With more than 100 years in business, the Heintzelman Meat Market has developed and perfected many long-standing traditions.

Monday was always slaughter day and Tuesday has been sausage and bologna day. And though he's 'retired,' David Heintzelman is still making his father's recipe for their trademark bologna for over 60 years now.Barry Smith and David work side-by-side like a pair of steady draft horses, quietly plodding along in seamless rhythmic motion. We were fortunate to see their accumulated experience create this almost mythical meat before our eyes (and because David trusted me with a few trade secrets that will not be reported here).The game plan for making sausage and balogna has remained consistent over the years.First, previously cut beef and pork are brought into the kitchen in tubs of 50 pounds each. One hundred-fifty pounds of bologna will be made today. That amount climbs to 1,500 pounds on the Saturday, Sunday and Monday the week before Christmas!The meat is first run through the five-horsepower electric grinder which flashes like lightning when it first starts up. It grinds with such force a pan hangs in front of it to keep all the meat falling into the tub.After a second pass with a finer screen, the meat, coriander, salt and secret ingredient is added to the stainless steel industrial mixer.On this day, 100 pounds of fresh sausage was made first. This process is near identical as is used for the bologna, except with slightly different ingredients. Sausage is stuffed into the small intestines of a pig. Bologna uses the girthier steer's small intestine, both of which David is well adept at handling.From the water bucket, Dave works a splash of water through the sometimes 20 feet of intestine, rinsing it all the way through with the ease of his experience. The casing is now ready to be loaded onto the press tube and the meat mixture slides through easily.Barry loads 25 pounds of mixture into the press while David ties the rings together with a single length of twine. About 12 or 13 rings will be looped over the wooden rack stake and taken to the smoke house, the top rack about six feet from the floor. Once placed, each ring is carefully separated from touching the next.The rings go in a translucent white over pink and come out as brown as a chestnut mare. Once all are hung, a fire is prepared in the pit. The wood is bought from a local Mahoning Valley firewood supplier who only brings maple, chestnut, or fruit trees, but mostly maple.David feels oak is too strong a flavor and hickory is too scarce to find anymore. (Though at one time plentiful, Carbon County's tanning industry virtually wiped hickory out of this area a long time ago.)Once some hot coals are established, larger split fuel logs are placed on top and a steel plate is placed over top of that with just the right gap. As Dave prepared to adjust it for the draft, his eye went to the sky. Seeing it was a damp, overcast day, he left it open a bit wider to compensate.The steel doors, with a few small holes drilled in them, are then shut, but not too tightly. As usual, after just a few moments, smoke began to evenly seep out at all the edges of the door. The fire and most importantly the heat and smoke, were just right.Next door, Barry is doing the same on his side of the side-by-side smoker. His fire is for smoking sausage. David points out how he'll check back on the fire, putting his hand on the door to feel the heat.The trick is not to get it too hot that you start a grease fire but hot enough to reach an internal meat temperature of 160 degrees. There is a permanent handprint on the door from all the years of checking. The bologna will smoke for about four hours.From the smokehouse, the meat will go into steam boilers for finishing. Many times the meat has already reached 165 degrees and will float, telling David it's done. The rest of the rings will stay in until the temperature is brought up and then they too will float.The Earlier DaysThe original farm began in 1905 with David's grandparents, William and Laura Heintzelman. They had two sons, Norton and Phaon. But it wasn't always big enough to raise enough beef to meet the market's demand.They augmented the farm by leasing 15 acres further out the Mahoning Valley and 55 acres between Heintzelman's and the Gnaden Huetten Hospital. Later still, weekly trips to buy steer at auction became necessary as well.Originally, the side-by-side cinder-block smoke house was a two-story structure. The top section used a coal-fire for longer smoked products such as dried-beef and Lebanon that smoked for more than a week.David's father, Norton, had a wooden smokehouse that caught fire from a smoking job that got too hot. And once in June of 1987, a quick change in the weather caused it to overheat and fire spread to the second floor of the kitchen house.In former days, the wood was all cut and split on site. David remembers how the wood shed at one time had an 80-pound steam line run to it to power a steam engine that turned the saw. The cement slab remains as evidence of the steam engine's place.Later, David would bring his Ford F-20 tractor down at the same spot and the saw blade was belt driven. The coil of belt rests with the unused saw.Early on, a steer was fastened to a bull ring on the floor. With his head securely pulled down, he was struck by the blunt end of an ax. David recalls a few instances when one stroke wasn't enough. Taking a few dumbfounded stares from steer led Norton Heintzelman to give up the ax for a rifle. And once they built the knock-down pen, a cattle gun (a 22-caliber blank propels a 4-inch steel rod into the steer's head) was used. With that, a steer fell "like sacks of potatoes."Originally, the meats were cooled with 100-pound blocks of ice stored on site in an ice house. It was located at the approximate location of the white cinder-block apartment on "Heintzelman's Curve." The walls were 6-8 inches thick and were insulated with sawdust.The ice blocks were also packed in saw dust and cooled the meat by being placed on top of the coolers. Evidence of this system can be seen today in the way the ceiling slants to allow the melted water to run off. Later, David's dad installed an ammonia coiled cooling system with a compressor powered by a Ford engine.Early on, they used three delivery trucks to deliver on this side of the Lehigh River. When William first started he had a gentleman's agreement with the folks at Fairyland Farms, his former employer. When he left, he agreed that he would keep out of Franklin Township and in return, the Diehl's stayed out of Lehighton and Mahoning. These trucks kept cool with ice too.The early high-pressure ammonia system was replaced by modern refrigeration compressors. The heavy coils of pipe were discarded but came in handy in the 1970s when the new United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) updated their slaughter house regulations.New cattle chutes and a knock-down pen were built with these heavy pipes. And though they no longer slaughter steer, all the original equipment is still intact.An overhead metal track connects the kitchen to the slaughter room to the two coolers. Sides and hind quarters can easily be slid on hooks from one area to the next quite efficiently. Before entering the warm meat cooler, the four quarters were weighed for each steer.The 1970 USDA inspector visited each Monday. They were required to inspect the condition and manner in which they were slaughtered and had to report it.David recalled a few times being called from Washington because an inspector's report wasn't posted and he would have to read off the weights of each steer slaughtered that week. Some steer dressed out at 700 pounds, though the average was around 500-600.David, now semi-retired, has been working in the shop since he was a little boy, but full-time since he left the Army in 1957. He and his cousin Joel Heintzelman (Phaon's son), who is now fully retired, formally took over the business in 1962 from their fathers.David still prepares the bologna and sausage each Tuesday for the new owner, Kyle Elsasser.And with the help of Elsasser's family, including his parents and grandfather, Heintzelman's remains a family business, something of a rarity today.(For the complete story and more pictures see

culturedcarboncounty.blogspot.com)