Opportunity knocks on its own schedule. Even when there’s a lot to do, it’s important to always be ready to take a detour. Last week, I was working an already full docket of butchering when I received a notice of an upcoming auction for a business dispersal. Kundlas BBQ from Hamlin, which also included an old slaughterhouse and processing, was liquidating much of their old inventory. 

Once upon a moon, my father-in-law used to sell hides to Kundlas from the butcher shop here. Personally, I wasn’t familiar with Kundlas, but I saw an opportunity to go pick up some used equipment for the shop. 

Used equipment comes with its own risks, though, so to be prudent, I grabbed my wife and we went down to preview the auction the day before. What we got to see was even better than a mere shopping trip.

With butcher shops, I have come to find that almost no two are the same. We all have our own properties and models for how things get done. Kundlas was no exception. It may have been closed for a while now, but the walls told me volumes. Many of the sale items were still spread out throughout the buildings, which were dark and dusty from having been closed. But walking through the first door into the old slaughterhouse, I felt like I was an archeologist in my own trade. We walked through the old coolers with galvanized metal and wooden doors, pre-stainless-steel-era construction. The rails overhead, which transported carcasses through the facility, were still there and led our path forward like the yellow brick road. 

Upon reaching their origin, I was amazed to see the layout of their dispatch room. Hanging high in the vaulted room was an old splitting saw, a model I had never seen before. And even more intriguing was a scale for measuring the weight of carcasses built into the rail. They make these with modern technology, but what made this one so cool was that it was driven by a long rod and gear built into the wall and ran down to the actual scale, which was set up like a manual sliding rail scale with counterweights to determine the exact load. I’d say it was nostalgic, but it was more along the lines of “discovery” than “remembering” for me. 

We looked at the equipment I wanted to buy and verified the condition. Along the way, we kept marveling at the way their facilities had been set up and how they must have run things based on the space and equipment they had. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a little bittersweet. They clearly had a great thing going at one point; they must’ve had plenty of people working there and making food. Even still, as it now stood in its final days before being dispersed and likely renovated for new ideas and uses. I couldn’t help but think of my own business and all the ideas I have for it. While I would like to think I’m building a legacy or an empire or something else entirely, the reality is that nothing lasts forever, and one day, folks may be walking through what I’ve built to buy up the pieces. 

In this way, though, businesses are like nature. They live and die, and what remains is used to feed new ones. 

The auction went on as scheduled and we made our purchases. We loaded the trailer onto my wife’s car and ran down to load up before they closed. With our work completed and the kids melting down in the back seat, we decided to stop on the way back to grab a bite at the Burger Shack. 

Coincidentally, I had won a kids’ picnic table at the auction, and it was still on the trailer. In a moment of spontaneity, the kids and Chelsea opted to have their dinner on the picnic table on the trailer right there in the parking lot, rather than at the tables that were already there. 

The way out here auctions help clean up and say goodbye to what once thrived, and they feed the futures of small-town businesses that hope to fill the needs of the community. When I get a saw I need for a good price, it helps my business and my customers, and when I get outbid by someone else who needed something, it helps the family who’s cleaning out all the more.