Trader-Gazette writer Julie Hohman and her dad, Roger Rollo, step out onto a 1 ½ inch-thick clear glass ledge atop the Willis Tower (former Sears Tower) during a trip to Chicago in October. The ledge stands 1,353 feet above the city and extends four feet outside the building’s 103rd floor. “My legs were rubbery but I was slowly able to gingerly back out onto the ledge,” said Julie who is afraid of heights and wasn’t even planning to go up in the tower let alone out on the ledge. “This is higher than we flew in the Tin Goose,” remarked a jubilant Roger. (Julie’s article about her and Roger’s ride on the Tin Goose on Roger’s 80th birthday appeared in the Fall Issue of the T-G.) Roger’s advice atop the Willis Tower, the second highest building in the United States: Don’t look down.

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Englebeck

Packing Company

Enjoyed Success,

Colorful History

By Julie Hohman

 Before it was a flea market, the four-acre site at 535 S.E. Catawba Road in Port Clinton housed an RV sales business, a used car lot, a fish market and perhaps most interesting, a slaughterhouse.

The many rooms in the 10,000-square-foot building, soon to be occupied by wood workers, jewelry makers and antique dealers, once comprised the operations of the Englebeck Packing Company. Those same rooms were walk-in coolers and freezers, a loading dock room, knife sharpening room, a room for salting hides, a gut room, cutting floor and killing floor, among others.

The company was owned by Bob Englebeck, who partnered with his brother-in-law, Lee Bracken. Before that, the operation had been owned by Bob’s father, Harry Englebeck. Bob Englebeck had worked for his father when he was a boy, went to work with him after he got out of school, and eventually took over the business.

The plant operated about 80 years, said Englebeck’s wife, JoAnn, who said that’s as near as she can pinpoint it because they did not keep records back then.

“I can remember him talking about how he delivered meat for his dad when he was in high school,” Mrs. Englebeck said. “Before they started the slaughterhouse they had a meat market in Lakeside.”

Mrs. Englebeck, who retired as an RN from Magruder Hospital after 30 years, said she did not have a part in the meat business but learned an interesting story recently about how Harry Englebeck became interested in starting a slaughterhouse. The idea came after hearing tales about slaughtering and cooking from his father, Henry, who was a cook in the Civil War.

“Harry’s father, Henry, was a Sgt. Maj. in the Ohio Volunteer Infantry in the Civil War. He was a cook and slaughtered chickens and beef and cooked it for the guys,” Mrs. Englebeck said.

A clean plant ... A good product ... And one tough, hard job. Those are among the memories of two former Englebeck Packing Co. employees, Roger “Tiny” Hofacker and Roger Rollo, both hired at the plant in 1968.

Hofacker was 20 years old when he walked into Englebeck and got hired.

A typical day for Hofacker included taking out guts, brains and tongues from animals that had been killed and hung up on rails that moved through the various plant operations by the flick of a switch; cleaning guts (because some customers ordered them for sausage making); hauling beef to the cutting room to fill custom orders; boning out sides of beef to make hamburger; loading trucks with meat for deliveries to stores; then, at the end of the day, washing saws, tables, floors and equipment so they were clean and ready to do it all over again the next day.

He did not regularly cut meat and he was thankful for that. He said he was constantly aware of the danger of working with knives on a wet floor. In fact what he remembers most about those days?

“Being afraid of falling on the killing floor because it was wet and having a knife in your hand and falling on your knife.” He said he also worried about being chased by cows on the wet floor and falling on the ice when he was carrying a quarter of beef on his shoulder while making deliveries.

Hofacker of Port Clinton said none of his major fears of getting injured came to pass but he did make several trips to the emergency room for stitches during the three years he worked there.

Rollo of Lakeside remembers doing everything at the plant, from butchering to processing, working on the killing floor, the cutting floor, loading trucks and making deliveries of packaged meats or quarters of beef to meat markets, stores, restaurants and hotels throughout the region. He cut meat for farmers and people who brought their own cattle in, and to fill customers’ demand for freezer beef.

“It was hard work, heavy work and dangerous work,” Rollo recalls. “Like Tiny said, you had a lot of things you had to watch out for.” Rollo said there was high turnover and it wasn’t unusual for employees not to come back to work after lunch on their first day.

After 10 years at Englebeck Rollo got a job as a state meat inspector.

He said it felt “really weird” at first going back to inspect his former bosses’ plant but “I don’t ever recall them having any problems. They were pretty safety conscious. They stressed safety,” he said.

The plant butchered 30 to 40 cattle, veal and sheep per week. The animals were hung up on a rail, bled, skinned, gutted, split in half, washed, then transported by rail into coolers. The animals had been bought at auction by Bob Englebeck. Employees worked a 5 ½-day work week.

Retired general contractor Orville Payne of Port Clinton recalls building the new, bigger concrete block plant that stands today for his friend, Bob Englebeck, 50 or so years ago. He said he literally built it around the first building that Harry Englebeck had built while workers inside the original structure were conducting their operations.

“We just worked around the old building and put the new one up so they didn’t have to stop their business,” said Payne, who will celebrate his 90th birthday this month. He said the old building was then removed a piece at a time until the new structure was all that remained.

Rollo recalled a couple of funny stories from that time ... the day Bob Englebeck accidentally got locked in the freezer that an employee had been complaining about because of a broken handle. Englebeck hammered on the freezer walls until someone rescued him, then fixed the handle.

.....The time an inspector was watching employees try unsuccessfully to get a very wild animal in the pen.

“The thing was crazy. It would charge right at you, try to come right through the fence to get you,” Rollo said. “Bob was telling them ‘you gotta let that animal know you’re not scared of him.’” The inspector replied, “It’s pretty hard to let them know you’re not scared of them when they’re standing on top of you trampling you.”

While they dealt with plenty of wild animals nobody ever actually got trampled, Rollo said.

As the large grocery chain stores grew, the smaller stores went out of business and slaughterhouse business declined. Bob Englebeck retired and closed the plant in 1997 at the age of 80.

Owners Englebeck and Bracken and most of the co-workers Rollo and Hofacker remember have died including Bob Rigoni, Lester McLaughlin, Hugo Heinzl, Peter Butchko and Pete Kowal. Hofacker, who retired in 2004 after 28 years as a custodian for the Port Clinton School District, and Rollo, who retired as a state meat inspector in 1995 after 17 years, remain friends today.