Oral history as related to Katie Reede by Fred Carlson.

My name is Fred Carlson. I`m 73 years old. I was born in Faulkton, South Dakota. My dad was a veterinarian and he got transferred to Belle Fourche. Marcie [my wife] and I first met when I got back from the service in World War II which was January, 1946.

When I came back from World War II, I was going to go to college to be a veterinarian. I had already started college before the War started, but, I couldn`t get back into the colleges because everybody was going to college. Mr. and Mrs. Carl Ellis, Marcie`s parents, had started the locker plant in 1945. The war was running down and Marcie`s dad needed a place for a locker plant and a hatchery. He got the idea to have the locker plant because at that time, you could get the equipment that you needed plus the stuff you needed to build this building. He built the locker plant and put the hatchery in the basement of the locker plant. It opened July 1, 1945. When I started going with Marcie, her parents needed someone to be a butcher at their locker plant. So, I went to the Toledo School of Meat Cutting in Toledo, Iowa. I came back [from college] and I started working here at the locker plant. I will have been working here fifty years come the first of July.

Marcie and I got married June 29, 1947. We have three children-Ginger Carlson, Barbara Graslie, and Fritz Carlson. In 1962, Marcie and I bought the locker plant from her folks and we`ve had it ever since. We liked the business and her folks offered us a good price, so we bought it.

I cut meat according to how people want it. The meat belongs to somebody else. I cut it into steaks, and the roasts, and make hamburger and then we wrap the meat in packages and freeze it. Either we put it in a locker or they come and take it home to their deep freezes. At one time we butchered. Myself and another man that used to live in Belle Fourche had a little slaughterhouse. When we started here at the locker plant, we didn`t have any inspections. And now, we got lots of `em. We are state inspected, not federal. We have an inspector who lives in Sturgis and he comes around every two weeks.

Working at the locker plant just became our life. We also had the little store over there, the Parkway. Between the two, we got to meet all the people. We met the older people at the locker plant and the younger ones at the Parkway. We enjoyed that very much.