For many years I was a steel erection contractor, putting both reinforcement bars in concrete and structural steel in commercial buildings.

We had a contract on a new school building in Trenton. The general contractor was Willard Widemann from Clinton. He was one of my favorite contractors to work with. His favorite expressions was “I may not be right, but I’m never wrong. I said, “How could that be, Willard?” And he said, “My name is on the checks.”

I called the local union hall for ironworkers, none would drive to Trenton. I was a union contractor, so I had to hire some local help and put them on a union permit. These farm boys I hired were some of the best workers I had ever employed.

One day, the best worker I had came to me and said Friday would be his last day. He had another job starting Monday that paid big bucks. I was paying these boys union wages, which at that time was about six or seven times more than any other job paid in Trenton.

The cheese factory and Trenton Foods only paid minimum wage. I asked him what he was going to be doing to make this big money and he replied, “I milk toms”.

I explained to him he didn’t have to make up any stories, it would be all right if he just went ahead and quit on Friday. He said he wasn’t lying to me, a turkey tom, on his own, will only have about 40 or 50% fertile eggs in a flock of turkeys. The company he worked for every year about this time, went across northern Missouri to the turkey farms and artificially inseminated the hens.

This raised the fertility of the eggs up to about 95%. He added, “Can’t everybody milk a tom.”

This I had to agree, I wouldn’t even know where to look.

I always figured that boy should have been on the TV show What’s My Line. ——— Jack can be reached at PO Box 40, Oak Grove, MO 64075 or jackremembers @aol.com