Swapping stories of the stockyards

By Tim Spitzack | Editor | October 2026

A rare opportunity to hear firsthand accounts of what life was like for people working at the South St. Paul stockyards and packing plants will occur at 2 p.m., Friday, Oct. 2 at the Croatian Hall, 445 2nd Ave. S., South St. Paul. The event is being organized by South St. Paul native Bob Schussler as a time for people to reminisce about the once-booming industry that provided well-paying jobs for countless area families. The packing plants, once the largest in the world, were shuttered in the 1960s and ’70s.

Schussler is a colorful character with a thousand stories, all connected to his hometown. In a recent interview, he shared memories of exploring the city as a child, playing hockey, basement poker games, barstool conversations, rubbing elbows with the well-to-do, and of Armour and Co., which provided income for his father to build a new home and support his wife and six children – all boys. Four eventually worked at Armour and “one pledged he would never work in the yards.”

“It will be a reunion for people who worked at Armour but if you worked at Swift or Lone Star, Rifkin or Iowa Pork, you’d be welcome also,” said Schussler, who worked at Armour for a decade following his high school graduation in 1969. He worked a variety of jobs there – some unpleasant – and alongside people who expected you to show up, work hard and not complain. “My Dad was from the generation of ‘Buck up, Buttercup.’ If you pick the job, then you do it. Dad offered me a college education but I didn’t know what I wanted so I went to Armour.”

Schussler grew up in the Sixties and showed up for work in true Sixties style.

“I was the first hippie at Armour – I got long hair and am dodging the draft and they [co-workers] start banging their knives and saying, ‘hey baby, baby.’ Every day they’d be whistling at me,” he said with a smile. The ribbing didn’t force him to quit, although he eventually cut his hair and years later lost it entirely. At that point he was a building engineer for ISD 196. “I remember the first day walking down the hall and a bunch of seniors came by and starting calling me baldy.”

As a child, Schussler heard many stories from his father and uncles about life at the stockyards: the labor strike in South St. Paul in 1948, the fire shortly after the strike, the conflict that occurred at the plants following World War II when men tried to reclaim their jobs from the women who held them during wartime, countless tales of working conditions, and how Armour treated its employees well.

“The whole closing was like a slow train wreck,” said Schussler. “When Greyhound bought it [Armour] in 1970, that was the beginning of the end. They paid $400 million and sold $225 million of it right away. They wanted to diversify, but they didn’t know how to run it. Everyone talks about how Armour treated people bad at the end, but they didn’t even own it then. When I hear people disparaging it, I get a little upset. I want to set the record straight.”

The citywide discussion over the past two years over the fate of the Armour gatehouse structures touched a nerve for Schussler, who was employed at Armour when it closed, and is partly why he chose to organize the Oct. 2 reunion. Regarding the effort to build a memorial from bricks salvaged from the gatehouse structures which were demolished in December, he said, “I wish they’d put a pause on it and include some people who were actually involved with it [stockyards industry].” However, he recognizes there are two camps with differing opinions: those with ties to Armour and the stockyards, and those without. The Armour Gates Memorial Task Force is expected to present design concepts for the memorial at the On the Road Again community celebration on October 3. According to the city, the 17-member task force was convened in January and includes longtime and new residents, and people with relatives who worked at the stockyards.

Today, Schussler lives in the home his parents built in 1951, the year he was born. He continues to be proud of his city and still finds himself defending it.

“All my life I’ve had to take the criticism about the smells in South St. Paul,” he said of the stench associated with the stockyards. When the subject comes up now, he reminds people that the stockyards were far less hazardous than the 3M Chemolite plant in Cottage Grove that has polluted the Mississippi River and the drinking water of local municipalities, including South St. Paul, with PFAS, the so-called forever chemicals. “Every time someone starts ripping on the smell of Armours, I say what about their [3M] chemicals. They were tasteless, odorless, but were the worst chemicals, the most toxic. If it [waste] smells, there ain’t nothing wrong with it.”

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