Coronavirus Comes to the Christmas City

by Pa Rock
Native Son

A friend forwarded a news article yesterday that she knew would be of interest to me.   It focused on my hometown of Noel, Missouri, a small community in extreme southwest Missouri that has billed itself as the “Christmas City of the Ozarks” since the 1930’s, and for many years during the mid-twentieth century served as a mecca for weekend tourists and summer vacationers from Kansas City and Tulsa.    Today the little town, which sits along the Elk River – the first floatable river south of Kansas City - still does a brisk summer tourist business with canoe rentals and camping.

But back in the 1960’s as the expanding interstate highway system began giving tourists more options, Noel’s city fathers realized that they needed to expand their economic base if there were to be jobs in the community to keep the town’s young people from drifting off to the cities to seek their fortunes.  Eventually the town leaders were able to attract a major industry to move to town and open a large plant.  That corporation was Ralston-Purina (owned by the Danforth family of St. Louis), and the industry that it brought to town was poultry processing.

The “chicken plant” as it quickly became known, brought jobs, and paychecks, and lots and lots of pollution.  It despoiled the local waterways and fouled the air.  The water was dirty, the air stank, and the tourists left for good. The “chicken plant,” however, endured.  The Danforths eventually sold it to Red Hudson, one of their in-laws.  Red and his Danforth wife lived primarily in Scotland and left much of the management of their business assets to others.  The pollution continued.

I worked briefly at the Noel “chicken plant” during the time it was owned by Hudson Foods.  The way it generally worked was that chickens were hauled into the back of the plant each night by large trucks stacked high with chickens stuffed into very small crates.  They were killed in the back of the plant and stripped of their feathers.  The dead naked birds were then dumped into long cylindrical metal tanks called “chillers” where they tumbled in cold water until they were chilled and ready for processing..  

Cold birds constantly poured out of one end of the chillers where they were grabbed by people called “hangers” and hung by their back legs onto a moving belt that circled throughout the plant.  Hangers were constantly lifting two birds with each hand and hanging them onto hooks extending from the moving belt.   (If the hangers fell behind, the belt had to be stopped, production slowed and people - usually the hangers - lost their jobs.).  The belt then moved the birds about the plant where various people did various things to “process” them.  The “chicken plant” was a crowded work environment, and many of the jobs were literally elbow-to-elbow.

(One of my jobs at the “chicken plant” was that of a hanger.  At another point I sorted giblets (livers, hearts, and gizzards) at a special table and weighed and bagged them.)

Several years ago Hudson’s sold their Noel plant to Tyson’s Foods which is headquartered in Benton County, Arkansas.  Benton County is adjacent to McDonald County, Missouri, where Noel is located.  Under Tyson’s management much of the labor force for the small plant was brought in from south Texas, Mexico, some Pacific Islands, and Africa – and the character of the town began undergoing substantial changes.  The largest building in town, for instance, which had once housed the community’s hardware store, became “The African Store” and now sells items and foodstuffs to that particular community.  Another large building is now an Hispanic grocery store called El Mercado.

Many of the locals, the one’s the plant was brought to town in order to keep, have moved on.  The new arrivals tend to crowd into rental properties in order to maximize their low wages and save as much money as possible.  Close living and working conditions brought about a situation that was ideal for the spread of disease.

Which brings me to the article that my friend forwarded yesterday about Noel’s “chicken plant.”   Apparently some employees had gone to their own physicians or local health agencies and been tested for the coronavirus – and eighty reported to plant management that they had tested positive.  This week the plant tested the remainder of its employees and learned that of 1,142 employees at the local facility, 371 tested positive for the virus – with nearly eighty percent of those being asymptomatic.

If the Noel plant follows the pattern established in other meat-packing and poultry plants with high infection rates, the infected workers will be sent home, replacements will be brought in, and production will continue.  We are in a “recovery” mode, after all.

But social distancing is all but impossible in places like chicken and meat-packing plants, and workers, when they aren’t at the plants working, are often mired in economic situations that necessitate crowding and unhealthy living arrangements.    (Sometimes housing and even beds are used in “shifts.”)

So all “fixes” to this important part of the food supply chain will remain temporary at best until a proven vaccine against the coronavirus makes its way to market and is widely available.  

We may be on the road to recovery, but it’s a long damned road and the potholes are plentiful!