Edwin Dohlby
In what he describes as a hard-knock life, Edwin Dohlby dropped out of school at the age of 14 and began work at a butcher shop. There he learned to kill, gun, skin and properly cut up animals for sale at the local grocery store. In the early twentieth century, the animal killing and butchering was done right behind the store.
This interview comes from the UWL Oral History Program at Special Collections Murphy Library.
Transcript
Location: 1522 Kane St.
Edwin Dohlby: I was fourteen years old when I dropped out of school and I went to work for A. A. Ashla of 1721 George Street to take up the butcher trade—learn meat cutting and that, see. I worked for him for three years I guess. I learned to kill chickens, pick chickens, and cut meat and that. And to finish my apprenticeship, I was supposed to work for Fred Brieback on killing. He had his own killing plant right in the back end of his butcher shop on Gillette Street where the North Side Library is. He was a hard son-of-a-gun to work for.
Howard Fredricks (interviewer): What was his name?
Dohlby: So I quit him and went to work for K.S. Knutson at the grocery store on Gillette and Kane Street.
Fredricks: You said a killing— *clears throat* You said he had a…killing…place?
Dohlby: Yeah, he had it right in the back room, he had a—
Fredricks: Where he did the butchering?
Dohlby: Where he did the butchering, yeah. That son-of-a-gun used to buy a carload of beef at a time. He had them in the backyard there, in them days. And, uh…
Fredricks: And you had to…kill the animals?
Dohlby: Well, I had to learn to kill them, yeah. I learned to kill. I had to cut their throats and cut their jugulars and rip them up the belly and take their guts out and I had to learn how to take all the fat off the paunches and, uh, skin…skin the calves and cattle and…Yeah, I had some hard knocks in my days.