It was an exciting day at school. My class had a field trip to the Chicago Stockyards scheduled. Forty, eager third-graders filed into the school bus. I had been around the stockyards before with my brothers, so the sight, the smell and the sound of the cattle in the holding pens wasn’t anything new to me, but this was my first time inside the plant.

We followed a tour guide along a metal walkway that circled around and above the noisy killing floor. Bawling cows from the pens outside were fed into the building through chutes. They were forced into more and more narrow aisles until they were finally blocked singly into a tight spot with their head hanging over a barrier. A massively-muscled, sweat-drenched colored man standing on a platform above them swung a large sledgehammer. He smashed the cows dead center on their furry foreheads.
Thud!
The cows collapsed onto their knees. The chute door flopped open. The stunned cows tumbled onto a bloody concrete floor. One of their legs was attached to a hook and chain. The thrashing cows soared up into the air. An emotionless worker sliced their throats open with a long sharp knife. Steaming hot blood gushed from their necks like water gushed from a wide-open fire hydrant.
I hated to see pain. I hated to see dying. Damn. I even hated watching the fish that my brothers and I caught from Lake Michigan die. The fish showed gasping mouths and bulging eyes as they slowly ran out of air. I didn’t even like watching birds being stalked, caught, taunted and killed by cats.
The next worker sliced open the cow’s belly with another long, sharp knife. He pulled the cow’s whole bloody mess of guts out onto the floor. The huge muscular coloreds and the equally large, hairy white men working here wore long rubber aprons and high rubber boots that were covered with blood. The cattle carcasses moved along the squeaking conveyer system and through an opening to the next area. That’s where the hides were removed from the dead bodies. That’s what we would see next our tour guide shouted above the din.
I wanted to scream, “Stop!”
I wanted to puke.
I wanted to cry.
“All right, children,” the teacher yelled. “Let’s move along now.”
My classmates did move on. I felt stuck to the metal floor. I watched another black and white spotted cow come down the chute. She had big, soft, brown eyes. She stupidly squeezed herself into the killing position. I watched the swing of the sledgehammer. I heard the loud thud as it slammed into her white-diamond-of-fur forehead. She collapsed. The chute door opened and she flopped out onto the concrete floor.
The farm animals in our Dick and Jane books at school always looked like they would be wonderful pets. In those picture books, brown and white, placid-eyed cows grazed peacefully and their calves happily played on rich green pastures that were dotted with colorful wildflowers. The story in the books said that the cows only had to fill grandfather’s shiny pails with cool, white milk. I wanted to rub my hand over those cow’s warm, soft bodies. I wanted to let them lick my arm with their long, tickly tongues. The cattle staggering into this horrible place frightfully bawled and they bled gallons of sticky, red blood and they died right before my eyes. I wondered why we children were seeing this slaughter. I guess they wanted us to learn the real truth. petite ladies garments dressed in prom
“Mickey,” The teacher yelled above the noise. “Catch up with the class.”

As our bus was leaving the stockyards for the trip back to our school, we passed an area of the stockyards where horses were being fed into a building. They didn’t kill horses here, did they?
Dazed and bloodied horses scrambled from crowded cattle trucks. The slippery climb up the ramp to the slaughterhouse entry-door brought some of the horses to their knees. White bone showed through bloody rips in horsehide. Unlike the passive cows, the horses neighed in terror. With huge white eyes and wide-flared nostrils, they punished each other with their hooves in their frantic efforts to escape. It looked like the smell of blood and the fear of death drove them crazy.
Damn. Horses were one of my favorite animals. I hoped that the always-faithful cowboy horses from the Hollywood movies didn’t end up at a terrible place like this.