out.
And most of the time it was, most of the time, not always, but the majority
of time was either with boudin or hog head cheese. Give me a dollar the worse of hog head cheese.
Right. And, but that's just kind of, the worse is I guess, Johnson Ridge slang,

(37:10):
you know, ain't nothing but a Johnson Ridge boy, so. Yeah.
But yeah, I mean, that's just- We still have customers. Oh, we've sold millions
of dollars worse across that counter. That worse is something.
Yeah. I didn't realize they still ask for it that way. That's good.
I like that. And one time I remember Papa actually went, this was when he was,

(37:31):
I don't know, he's probably 95, 96.
He actually went a little too far over the whatever it was, $1.50 worse, $1.75 worse.
He went a little too far over and they told him it was too much.
So he smiled at him broke broke a quarter of the piece off you know it's turkey
cheese he broke a quarter of the piece off popped it in his mouth and then continued

(37:52):
to wrap their the rest of their dollars worth.
That's how this place is going to- Well, you know what people- It's going to
be really- Maybe those people realize this, the ones that do the Wursa,
I would say 80, 90% of the time,
maybe every time, that dollar's Wursa is actually about a dollar and a quarter.

(38:16):
It really, it's always, I never, ever went under, almost never. That's the trick, huh?
Yeah, it was always over. I think that's why they do that, because they know
they're getting a little more. You gotta ask for a little less than a dollar's worth. Yeah.
I never, ever, I never did that to people.
If it was a little over, they got, which most of the time it will.
I want to make sure that, you know, they got their money's worth.
But like I said, it was never about the money, you know, what's a quarter here,

(38:38):
50 cents there, you know.
So beef jerky goes from Mr. Chick ordering his first, what was his very first order?
It was 20 pounds. 20 pounds of wet weight.
Yeah. Wet weight, $1.90 a pound. Now what it came out to on the end.
A third of that, maybe. Probably, yeah, probably about six bucks a pound.
Okay. Probably. And that's not including any labor or anything else with it.

(39:00):
But from there, we did start selling, I think, best I can remember.
And they may have some customers who bought it for cheaper possibly.
But I think we started at $8 a pound, I think.
I think in my high school years, the lowest I remember was about $16 to $18 a pound.
And we always get customers, they say, boy, I've been buying this stuff since

(39:22):
it was $10 a pound. You know?
And yeah, I remember back to about 16, 18.
And mostly the first increases on the price was we were still kind of trying
to figure out what cut of meat worked best.
Just a combination of taste, texture, and price, you know, because I mean, it's jerky.
You know, you don't want to use the most expensive cut of meat for it,

(39:43):
but you want to use something good, you know.
So that was probably why we ended up having to go up to that 10 or 12 mark when
we first did, you know, because of the cut of meat we ended up going with.
People don't know this Almost no one knows
this But Our jerky Is It is
known for being expensive It is People do Mention how expensive it is But they
don't know that it's It's on average Eight to ten dollars Cheaper per pound

(40:08):
Than Almost anything you find In a gas station Yeah They never figured that
out But that's That's And it's not It's not something we We ever pushed No I've always,
Questioned If we should or not And I guess I don't know yet Yeah But.
You could do something like that on Facebook, you know, with media,

(40:28):
with the social media you all have now.
You could maybe just kind of show some examples, you know. But people don't
know that. Show them how much it is and then do the math.
People don't do the math, that's all. Right. A lot of people aren't that good
at math, but if you sit and do the math, you have the vast majority of them in the 40s probably.
Right. They're getting those 2.7 ounce packs.
They don't understand what's happening there. Yeah, yeah. We could easily say
it's $4 a pack instead of $30 a pound and put whatever we want in the pack.

(40:51):
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
So, yeah, maybe that's something we ought to switch up one day and follow suit
and do the packaging different.
And maybe people will realize we're actually very underpriced for what you're
getting. Yeah, it is. It is.
And on top of all that, health-wise, it's probably the healthiest jerky you're
going to buy because it doesn't have any nitrates or nitrites in it.

(41:12):
Right. And that's super rare.
Yeah. You can't find it. A lot of stuff in there is loaded with sugars.
Yeah, I've noticed that. A lot of your breakfast sausages, every one of them has sugar in it now.
I don't like sweet in a meat. You know, like bacon. Same thing with bacon.
They're all sweet. I don't like that.
But then they all, everything, everything. And that's another thing I'm really
excited about is your bacon over there at the place.
And you'll sell it here, I think. Brett's got that bacon down pat,

(41:35):
man. Dude, I have played with that. I don't know if y'all know that,
but I have played with that darn bacon over the years.
I never could come out with something I liked. He's got it. I like what he makes.
I've actually never been super interested in bacon until now.
He's got a good product, man. And Brett came up with a good recipe.
Bacon's always been whatever.
And after a couple of times trying it, I'm kind of hooked on it.

(41:55):
So we've been messing with it a lot. Well, I tell people about it,
when you first bite it, for me, this is just my experience.
And I think most people will experience this if they follow through with it.
That first bite, it's good, but it's not like the best bacon you ever ate, honestly.
But it's because it doesn't have the nitrite. So like regular bacon with the
nitrite, man, that first bite, boy, it's good.
If you really want to be a pig, you can eat five, six pieces.

(42:17):
But by the time you get to that fourth, fifth, sixth piece, it deteriorates like it's not as good.
I find hours when you get to that fourth or fifth piece, it just keeps getting better.
Each bite. Each bite gets better and better. It's hard to explain.
It stays with you until later. It's just good.
Like I said, that first bite to me is just average. And then it just gets better
and better with every bite. And wet age is in your mouth.

(42:39):
That's a little drink break never hurt
no one yeah you asked me about the 10 years right
when daddy was fixing to leave we're talking about that a little bit yeah yeah
let's go to that let's go back to he's kind of he's he's not hinting toward
retirement yet and you and and uncle john have well he he is i guess he because

(43:02):
he's letting us know he wants us he's training any all up?
Yeah. Well, he's letting us know that he's going to be retired and we needed
to have each saved $6,000. Okay.
And I was what, 20, let me think now.
How old was I? 90, about 28 years old.
And so I'd been married, I was married, married.

(43:23):
Before I was married, I was making $1.50 an hour. So after I got married,
I was making $2 an hour at the time.
What were your friends making what were they doing oh i had a buddy of mine
making what was kevin making.
He was in college. His dad was giving him $250 a week, and he worked about four hours a week.
No, he probably worked more than that, but still. Yeah, yeah.

(43:44):
A dollar fifty an hour while I was in college, and up until when I got married,
I got a raise. I went to $2 an hour. So it's not easy to save $6,000.
Buddies in the oil field? Stuff like that? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It was his dad's company.
But all your college buddies, what are they doing after college?
Much well right at the end of college i so yeah i had i had a heck of a graduating year in 84,

(44:09):
so inside of uh about a four month period five month period so i graduate college,
in may i decide in august to run for terrible parish school board okay i heard
some stories about this age of 20 years old i don't know much so yeah so i've
run and win that and then i'm I'm married about a month after that.

(44:30):
So we're inside of about a full month period.
Yeah, I'm graduated, run for school board, the youngest elected official in
the state of Louisiana at the time ever.
I know there's been some younger than me since then. And why'd you want to do
that? That's a good question. You loved school.
You know, my mom was a teacher, dad, all his sisters were teachers.

(44:51):
I loved the thought of teachers. You know, I think I had some very good ones
in my, you know, I went to public schools, but yeah, I had some great, great teachers.
I was really blessed with some great teachers that pushed me a little bit,
you know, and, you know, I needed it.
But yeah, yeah, just I liked teachers and I wanted to maybe make a difference there, you know.

(45:12):
And I mean, it was kind of long-term, kind of a stepping stone.
The summer or two before that, Dave Trane had run for office and my buddy Kevin was real big.
His aunt was real big in his campaign. pain. So.
We did put up a bunch of signs. That's my first taste of politics,
I guess, at about 20, 19 years old and ended up meeting him.
You know, that was pretty exciting for a young kid.

(45:33):
And so, yeah, that's kind of where I got my taste, I guess, for politics.
I'm not into politics, but do you still have a taste for politics?
No. Has it changed since then? Yeah. Yeah, it has.
Yeah. You don't want to be the politician. You want to be the man behind him.
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, a very wise man once told me,

(45:53):
he was our district attorney in Terrebonne Parish.
He said, you know, Donald, he says, once you get elected and you have to make
decisions on any board or whatever, parish council, he says,
from then on, the whole time, you very seldom make friends.
All you do is make enemies. And I never understood when he said that or make people mad at you.

(46:15):
But every time you say yes or no to a vote, somebody's not happy.
Somebody is not happy with that decision.
So, yeah. Yeah. And he was right. Like I said, I was a young age when he told
me that. I didn't catch it.
But yeah, it took a few years when I realized, you know, there was a lot of
wisdom in what he told me. I didn't understand it at the time.
And people are more inclined to tell you when you made them mad than when you

(46:39):
made them happy. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. You never hear, you very seldom get the pats on the back. That's a trend.
And that's just life. That's people. That's human nature, unfortunately,
but that's just, it is what it is.
When did the slaughterhouse close? Man, what year?
Best guess, around 2000 maybe, maybe a little bit before that.
How old were you when you slaughtered your first cow? Well, I mean,

(47:02):
I can remember five, six years old, Cleve would hold a gun and he'd let us pull the trigger.
Right here, right in the back. Yeah, yeah, yeah, in the back here.
Yeah, yeah, that's when we slaughtered. So if you pass the market,
if you're passing the market and you pass the taller portion.
Yeah, the metal. Right.
That was a slaughterhouse. The big, tall metal building. That was a slaughterhouse.
Yeah. But before that, that was built in 72.

(47:23):
So I was about 10, 11 years old when that was built.
But before that, they slaughtered right there where y'all make the boudin.
That was a slaughterhouse. And the boudin and the sausage, we did everything in that one little room.
So what we did, Shane, where the back cooler door is, we backed the trailer
to that door. Daddy had two big swinging doors right there.
They'd back a big, big square trailer there.

(47:45):
They'd try to push the cattle that they wanted to kill to the back of the trailer.
Somebody would go outside, kind of push them towards the building,
to the back of the trailer, and somebody would be inside with a gun, and they'd shoot them.
Try to drop them near the door, but not where you couldn't open the door.
Right. And we'd hurry up and push them to the front and stand.

(48:06):
Somebody would make sure to try not to, because sometimes they would charge
you, and you'd have to hurry up and get the dead animal out,
and hurry up and close the door.
So it was, and they did it that way for, I don't know how long,
probably since it was built. That was built probably in the early 50s, that particular.
I heard Mr. Cleave punch a cow out cold with his- No, not Mr.
Cleave. No? No, that was Nanny.

(48:28):
That was a boy, I say a boy, a man from the ridge. I don't know his real name.
Big boy. Yeah. Punch it, bare knuckle.
I heard many stories about Nanny. Nanny, from what I hear, was- Nanny.
So if y'all ever heard about Big John, okay, if you ever heard that song,
that had to, I've only, I can vaguely remember him.
He died many years ago, but, From everything I've heard about him,

(48:49):
he was a man's man's man. Like just powerful. Nanny.
Yeah, you know, I've heard stories of him just sitting there and people punch
him right square across the chin and he just kind of smile at him.
Right. You know, just tough and just.
Now, that being said, I heard he wasn't the brightest person in the shed,
but he was a good soul from what I, you know, a good man.

(49:10):
But yeah, yeah. He said he came there that day and he watched daddy and him
shoot him. This was before inspection.
And when he got up to the next one, nanny was back there BSing with him and
all. And he knew Mr. Cleaver, wouldn't he? And my dad knew him well too.
But, oh, man, Mr. Lester, he says, save your bullets. He went over there and
punched him and knocked him out in the head. Knocked him out. Yep.

(49:31):
Knocked him out with his fist. Save your bullets, Mr. Lester.
What a hero. That's called a hero. No, that's a man with big hands. Big hands.
I guess they don't make guys like that today, right? They do.
They just don't use it. You think anyone in Louisiana punched a cow out cold
with their bare knuckles this year? He's the only one I've heard. No. No.
I don't think so. They probably didn't spank their dog that hard.

(49:56):
But anyway. So do you remember what year or time frame when you stopped slaughtering?
Like I said, roughly, it was a little before 2000.
Pawpaw was gone. Yeah, you and John had it. And the reason why we did it,
it was going to be a pain in the butt. Man, the government would slaughter. I love slaughtering.
It was hard work, but I liked it. We only did it one day a week.
We were killing three, four animals on average a week.

(50:19):
And it just got to be three, four hours of cleaning, scrubbing,
preparation, getting everything ready.
And it would take, you know, at the most two and a half, three hours to slaughter
four animals. And then, you know.
The government just kept getting more and more. We had to buy an incubator to
test for E. coli, swap test all the carcasses.

(50:40):
I mean, I don't even have to be a scientist to be able to slaughter.
So it just got old. And plus, the jerky was really growing, and we were starting
to pop out the seams over here at the time.
So it was the right—I miss it, don't get me wrong, but at the time,
it was probably the right decision. Yeah, so we took the slaughterhouse and
turned it basically into jerky processing, the whole area.

(51:02):
We ended up doing the vacuum packing room and the slicing room and all that.
Did that feel risky, calling it quits on the slaughtering?
No, it didn't feel risky. It just felt like I lost a part of me there. That's all. Yeah.
Isn't it a shame? I mean, I did it for too long. I mean, I probably should have quit sooner.
But financially, I probably should have quit. Let me say it that way,

(51:23):
probably. Because you don't make a lot of money off of that particular thing.
It's the process and stuff.
That's what the money's made. But it was just a part of me. I'd been doing it
since, like I said, five, six years old. I killed probably my first pig and cow.
Miss Cleve would hold a gun and he'd let me pull the trigger.
Kind of cool as a little kid. It kind of reminds me of today.
We're at the Thibodeau market right now, and you look at that saw right there

(51:45):
and think about how many calves have been cut on there. How many sevens? How many pork chops?
How sad would you be if we stopped doing calf cuts? Yeah, with the new location, both stopped.
And I probably was the one that advised them to do it because there's just no
money in it, and you don't sell a lot of it.
People just don't eat that way anymore, really, is what it amounts to.

(52:07):
People don't cook. It takes time to cook those things. Patience.
People want something fast.
And it'll probably come back someday, and I hope we don't get rid of it.
It takes patience, and it takes learning. It takes the generational.
Yeah, it takes that grandma to teach you how to do that. Yeah,
you got to have the hand down, you know? Yeah, yeah.
We're losing that, unfortunately. Not everywhere it is.

(52:30):
You go yeah we i guess people don't
people don't know that that's not a money-making product
and that's that's something we're doing to make people to make
people happy to keep them yeah cooking the same things they're used to cooking
i hope so and fulfilling those recipes they have that were passed down by grandma
great-grandma it's it's hard to do because it takes so much training yeah it

(52:53):
takes another thing finding people a hell of a lot of training to learn how
to break it down and all. Yeah, it does. It takes time.
And you don't want to invest that in somebody young if they're only going to
be here for a year. I mean, it takes five years to learn it.
That's one of those things in the building.
We don't really let anyone under 25 touch that saw just as our own personal
rule, but it takes maturity. It takes a lot, man.

(53:16):
You know, nowadays you hear a lot about people being racist and prejudiced.
That's one thing Mr. Cleave always used to say about that saw.
He said, that saw is neither racist or prejudiced.
If you put your finger in it, regardless of what or who you are, it will cut you. Right.
I used to like, oh, Mr. Cleave had so many good sayings. But yeah, that saw is not,

(53:40):
is not prejudiced at all, and it will cut you. But yeah, you need maturity to
use it. And the key is, especially over the years, man, we used to be so busy in here.
I know people probably thought I was very rude because when I'm on that saw,
I ignore, I turn everything off.
Everything around me, I turn it off. All it takes is one glance up.
If somebody, hey, Donald, and you just look up while you're cutting something,

(54:00):
that could cost you a finger.
Right. So I liked my fingers. So take being, people think I'm rude over losing a finger.
Right. So, and that, that, that was my attitude over the years,
but Ms. Cleve taught me that way.
When you're on that saw, you don't play, you, you, you focus and you concentrate on what you're doing.
What is it about? It's something that's so cool though, is being on that saw,
you know, cutting up, cutting up for good and at four and you get a little line

(54:25):
and man, the way people watch you, it's, it's almost, yeah, it is.
But it, but for someone who likes that, it's a extreme sport almost, you know?
Yeah. Cause not, you don't see that every day. I love it. Especially cutting up for boudin.
That's something you don't – yeah, cutting up for boudin is not like cutting
a steak or a chop. You know what I mean? That's different.
People are looking. They don't have a clue why you're doing what you're doing.

(54:47):
Yeah. And doing that, that being said, you're not going to lose a finger if you get hit there.
Good chance you'll lose your whole hand. You know, really, really,
because you don't have the guard on with a one-inch or a half-inch.
You freestyle. You only lose a little piece. You're going to lose a lot if you
get hit while you're doing that.
But those are things that – That's the scariest, that's probably the scariest
thing to do in a saw, is cutting up a Buddha hen, honestly.

(55:07):
Those are the next things in my mind that we have comparable to y'all,
you know, losing the slaughtering process, like the veal cuts and man,
anything that's not easy and already done for you,
I'm afraid that people stop ordering.
Let me, I'ma spread a little, I guess, wisdom or whatever you want to call it.
So daddy, daddy lived to be 97.

(55:29):
My grandma lived to be, his mama lived to be, I think 91.
90, 91, something like that. They eat their share of meat. Even when they were
poor and young, they had a meat market.
So we ate a good bit of meat. It might have been the neck or the feet or the
hooves. The last thing standing.
Yeah, yeah. Whatever they couldn't sell that week.

(55:50):
But 90 plus percent of it was all grass-fed stuff.
And I'm convinced over the years of selling, we have some really good steaks.
And I love a good steak as far as a heavy beef steak. but vast majority of meat
you get in these grocery stores and anywhere in the country is that heavy beef stuff.
I'm convinced that that's what clogs up arteries and gives you the cholesterol

(56:11):
and stuff is that heavy beef.
I mean, that, I mean, granted daddy had a little bit high cholesterol, but it wasn't horrible.
You know what I mean? It was, it was, and he never, he never,
he never was overweight.
So I think eating, eating that particular type of meat is not that bad for you.
I'm really convinced of that. And time has taught me that, I think,
but it's that heavy beef. I think that'll get you. But it takes a skill.

(56:32):
You can't, it's not something you can order it and cook it like.
I know, and y'all are the last ones that have it right now.
You can't just order it, cook it how you want it, and it come out good.
You have to know something.
You have to know a little something. Yeah, you can't take grass-fed and cook
it like a grill, honestly. You can.
I don't think you'd be very happy with it, you know, grilling it on a barbecue pit or whatever.

(56:52):
Yeah, it needs, most of it needs to be smothered down, honestly.
Yeah. You know, now you can take the veal cutlets, pan them and fry them. you know, I eat my share.
Like I guess back when I was young, we ate a lot of chuck chops, dude.
The whole family. Apparently back then people, it's funny how things change.
So when I was young, I think from what I understand, what daddy tells me,

(57:13):
you couldn't keep round steaks in here.
How is it now, Shane? A round steak. Yeah, a round steak. Couldn't keep them.
You could put it in a pup, you can grind it up in a pup stick and not sell it.
It that's what i'm saying nobody buys them anymore that that's crazy back back
like i said as a kid and for what mr cleveland all tells me before my time that's
what everybody wanted and they smother it you know it's made to smother down

(57:36):
they cut them different you know a lot of sometimes they do a dough but most
of the time they cut them real thin and they they'd smother them down
but uh in recent years what's the thing still it's still chuck and nick sevens
seven well you never we never yeah that's been forever you never you can we
got a list of sevens we got a list of Chuck,
if you can grow a genetically modified number seven cow, you'd be a millionaire.

(58:00):
But, yeah, you get those families in. It's the families you know,
you know, the Josephs, Slenda.
She's – her daughters, and I think – Oh, her daughters come in here?
I think her granddaughters come in here. Oh, awesome. They live in local?
I'm assuming they're here. Okay. I don't think they used to, but I'm glad.
That's good. But that family, you know, we recognize them. We see them. That's good.

(58:22):
But who else? Who else? I guarantee you they know how to cook.
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. they're not ordering what they ordered on accident.
They still got some out there. They just, and they're not following a trend
that they're seeing online where they got a special recipe, you know,
that's just how they eat.
Yeah. Yeah. And that's what it takes. You got to have people who they're not trying something new.

(58:44):
They have a, you know, eating is a part of life and people are afraid to make it a routine.
They're afraid to make it. That's a good point. I've thought about that. This is what we do. Yeah.
Mama, mama. Yeah. We had, wasn't so much a routine, but like,
There was, we ate the same stuff regularly.
You know what I mean? Like smothered the chuck. Back then, like I said,
I think it was the exact opposite back then. They couldn't give away chuck in the neck hardly.

(59:09):
But now it's the exact opposite. You can't keep them now.
But it's just, I mean, we ate a lot of that. And look, we ate,
I bet you this is something you never ate, that we ate quite a, pretty regular.
And I'm not talking about the big end of the chuck. You know,
going towards the neck, the small end. You cut it real thin.
Thin as you can almost. and fry them. In between the chuck and the rib?

(59:31):
Well, the chuck chop, but closer to the neck, Connor. Okay. You know,
that's the toughest part of the chuck, right?
I've never fried it. But when you agree, that's the toughest part of the chuck.
Sure, yeah. If you get towards the rib eye, it gets more tender. But yeah, yeah.
Mama used to fry them. And didn't flour them or nothing, just fried them.
Okay. But apparently, Daddy just couldn't sell them. And I mean,
we had seven of us, so she'd probably fry, I don't know, because I'd make sure

(59:54):
I got two of them. So she might have fried 15 or 20, who knows.
But I mean, back then the calves were smaller too, I find. And you can't,
you just, they don't slaughter smaller calves now.
That's part of the issue too. The calves are bigger, so they're going to be
a little tougher probably.
But yeah, our calves, man. Oh, and let me tell you that story, talking about cut meat.
So me and John B., we bought a business, do all the paperwork,

(01:00:17):
like August 1st or whatever, you know, January 30th, whatever it was.
So the auction is Tuesday and we slaughtered on Wednesday. Okay.
So, me and John B. come to work Monday, Tuesday morning. We're like, we need some meat.
You know how to buy cows? No. You? No.

(01:00:39):
I mean, we went to daddy, to the auction with daddy, but we never sat with him
or he never showed us zero in the auction, ever, nothing.
You weren't supposed to be watching. I guess. I thought he maybe thought we were watching, maybe.
But I mean, I never went with him after I started working here.
This was as kids, like teenagers, we used to come and during the summer,

(01:01:00):
we'd go with them sometimes and hang out at the auction and go look at the cattle
in the barn and stuff like that.
But yeah, so we're like, oh, shoot. So, all right, I guess I'm the one.
Where was the auction? I was the older brother. The Thibodeau auction right
here. You know where it was?
Toward Hero Park? Yeah, past Heroes. What is that, Richfield?
I guess way down by the end. They got housing and all there now.

(01:01:21):
Towards Thibodeau High. It was on the left. I think the barn's still there.
Past Thibodeau High and all. It's on the left as you go right before you get
to Brulee and all. Okay. But not far, maybe a quarter mile before the Brulee or so.
But anyway, so I get in there and I didn't know the routine of how they did
things. Okay. I learned.
How many people are at the auction? Oh, there's a hundred.
Not 70 for sure. Okay. Buyers, you know.

(01:01:44):
And of the, yeah, let me see, probably a hundred, maybe 70 to a hundred,
but only like 10 or 15 are buying. And y'all are 20 years old?
Yeah. Yeah. And everyone else is in their 60s. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I'm watching. Well, I'm by myself. John's like, you got to go.
I'm the older brother, you know? So I'm like, all right, I'm going to go.
So I go over there. I don't know what I'm doing. So I didn't know this at the

(01:02:07):
time, but the way they ran the auction, they ran the cows first.
Okay. So cows are bigger, older animals, and that's when you use for ground meat.
It's cheaper. It's not like a calf. Calf's a lot more expensive,
and it's better meat, but more tender. but the cows are older and they're different age cows.
I didn't know that at the time. You know, I'm watching them come through and,

(01:02:29):
oh, man, that's too expensive. I didn't even know how much they were.
And they sell them by the pound, you know, at the time, I don't know,
75 cents a pound, dollar, I don't remember what it was.
Yeah, so they're coming through and coming through, and I'm like,
I bet maybe on one or two, and it went up, and I'm like, so anyway,
next thing you know, no more cows are coming through. It's nothing but calves.
So I'm like, oh, shit, no more cows. I need a cow. I think that's all we needed

(01:02:51):
that week maybe. I don't remember buying a calf. I may have. I don't know.
But I remember the cow, and there's a reason I remember that cow.
So they run everything through, and I sit there for hours and hours.
They run all kind of pigs through the calves and stuff, a lot of calves.
So, you know, back, there were auctions back then. They'd run 1,500 plus through there.
Oh, wow. Oh, yeah, yeah. You'd be there till six, seven o'clock at night,

(01:03:14):
later sometimes. Wow. People from out of town? Yeah. Some of them. Yeah.
But so, yeah. So, it wasn't that late. This wasn't that huge of a sale,
but it was, you know, I know I'm pretty sure John was wondering where the heck I was.
But so, finally, I mean, they were finished. There was no more cattle.
So, I think Gene Voiron, who was the owner, he knew who I was and all. He knew Daddy real well.

(01:03:36):
So I think he went and found a couple of them that maybe didn't sell or something.
Because he would buy some himself to resell somewhere else or whatever maybe.
But anyway, so he ran a few more through.
And boy, there was a cheap one came through. Oh, I want him.
That's the one I want. And when they came into the ring, he announces it's a
zero brand. It's a broke mouth.

(01:03:58):
And other than that, they'd have a, well, it had a BM on them.
I didn't know what the hell. A broke mouth.
Well, he wouldn't announce it. It had a BM on it, okay? Or they had a zero,
or they'd have a number, one through usually about eight, more or less.
And it was like chalk almost. I guess it was a paint they used and it was near their rump.
I didn't know what none of that meant. Well, this was a zero.
I didn't know what the heck that meant, but he was cheap. I thought,

(01:04:21):
oh yeah, that's the one I want.
This was a good lesson. It taught me never to buy cheap. So I get back, I get to, you know, bye.
So I'm like, I can go back to work. So I run back to work, blah,
blah, blah. Get in here the next morning, we get ready to slaughter.
And back then, you know, it was under inspection. So I get back there and this cow is on the floor.
Can't get him up. And he's not supposed to, they're not supposed to allow us

(01:04:43):
to drag them in. They have to be able to walk in on their own.
And of course, they made us put a stupid cement floor back there,
which even a healthy cow, a lot of times falls on it.
But he fell and we couldn't get him up. and but he he was when i got there he
was laying down and he was like.

(01:05:05):
He was pretty much on his last breath maybe i don't know it ain't good so i'm
like oh god what are we gonna do thank god i think the inspector felt for me
that day he allowed us to uh drag it in well he checked it he has to check it
for temperature it did it wasn't if he'd have been running a temperature he
would not have let me kill it but it wasn't running a temperature and So it
wasn't sick or anything.
And he just wore himself out on that cement more than anything, probably.

(01:05:26):
But anyway, so yeah, he did. Thank God he let me. He did let me slaughter that cow that day.
But that is the last zero ever walk into this building ever. In fact.
I don't think I allowed a five to walk into this building. Everything I ever
bought was between two and five or two and four.
I love those younger cows. Man, it's just better meat.

(01:05:47):
I learned. It took me a few weeks, but that's pretty much it.
Yeah, MZeroes came in. I looked the other way.
That's how my daddy taught, though. Man, he let you make mistakes, and he didn't care.
You think he knew what was going to happen? Probably. I wouldn't be surprised.
I never told him that story. He probably didn't even know that story.
I wonder if he called someone and said, hey, Donald's going to be there.

(01:06:09):
Keep an eye on him. No, daddy did not do that.
Because I wouldn't have had a zero if they'd have kept an eye on me.
I'm sure someone laughed when you left. No, they didn't. They probably felt
sorry for me because I didn't know.
I bet you daddy, I should have told daddy that story. I don't think he's ever
heard that story. I don't know why.

(01:06:31):
But, I mean, I was busy working from then on. Me and John, I mean,
that was our ball game from there.
And he like, you know, we were kind of expecting him to come in here.
And he's like, where's daddy? Seen daddy? No.
It was a little bit of a shock because, you know, you're used to that every
day, every day as a young person. And I mean, we're 20, 19, 20, 21 years old.
No, no, no, not that. I'm sorry. No, we were more like 27, 28.
Okay. But, you know, you still, you saw him every day.

(01:06:54):
So when's the first time you think Bo ran into something like that?
Oh, that's a good question.
You know, with Bo, because that happened to me, the way daddy did it.
Purposely, while I still owned it, I would not show up.
That last year in business, I knew I was getting kind of close.
I would purposely not call him or nothing.
And I just wanted to see how he'd handle it and, you know. Did he call you?

(01:07:17):
No. All right. But I was the same way. Like when my workers were off,
there was a lot of times I could have called him, like mostly just a question
about an order or something.
And I did occasionally, but I did everything I could.
I've been over backwards, never, ever to bug my workers when they were off Because
I tried to give my workers a day off during the week just to get, you know.
But back, like my dad and I, when I was coming into this thing,

(01:07:39):
look, we didn't take a day off.
You work six days a week. And we were open until Saturday, until five.
So, I mean, I think what it was about a 55, 57-hour work week.
Right. Maybe more than that. Hell, he was open from seven to six when I first
started. So, what's that? That's an 11-hour day.
And we didn't, yeah, we did close for lunch. We did close for lunch.
That's probably 10-hour day. You close up shop, everyone leaves,

(01:08:01):
come back at one. And that was whatever.
That was miserable because there were 10 cars in the parking lot sometimes waiting on you.
So when you walked in that door and you had lunch, you kind of took a little
nap maybe or you got lazy a little bit.
So you're kind of like trying to fumble your way through it and you had to roll.
I mean, you didn't want people waiting because they already had been waiting.
Not every time, but there was a lot of times there were plenty of people waiting.

(01:08:23):
And that's kind of why I got rid of the lunches.
I started just – I cut the hours back when I took over and got rid of the lunch
hour because of that mostly.
And just started alternating the lunch hour. Yeah, and that's still what we do today.
Man, speaking of naps, some of my earliest memories here were,
you know, I'm assuming high school, junior high time.

(01:08:48):
And you and Uncle John were here. And sometimes I would go with you for lunch,
and sometimes I would go with him. Okay.
And I just remember jumping in your truck, heading to your house.
I don't know what we were getting, maybe grab a Subway or something or make
a sandwich at home, take a nap, head back over here, do the same thing with

(01:09:11):
Uncle John, go to his house. He'd do the same. Take a nap.
We'd lay on the couch, take a nap, come back. And then I did the same thing
with Pawpaw. I remember coming over. That's where we got it from.
I would head to Pawpaw's with him and lay on the couch, take a nap.
He'd put on whatever kind of, you know, whatever he was watching on TV.
Yeah, he'd throw something on TV. I think that'd help him go to sleep a little
bit, get his mind off of it. We take a nap and then, and then come back.

(01:09:33):
Okay. So let me ask you this.
We know which chair he was in. Right. How did he nap? What did he do?
Do you remember anything specific? He would usually, if he made him a sandwich
or more. No, no, no, the nap, the nap.
Well, it includes the lunch.
The nap and the lunch are one.

(01:09:53):
Because the sandwich would be half eaten on his chest.
The feet would be up. He'd be reclined back out cold with crumbs everywhere.
And most of the change would have fell out of his pockets. And went into the chair.
And I would just, I would either be napping or I'd be waiting for him to get
up so I could check underneath the chair and collect the change.

(01:10:14):
So do you remember, I don't know why I remember this, but often,
I don't know if he, I'm pretty sure he did it every time.
So the curtains were behind him. You remember him taking the curtain strings
and wrapping around his head some, a bunch of times to sleep?
You remember that? No. That might've been before your time.
So the chair leaned back and it was right up against the
wall where the curtains were were open right there and you know the drawstring

(01:10:37):
curtain he'd take and wrap it around his head kind
of a certain way where his it would cock his head a certain way i
think yeah yeah a little headrest i thought
i thought you would have noticed that ingenuity maybe he wasn't doing it then at the
time or it might be mama changed your curtains then i'm not sure but yeah he
did that a lot too that's something i remember ingenuity but yeah i bet you
three four days a week he did peanut butter jelly pbj we often we often did

(01:11:00):
a little piece you know maybe a a half pound of jalapeno sausage.
Really? Out the casing, just fried up in a skillet on white bread with mayonnaise.
Okay, yeah. We did that often. When I ate lunch there. And when he did eat something
like that, a lot of times he did a little fold over with the PBJ.
Sure. Yeah, he'd do a little fold over. Or just like his dessert. Just PB.

(01:11:25):
Oh. PB. Okay. Peanut butter sugar sometimes. Yeah. You like the little sugar crunch.
But yeah so i remember that was one of my earliest memories and then one of my most,
significant memories was the time
me and benson were vacuum packing in the dungeon we had so we'd move the vacuum

(01:11:48):
pack machines from the middle room to the dungeon this has something to do with
me i bet yes so me and benson are in the dungeon and we're vacuum packing and
we have was i having Was I having a good day?
Probably had one machine back then, right? Yeah, probably. Was I having a good day?
Oh no, not after you came to the dungeon. You sure you want to say this story?
Oh yeah. Okay. Not after you came to the dungeon. Oh, okay. What would y'all do?

(01:12:10):
So me and Benson are going, Benson, you know, Benson must be in high school
and I must be in junior high. So Benson might maybe 17, 18.
I'm probably 14, 15, if that's close.
We got an assembly line going on. So to vacuum pack, you weigh out the beef
jerky, you put it on a paper, you wrap the paper, you stick it into the vacuum bag, and it's nice.

(01:12:35):
And then you drop that into the vacuum seal machine.
Well, we had two of us with not
enough to do, so what we did is we created more to do. But in our minds.
Yeah, y'all working faster. We invented a new process. We're evolving.
That's what we were doing. Y'all were being entrepreneurs. And we were going
way faster, okay? Okay, so Benson would seal up the jerky, and we created this

(01:12:59):
big ramp out of cardboard boxes.
We cut up some cardboard boxes, and we made maybe a three-level ramp.
It would turn. It did like a big S-curve.
And we either stapled or duct-taped them together.
Well, we put it from the top shelf, and then I had the vacuum machine on the ground.

(01:13:20):
So I'm sitting on my butt. I really don't remember this, but this is getting
good. Yeah, I'm sitting on my butt, and there's a big S-curve slide leading from Benson to me.
So Benson would bag up the jerky, and he would take—this is so Benson wouldn't
have to turn around, by the way.
So Benson would be standing straight. He would fill the bag with the jerky,
and then he would bring it like this and then just drop it right beside him.

(01:13:43):
And it would go down the slide to me where I would grab it and put it on the vacuum machine.
So we had did this for who knows how long. It could be all day.
You know, it would probably be Christmas time, something like that. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So we had been doing this all day, and we're proud of it, and we're not afraid
to tell people what we've created and show them the process.

(01:14:07):
And you had come back there, and you had seen what was going on,
and we were still—keep in mind, we were still proud of it. I wish I remembered
this. I just don't remember it. Still proud of it.
So we wanted to show you what we had created. so we showed you
boom boom boom boom boom and you you kind of
were like okay that's cool so how many totes
did you do so we you know we were also proud of the totes you did that we did

(01:14:30):
so we counted the totes and we told you whatever you know six six totes and
you're like six totes okay so let's see and you grab the paper and you just
did some math so i love numbers you did some math I love numbers.
And you broke down what it normally should take versus what it took us.
Well, y'all didn't figure in the hour it took to build the slide.

(01:14:53):
You did all that on paper and you showed us, you said, all right, it's cool, but listen,
for every, I don't know if you broke it down by the hour or by the pack,
maybe you said, from every pack that y'all have packed so far,
you lost about 20 cents on each pack.
With the slide and then you just left and it

(01:15:18):
threw a big wrench into things i really don't remember the slide but i can see
me doing what i did with the numbers it threw a big wrench into things and obviously
you know we didn't see it that way we were we were more proud of the invention
and we really thought we were doing a great thing but but we weren't i busted
your bubble and But it did stick with me.
And if I told you I didn't do that same thing.

(01:15:42):
With your workers now? Five times in the past 10 years, I'd be lying.
And I just knew what to do. And I knew how to handle it because that's how you
handled it. And it worked.
Right? And it worked. I guess it did. And now.
If I'm in a bad mood, I didn't do too good with people, unfortunately.
And now I know that Mark can do the same thing with the high,

(01:16:08):
you know, if we get two high schoolers in, Mark can do the same thing.
Oh, that's nice. That's good. But it's just one of those things.
It's the things you don't think about that are most impactful.
You know where that came from, Shane?
I don't know why, but it fascinated me. I think high school,
what was the class you had to take in high school?
Not English. No, no, no. Not English.
Civics. Was it civics? It might have been college.

(01:16:31):
Economics. When I learned about, I forget which class, but anyway,
you learned about assembly lines. Okay. And the efficiency of them.
That fascinated me. And I was in numbers. I love numbers. I was very good with numbers, very fast.
I mean, I didn't use a calculator in here for years. I did tax everything in
my head, whether it was 2% was real easy, but when it started going to two and

(01:16:53):
a quarter and three and a quarter, three and a half, three and three quarters,
stuff like that, it would take me an extra second or so to figure it out.
But I did in my head all those years up until we got these dummy up,
these scales and all, which is nice. Don't get me wrong.
But yeah, I figured tax in my head. And in fact, my CPA always said,
I would race with him sometimes with numbers and I'd beat him every time.

(01:17:14):
If he had a calculator and I did it in my head, I'd beat him every time with
big numbers and percentages and stuff.
But it's just something that I was good at and I liked. I liked numbers and
I liked just playing with them.
But I liked efficiency. Efficiency. I like, even in my life,
I always try to be efficient.
Whatever I did, I hate, drives me nuts to be redundant and have to do something

(01:17:35):
over or to see someone do something and have to do it over because just do it
right the first time, you know, you don't need to screw it up.
And, you know, we've had workers over the year that want to try to change something
that we've done for, you know, and they asked me like, why y'all do it that way?
I'm like, that's the way I was taught. it, but that wasn't a good enough answer for them.

(01:17:57):
They wanted to do it their own way, which was slower, not nearly as efficient,
and just not the way I wanted it, and it would aggravate the fool out of me.
I mean, that's how we operate today. You know, the kind of way we taught the
guys is, look, here's the way we had to learn it because we want it to be just
like Uncle Donald. We want it to be just like Papa.

(01:18:20):
We did it the same way. We sharpened the knife the same. We sharpened the knife
with the steel facing up like this. We don't put it down and do like this.
Why? Because they didn't. That's the way we did it. Yeah, that's the only way
I learned. That's the way I learned.
Can you do it like that and get it sharper than I can?
Probably not. but hey if you're
here for five years ten years and and

(01:18:42):
you prove yourself that you can sharpen you
can sharpen it the way i taught you yeah just like
i taught you and you can do it your own special way now you get to do it your
own special way i mean growing up in this place i wasn't allowed to sharpen
a knife for a long time long time you know yeah because i mean they're expensive
and you can grind on them and it costs some money and then when i did was able to sharpen Did I look?

(01:19:06):
Yeah, when I was able to sharpen a knife on my own, it was the oldest one out there.
Right. I wasn't allowed to touch it. And we still, I mean, we still do that
because it's the idea of, it's not about the knife being sharpened.
It's about, can you learn? Yeah.
Are you a learner? Yeah. Can you listen? Can you just pay attention?
Yeah. The details. Details.

(01:19:27):
We still do it that way. And then we have no problem recognizing when,
hey, you do it just like I do.
Yeah. It's as sharp as I can get it. Now come up with your own special way to do it.
But when the new guy comes, you're going to teach him the way Mr.
Cleave sharpened a knife. Because that's what we want it to look like.

(01:19:47):
It's not just about the function of the knife.
It's about I want to be able to imagine what the person across the counter sees.
And to me, the coolest thing to look at is a butcher with the handle and like this.
That's that's what looks the coolest never
thought about this crap when you put this the tip of the stone on the table

(01:20:11):
and you know like a chef might yeah yeah it's funny that chef's kind of that's
how to do it i've never thought about it but yeah i guess if nothing else other
than it doesn't look cool then we're sticking with that until you can do it this way yeah,
yeah never never thought about that at all so all right back to kind of getting
to where but Bo's coming into the picture.

(01:20:32):
Okay. Yeah, so yeah, I would, I purposely would kind of just not show up.
You know, I didn't do it often, but, you know, I did it, especially towards
the end, the last few months. I was kind of doing it regularly.
He passed the test. And Bo got started with the website.
I don't necessarily know what year that kind of stuff started.

(01:20:53):
Was I still here? I believe so, yeah. He would maybe know.
I don't know. And how did things change for that transition?
That had to be right towards the end, Shane. I'm not sure if we had.
Not the online, but the changeover sort of. Oh, between me and him? Yes.
I don't know if I did it right, but I did it. Right. I pretty much did like

(01:21:16):
my dad, kind of, honestly, in the end.
Now, granted, he didn't give me breaks like I gave Bo, like not showing up.
That kind of prepares you a little bit of me not being here.
So I did give him that, but yeah, when papers were done and it was time for
me not to show up, I didn't show up.
Kind of like, here you go. Yeah. I never heard him complain.
Yeah. To my knowledge. And look, I know it wasn't easy because I went through it too. I did the same.

(01:21:42):
But I did have a brother to go through it with. Right. When did you come in?
Were you there then? Not yet, huh?
Yeah. You were working before I left? Yeah, you were still here.
Okay. All right. I wasn't sure if you had come in yet or it was after. You were still here.
From what I remember, Bo was more than capable for long before that.

(01:22:04):
Yeah. You know? You know, I just, I didn't want him to do this.
And I told him, and he'll affirm this. I told him, I said, look,
Bo, this place makes plenty of money. I mean, it's, you know,
you're going to do well here.
I said, but if you do it for the money, it won't make it. It will not make it.
It won't make the next generation.
And you have to love, and I loved what I did. I mean, I loved what I did.

(01:22:26):
I just, I was hoping that he would love it as much as I did.
So, yeah, and I've been very, very pleased to see that he definitely has the
work ethic and he definitely loves it.
Never been as much as I did, I think. So, yeah, I've been proud and very,
very just fulfilled, I guess, seeing that happen, really. For sure. Me personally.
It's a different animal in here. It is. It's gotten to be because,

(01:22:50):
and I knew it would be, and that's why I got out of the way.
Because with Bo here, even the last couple of years, we'd added on that little
addition with the Boudin Burritos, which was a great little thing.
But we had to hire more workers. And that's what my issue was. I kept it small.
I don't know how the customers like it. But, I mean, when I got to where I just

(01:23:10):
couldn't keep up. And, look, we worked hard, all my workers.
They worked hard, worked long hours and worked fast as we could.
And when we got to where we just
couldn't keep up anymore and we just had enough, I just went up on prices.
In business school, you learn, take some economics classes, supply and demand.
So I figured, you know what, I need to go up. And usually when I did go up on

(01:23:31):
prices, I tried to pass it on to my workers. You know, I'd give them a raise also.
So, and that's, you know, that's just kind of how I did things.
I know I got a little expensive with things probably over the years. I didn't want to do that.
I didn't want that image, but I kind of had to just because,
I mean, physically, there's only so much you can do.
And the way we make it, it's a physical job. There's not a fast way to do it.

(01:23:52):
So, you know, unfortunately, we had to charge more for things.
And just because of supply and demand, there's only so much I could make,
especially with the facility you got here.
I mean, you've been in here with 30 people. You can't hardly move.
Right. You know, nine, 10 workers
is probably optimal for the size of this building. you know, maybe 12 max.
And that's what we were, I think, when we did that addition before I left,

(01:24:14):
we had about 15 or 17 maybe.
And I mean, when it comes to workers, their problems are your problems and it
starts wearing on you, especially when you get older, you know,
you get a little more grouchy.
And that's really one of the reasons why I got out quite as young as I did.
I probably got out a little too young, but I needed to get out of Bo's way.
I know he was ready to expand and do the new location.
And I didn't want nothing to do with that. And he wanted to grow the business.

(01:24:36):
And I was there before. I was there with Daddy.
I was ready to expand and do things that he didn't want to do with the jerky, stuff like that.
So, you know, Daddy got out of my way. I wanted to get out of his way,
basically. Nice. And let him do what he needed to do. Because,
you know, I was there before. I've been there.
Well, I do know this. So, last year, 2023, I believe...

(01:25:00):
So you said you had 18 in here? At the most, probably 15.
I don't know. You know, yeah. And the tenure back then was a lot longer.
You had some 15, some long term. I had a core of six people in here.
I had been in here for a long time.
So think about jumping from that to in 2023. And that was starting to happen,

(01:25:24):
what you're talking about, the turnover of workers.
Yep. in 2023 between both
locations we had and that was our first year with
the with the new market opening up in march so between
both locations i think we had 120 w2s oh and that's an astronaut and that that's

(01:25:44):
what i say by it's a different animal and it forces you into places that you
don't you don't understand where you're going yeah i can see when it's when
it's fun to run running the meat market.
That's not fun. A meat market. That's not fun. It's not a meat market anymore,
it's a people market, you know? Exactly.
It's people and that's what. That's the hardest part.
That's the hardest part. That's the hardest part. And there's no,

(01:26:06):
you know, the hard thing about it is we know how to do all the meat stuff from you guys.
You wrote the book on it and we can follow it to the T. That's the easy part.
We can mimic it, but there's no one to tell us, there's no one to tell us what
to do with 50 people, with a hundred people.
Yeah. So it's a lot of- Logistics and- Man, it's a lot of just trying.

(01:26:29):
We're just trying and we're just taking the best ideas we have.
Well, Bo, no doubt about it, he's a totally different owner from me as far as
his skills, his leadership skills and all. But-
To take it where y'all at now, I don't have those skills. Bo does.
But there's no doubt in my mind, Bo has the skills to be where you're at. Well, and we don't.

(01:26:50):
We're totally different owners, totally different philosophies and all,
but to be where you're at now, he's the right one.
There's no doubt in my mind. No doubt. And you two. I mean, both of y'all.
Y'all compliment each other. Here's what I learned quickly here is that,
man, there's a lot that we don't have. There's a lot that we don't have,
you know, me and Bo work excellent in a team because we're so different.

(01:27:14):
We are very, very different when it comes to how we analyze stuff or problems,
just problem solving. Okay. Yeah. We're very, very different.
I'm the, I'm a creative type. Yeah. I want to give you a bunch of crazy ideas.
Yeah. Bo is going to take one and he's going to go, all right,
if we go with that idea, what is step one?
If we can't complete step one, then ditch the idea. But I'm the type where I

(01:27:39):
give you the crazy idea and Bo says, okay, here's step one.
I'm going to give you 10 crazy ideas for step one. And Bo's going to go,
no, it's unreasonable. Pass.
He's linear. And he's, yeah, that's how kind of you need to be with new ideas.
Yeah, yeah. And that's me.
So it's perfect. We really make a perfect team. You have great ideas and he
takes them and makes them analytical is what happens. And he finishes them.

(01:28:02):
He's a finisher. He can make the map of the idea. Yeah.
I love it. There's so much we can't do and we have hired for,
and, and all, all the people that are special here now, they,
they can all do things that we don't have a clue how to do. Gotcha.
And it's, it's scary and it's hard. Yeah. And I, I imagine that's where it's
never been before, where it's that, it's a trust, you know?

(01:28:24):
Yeah. Cause y'all, y'all got stuff going on.
I understand. I understand. Cause I was a control freak. Okay.
I'm a, I'm a type A, not type A, but I'm a control. I liked,
I'm a control freak, I guess.
Right. I'm a, what you call that, a control freak. I like to be in control.
And if you're doing something like, I know some of your workers do stuff that,

(01:28:46):
I have an idea who you, several of them who you're talking about, and I understand that.
So my fear with that is, what do you do when they leave? If they leave,
do they get pissed off or whatever? You know, things happen in life. You know what I do?
That's what scares me. I learn from them just like, I don't take any- Because
you got to teach the next person. And if you don't know it, how do you teach them?
Man, I've learned so much, you know, from our, you know, our hub crew, our guys.

(01:29:13):
You know who they are. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I've learned so much from those guys
that a lot of that stuff is invaluable. Yeah. You know?
Yeah. And I never had that issue because it's a big business now,
man. Right. It's the workers. Like you said, it's the workers that made it a big business.
And it's a lot to it. You know, all the insurances and, you know,
just, whew, it's a lot. So.

(01:29:36):
You're talking about popping at the seams earlier. Here's a number you don't know about. Okay.
So we go from Chick Bro buying some jerky and stuff, and that was in 1990-ish.
Five-ish. 95-ish. Six, seven, I don't know, somewhere in the mid-90s.
So we're going to fast forward to 2023.

(01:29:57):
Okay. where we sold online only, just online orders, not through the door,
not the thousands of pounds we donate to everywhere in Thibodeau.
Just online, we sold 6,500 pounds of beef jerky through the mail.

(01:30:18):
Only online orders, not phone orders. Yeah, yeah.
So can you think about, really, really think about that. Like,
think about you at 20 years old talking to Chick Bro. 120 pounds a week.
All right. Think about you, you know, talking to Chick Bro about making a little
batch, and then that's where it is now.
Yeah. You know, so what do you think about 20 years from now?

(01:30:42):
You know, honestly, I don't know if it can grow. I guess it can grow because
of the internet, but locally it can't grow a whole lot more because you only
got so many people around here.
Okay. And you get tired. I mean, anything you eat, you get tired of eating it.
Sure. You know, now you come back around to it maybe after a few years if you
didn't buy any. Right. The jerky, it's a luxury. It's a novelty item. Yeah, absolutely.

(01:31:02):
And it's good. Don't get me wrong. It's very good. Regardless of how good it
is, anything in life, I mean, too much fun is not fun.
Same thing with food, you know. Much as you like a good, good steak,
you can't eat it every day.
So, yeah, I mean, that's really the only place to grow, really,
with the jerky is there, you know, online.

(01:31:23):
Line we're doing these we're gonna start hitting these you know trade shows
yeah yeah i saw y'all been doing pretty hard and we've only done really local
baton rouge uh new orleans mississippi,
i'm very interested in reaching out to texas like houston and maybe arkansas
and florida things like that so with the trade shows just to get houston livestock

(01:31:46):
yeah things like that two whole weeks sure things like that that we have no
business you better start making it now now.
But seriously, those things, those shows are super, super beneficial.
And not just because of- So the ones you've done, you get a lot of- Oh, man.
People coming in behind you. The feedback we get is incredible,

(01:32:06):
man. That's awesome. We did a few early on. Yeah, we did a few.
The fun thing about it is that- They were fun.
They were a lot of fun. You learn a lot, too. We go to these shows and we always
walk around and we go see what they got.
And what they got, man, what they got almost everywhere is a half-assed product
and your choice at a salesman.

(01:32:29):
And with our stuff, you don't need to be a salesman.
No, you don't. You hand them a piece of the stuff we make and you shut your
mouth. That's all it takes. And that's it.
That's probably, honestly, Shane, when you asked me when I knew it was going
to be a hit, was probably the first New Orleans Boat Show we did.
And you see people that never seen you before and they taste it and their eyes light up.

(01:32:52):
It's funny to watch. It is something to see. They grab it and they start walking away.
They put it in their mouth. They take about four or five steps.
And you've seen it. I know you've many times. They stop.
Then they turn around. Then they look up at the sign. And their eyes start doing
kind of sort of like a slot machine. You know those slots where they spin?
The eyes start kind of spinning.
It's something to see. And that's not just a few of them do that.

(01:33:14):
Almost every one of them that have
never tasted it do that. I've started offering to pay people to try it.
If they refuse to try it at the shows, some women will pass by and say,
hey, you want to try some jerky?
No, I don't like jerky. I say, I'll give you a dollar if you try it.
All right. right? She'll try it. If she don't like it, I give them a dollar.
90% of the time, she's going to give me some money after because she's going to buy a few packs.

(01:33:38):
I'll be dang, that's hilarious. But yeah, that's probably when I realized it
was really special. It was, yeah.
And that's why they're fun is because, like I said, when people eat something
good, they smile. It makes them happy.
And that's where you really see it. And you don't have to be a,
you're not slick about it.
You don't feel like you're selling You're not selling anything.
No, you're not selling. You feel like you're sharing.

(01:33:58):
Yeah, I'm not the last salesman you ever want selling for you. I can promise you that.
I'm not a salesman boning my body.
But when you got something good, that's genuinely good and you believe in it,
you get to share it with people.
You don't have to push it, you know? And that, man, it feels good.
It does. It's really awesome to have that.
That's, yeah, those trade shows, that's the beauty of those things.

(01:34:18):
You really get to see the fruits of your benefit, the benefits of your fruits,
works of labor and all, you know? So that's pretty cool.
So what do you think about a fifth generation?
It's going to be different then probably too. Yeah. What's it look like?
Or what could it look like?
I have no idea. Dude, you're asking me something I can't fathom.

(01:34:41):
But you'd want it. But you'd want it. Oh, absolutely. But I don't see where
it needs to change a lot, honestly.
You know? I mean, when it comes to... I mean, the bottom line,
I guess the reason why you're in business, one of the main reasons is to make
money. You want to make a good living.

(01:35:02):
As far as money-wise, if you're going to do this, how much do you need?
There's other reasons that people do what they do. You got billionaires out
there. I don't understand why they keep striving and pushing to make more money.
Just me. I'm simple. I'm simple Cajun. I guess I just only need so much.
I don't need to be a multimillionaire, you know?

(01:35:23):
It just depends on your wants and needs, I guess, you know?
Well, think about how many, I mean, we're sustaining quite a few families.
Yeah. You know, very, very well. I took that serious too. That's a serious thing.
That is. And that's something to be proud of, you know?
Yeah. I never was proud of it, but I took it very serious. I made sure,

(01:35:45):
I always made sure that they were paid first before I ever got paid,
you know? Because, I mean, we had some first few years in here.
It was, you know, it was small. It was a very small business. Me and John took over.
I mean, Daddy's last year in business was about, he did about 220,000 in sales.
So I don't know if you knew that, but yeah, do the math. Yeah.
But in about 10 years time, and probably because of the jerky,

(01:36:07):
we did tenfold on that in 10 years.
I was proud of that. Same four walls too, you know? So what did that feel like?
I took a lot of pride in that, you know? But it was- Was it a motivator to go
harder? or was it a, we did it?
I just wanted to be successful and I wanted daddy to be proud of me, you know?

(01:36:28):
But I mean, granted, a few years when we shut down the slaughterhouse and started
doing jerky full-time in there, I can remember daddy coming in and when you
take it out in the afternoon, we'd take it out in the back, you know, take it off the sticks.
Daddy would look at that and he was retired, you know? He'd just shake his head. I'm like, what, daddy?
And he'd say, man, I just can't believe y'all sell that much of that burnt meat.

(01:36:54):
And he'd walk away.
That's so good. I can't believe y'all sell that much of that.
That's what he called it. They should put y'all in jail.
Yeah, he'd probably say that too.
But yeah, he probably wished he wouldn't have told, he wished he'd have started
making it earlier probably.

(01:37:14):
Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. I think he was, he was, he was done,
you know, when he got out, he was ready. He didn't, he didn't need any more.
And he was like me, you know, he kind of simple, like do a little fishing and.
Of life. Don't need a whole lot. We've probably got hours upon hours we can
talk about different topics and probably next time we'll go into more of the

(01:37:35):
sportsman side of things. I'm very interested in that. Yeah.
That's a good idea. I've learned a lot from you since I was a kid and that'd
be a great next topic for next time.
Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. But let's say to close off this, if there's some family
businesses out there that are in the second generation.

(01:37:58):
What should be going through their heads, whether it's the departing generation
or the taking over generation?
Well, the departing needs to make sure that the next generation is not doing it for the money.
They got to love what they're doing. I don't care if you're a janitor or bus
driver, whatever it is, if you don't love what you do, you're not going to be successful that.

(01:38:20):
I'm convinced. If you're just doing it for a paycheck and a job,
it's not going to make the next generation.
And that's the problem with generational businesses a lot of times.
So the first generation, they love it, they work hard at it, and they build it, okay?
Then what happens on the next generation, they just don't love it.
They just milk it kind of. They're there and they're doing it for the money.

(01:38:41):
And then by the time it gets to that third generation, they haven't learned
to love it from their parents.
And that's not always the case, but a lot of times I think I think if you research
it, I would be surprised if it's any other way.
But I think that's one of the issues is they're kind of milking it for the money.
If you don't love what you do, find something else to do. That's my best advice.
And be straight up with your kid. If you've got a kid coming into your business, let them know.

(01:39:05):
Yeah, if you're successful and you're making good money, yeah,
that's good and that's wonderful.
But if you do it for that, I'm convinced that most businesses just ain't going to make it.
And they may make it, but it won't thrive, I don't think. Mm-hmm.
I'd like to get, so I kind of started making a list of, of future interviews.

(01:39:27):
I got a big list. I probably have 45 people on this list. Oh, that's awesome. Good.
And it's all people that I really, I really think would be interested in.
And I think they would say yes. Yeah. It's all people I'm very interested in hearing from.
It's all, it's all people that I, I, I really believe they love what they do.
Whatever, whatever that thing is.

(01:39:48):
I think it's, I think they love what they do.
I love that, yeah. And the most important part is they're all customers.
Oh, cool. So I think that'll be really cool is to kind of keep this as a thing.
You know, all of these people, you know, general public might not realize that they are our customers.
Whether they're a regular customer, they're a once a year, we know them.

(01:40:12):
You know, we have a relationship with them because of this place. Yeah.
And that's kind of why we, you know, that's the miracles in meat.
And that's the that's what it is and it you know i heard a quote from i think
a guy came in here after pawpaw passed and i was at the register and he said
he said sorry to hear about you about your pawpaw he said you know that man

(01:40:35):
that that man can make a friend with a rattlesnake,
and i never i never forgot about that you know but.
But it's true. That says a lot about a person.
It's really true. Yeah. And that's how he treated people, you know.
You watch him interact with customers at the counter, and I'll watch you do the same.

(01:40:59):
It's this place because you're interacting with people. People don't interact with people anymore.
I mean, even like when you go to Walmart, you got a machine.
You don't even have a checkout person or a lot of these big box stores, you know.
I think that's important, that interaction. Actually, I think,
you know, hopefully we come full circle with that at some point and it comes
back around where you have someone to talk to when you check out somewhere,
you know? Yeah, it's fun, man.

(01:41:19):
And I truly believe that. Yeah, daddy liked the conversation.
He liked that older generation, man. I mean, that's all they had.
Think about it. The storytelling, man.
Storytelling. They didn't have radios hardly, you know, not until probably he
was a teenager, maybe a little before that.
Maybe as a young kid, they might have had radio and I don't know if he had it.
But, you know, their first saw, I don't know if you knew that.

(01:41:40):
Their first saw, they'd take their Model T and they'd jack it up,
take the wheel off, and they'd put a belt on it and hook it to the saw.
That's how they used a Model T to run the saw.
That was their first electric or whatever, or powered saw, I guess you could
say. Yeah, yeah. I was telling somebody the other day, I kind of forgot that.
I thought that was interesting.
But daddy slaughtered on, people don't realize how far we've come with slaughtering

(01:42:06):
and just meat and sanitation, I guess. I mean, it was slaughtering on dirt floors until...
Probably mid-50s. And whenever he built this place, I think mid-50s, early 50s.
Before that, they were back there still starting on dirt floors and throwing a bunch of sawdust down.
And I'm sure there were still some places doing it after he quit, you know. Yeah.

(01:42:26):
But so that's, what, 75 years ago? I mean, yeah, for young people, that's a long time.
But for me, I mean, I was, what, I was maybe, you know, 10, 15 years from that
when I came into remembering and actually helping.
It sucks that our, you know, previous generations, they did what they had to do.
And it seems like it's getting to where we do what we're allowed to do.

(01:42:50):
Well, yeah, it's getting more and more of that. You know, doesn't that suck?
Yeah. I mean, laws, it's a shame.
They never, I wish every time they made a law, it had to be revisited every
10 years. Revoted on. Okay.
Because you just get more and
more laws, you know. And if it's not revisited, it comes off the books.
That's how it should be. because otherwise, I mean, even now,
you got laws everywhere. Everything is governed in laws.

(01:43:13):
In fact, there's so many of them, half of them aren't even enforced probably anymore.
So the customer interactions on the counter and the storytelling and the checking
in and asking, you know, what you're cooking, the little things like that,
I believe that that's why you loved what you did is because there is that aspect.
Whereas if you have a company and

(01:43:33):
you're behind a computer and you're only interested in the sale number.
Yeah. That would not interest me at all. You don't get that personal connection with anyone.
Yeah. That was my favorite thing here. Right. Waiting on customers.
Yeah. I loved, I mean, by far, the thing I loved most was waiting on a customer
and having to cut meat for them.
You know, I loved cutting meat on a saw, whatever, steaks, get them ground.

(01:43:56):
I just, I loved waiting on people, but, you know, I loved waiting on a period,
but when I had to cut something, I liked, you know, to try and make it pretty
as I could and do a really good job you know that perfectionist in me when it
came to that would really come out right you get to put that little you get
to put the little spin on it you get to put your stamp yeah exactly personal
this is how i do it you know.

(01:44:19):
And people appreciate it too. They do. They realize it. You don't have to tell
them. They realize it. It's really cool, man. Yeah, they see it.
I love interacting with the kids.
I like grabbing a kid and ask them if they want to go check out the cooler,
go look at the smoker and stuff like that.
That's awesome. Sometimes I give
them a fresh green onion to chew on and they'll just grab it and eat it.
So you don't do it like that. You don't do it like daddy does then, huh?

(01:44:41):
Wrap him up in a cow hide? No, not a hide. The whole cow.
No. Yeah. He's taking a kid one day. Haven't done that one yet.
Yeah. But he was coming in. He was aggravating them. pretty regular,
I think, and they just got enough of him.
And before they split the animal, they had just finished skinning it.
Him and Clee, they took him, put him inside the cavity of the animal,
and they closed the ribs up on him. Wouldn't let him out.

(01:45:01):
Freshly killed. You know, it's not a lot of blood, thank goodness,
but I'm sure it was wet and sticky and, you know.
You learned a good lesson that day. Smelled just like a dead cow coming out of there.
Learned a good lesson. I don't know if he ever came back.
Nope. I was probably a kid when he did that. They had some stories,
him too. Oh, my goodness. Well, all right.
That's an awesome few hours we hit, and we've got many more.

(01:45:27):
Yeah, this was fun, Shane. I enjoyed it. We'll do some more.
We've got plenty more stories. Yeah, we just touched the surface of some of
the stuff. I'd love to get some of the siblings.
Yeah, that'd be fun. That would be fun. Because like I said,
their memories are going to be different from mine. They're going to remember different stuff.
John, you know, John's going to have different memories of stuff with Super
Kite and all. Yeah, and this is something that I wish.
Before I leave, I just want to remind you, 30-foot, that's my advice.

(01:45:49):
Take it or leave it more nor less yeah I'd like to say we've been doing this
for 10 years by now because that's probably how long we've been thinking about
doing it and oh the podcast we've got,
we've got hours of conversation good conversation recorded in the office just you know maybe me Bo Phil,

(01:46:10):
Brody cool we do this often man we
go down these deep conversations and I've
always said I want some of that I've always said man if
some of these if some of these man these startups or
or even you know whatever 50-year businesses if
they could hear some of these conversations who knows who knows what little

(01:46:31):
kick it might give them and uh i really believe in that so this that's what
this is for is it's for anyone and it's also for us to just put on our bookshelf
you know for the kids for the grandkids You know.
You don't get to pick people's brain after they're gone, you know,
but it's the least we can do.
And I think it can make someone happy. Yeah.

(01:46:56):
All right. All right, brother. Thank you so much. Thank you.
All right, that's it for this episode of the Miracles to Meet podcast.
We ask that you share it with at least one person in your life that you think needs to hear it.
You know, if you got a little something from it, you got some little goose pimples
or just gave you some feel goods, you know, send it to someone else.

(01:47:19):
Let them let them feel that, too.
And if you loved it, please leave us a five star review. That'll really help out.
And if you only loved it like four stars or so, please do not leave a review.
Same thing with the one through three. If you're not interested in any of those, only five stars.
If you have any personal questions or comments about the episode,

(01:47:39):
shoot them over to Bourgeois Meat Market on Facebook or Instagram,
and we'll reach back out.
And if you have any ideas for any cool future guests, please shoot those over too.
We're always interested in hearing who else is out there and what kind of cool
stories we might be able to bring into this place.

(01:48:00):
See you next time.
Music.

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Ep. 1 - From Slaughterhouse to Louisiana Landmark: 3rd Generation Butcher - Donald Bourgeois

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep. 1 - From Slaughterhouse to Louisiana Landmark: 3rd Generation Butcher - Donald Bourgeois