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Leo an interesting story, for sure. While details are few, there are a couple of things we can assume. 1) the meat had come from some distance, if the cars needed reiced. At least 24 hrs away. 2) As it was on a train from Savanna, it most likely came from a slaughter house in S St Paul, or Winona or even further away. Armour and Swift had facilities in Winona served by the CBQ, so that would be my guess as to location. 3) the meat was going some distance if the cars were re-iced. So the meat was not going to the stockyards or to local slaughter houses. Nor was it likely headed to a local grocery distributor or cold storage facility. Why spend the money to re-ice if the loads were were local destinations? 4) And it appears the loads are not normal loads, in that they do not go the normal routing of Congress Park to the IHB and on to eastern destinations. So lets assume they are special loads, or loads that require some kind of special handling or instructions. I'm going to take a wild guess and suggest the cars might have contained Kosher meat coming from a slaughter house that had a Kosher kill line and could produce Kosher meat. Kosher meat is lamb or the front quarters of beef killed by a rabbi under specifications dictated by the Judaism. The western grasslands were home to a lot of cattle and sheep. While in 1934 most of the Jewish population was still in eastern cities like New York and Philadelphia. Further the reason for the destination to the stockyards was possibly to meet the obligations of a Kosher tariff which called for a car hauling Kosher meat to be blessed (washed) by a rabbi within specified time limits. If the train had been running late or delayed, ie missed the normally scheduled location for the blessing, the railroad was required to get the car to a rabbi within the required time limit. I believe a Kosher blessing was required every 24 hrs after the first 48 hrs. It is possible a rabbi was available at the stockyards/slaughter houses. There may have been a rabbi working on a Kosher kill line who could do the blessing. Similar to keeping a lawyer on retainer, should you need one, railroads kept rabbi's on retainer for the required Kosher blessings if they handled loads of Kosher meat. Rifkin was a Kosher packer in S St Paul, so that may have been the cars origin. As I said, a wild guess based upon the limited information. Doug Harding
__._,_.___ Posted by: "Doug Harding" <doug.harding@iowacentralrr.org> __,_._,___ |