I received a wonderful donation to my library recently, courtesy of Ed and Regina Woods of Woods Smoked Meats in Bowling Green, Mo. They sent me an operations manual, issued by the National Institute of Locker and Freezer Provisioners. You’d be more familiar with that group under its current name, the American Association of Meat Processors, or AAMP.
The manual, the Woods guessed, belonged to Ed’s father. While there is no specific date on it, some of the pages refer back to the early 1960s. Robert Madeira was the executive director of the association at the time. It is a massive binder – 11 X 11 X 3 and weighing in at about 6 pounds.