OCR Text |
Show f - j I Down Memory Lane I BY JOHN J. CREEDON I THE BINGHAM MEAT i The Bingham Meat has closed its doors and one more of the old established es-tablished business firms in Bingham has joined the exodus from the Canyon. t Ihe last beef and hog has been cut up and for the first time in ner.rly forty years, a closed sign ' looms up in the window and for many it means a new search for a place to buy our chops and steaks. your order and you never had to think about it again. Everything would be on hand. Many times they would be there to cut and distribute the meat. I thought of Thanksgiving and Christmas and other holidays at the shop. How these men would work for a week ahead, drawing and cleaning the turkeys and chicken for the holiday spread. This was in the days before the quick freeze and the modern method of dispensing such items. I often wondered how they could enjoy a holiday after working so hard for so long. Mince meat never tasted so good as the bulk mince meat that Bill would scoop out of a huge glass jar and put in the card board container. contain-er. It had body and something the packaged article lacked. 1 remember how my first little The Bingham Meat was established estab-lished shortly after af-ter the big fire at Bourgards, and if memory serves me right, it was Ben Dietrich who was the proprietor. propri-etor. Bill Harris and Tommy Evans, Ev-ans, who worked s Mr. Creedon for Bourgard tran ferred their talents tal-ents there, and to the day of closing, Bill has been associated with the business. After Mr. Dietrich's death, his widow operated the shop for a time, and then sold out to Bill Harris and the Robison brothers who had worked work-ed there. This partnership has endured through the years although for the past few years. Bill Harris has operated op-erated the shop himself. His partners part-ners have gone elsewhere as the i town and business has gone down and down. These men were all good citizens and civic workers. Bill, Brick and Ted all belonged to the fire department depart-ment and each served the fire companies com-panies as Chief at one time or another. an-other. Bill and Brick both served as Bishops of the local L.D.S. Ward and they were active in all community commu-nity affairs. To many of us, though the Bingham Bing-ham Meat was Bill Harris, and Bill was the Bingham Meat. Long association asso-ciation fused the two together and you could hardly think of one without with-out the other. Here was a shop that took care of the needs of the far flung area comprising the Bingham area. There was regular delivery to Copperfield, Highland Boy and Copperton and the delivery truck would be Diled girl, Colleen used to look forward to a visit to the Bingham Meat. Bill knew her love for dill pickles and would see that she was not disappointed. disap-pointed. The one thing that would disrupt dis-rupt the business at the shop was the fire siren. At the first sound of the alarm, Bill would dash out of the shop and head for No. I Fire Station. In later years, Brick and Teod were on hand too to answer the alarms, but to this day 1 can picture Bill running for the fire truck with his white apron flying in the breeze. He was usually the first one there and remained until the truck was put away. I am reminded of seeing Bill return re-turn to the shop with that white apron frozen stiff and resembling the scoop on a snow plow, after a bad fire in the winter, with his black hair glistening with the ice particles. par-ticles. He would return to his work as if nothing had happened. He became Chief of No. I a few months after I joined the department depart-ment and 1 learned many things from him in our long association together. Some of the knowledge learned from him in fire fighting I mny have forgotten, but I have never nev-er forgotten his sense of fair play, his courage and his love and devotion devo-tion to his fellow man, and above all the love and friendship of him and his family. high with meat and butter and eggs. The cafes depended largely on the Bingham Meat for their steaks and roasts and other products and it was a familiar sight to see Bill delivering de-livering a special order to the cafe up the street. Many memories are connected with the shop and the men who operated it. It was a meeting place for friends who discussed their new babies or cars or other items of interest in-terest while standing on the sawdust covered floor. If you wanted a special meat order, or-der, you just had to tell the butchers butch-ers how many to be served and they would do the rest. I never worried about how many pounds or the cuts, just tell Bill and he took care of the rest. The same was true for parties and organization events. You placed |