[73-75 Kent Avenue, Greenpoint, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]
I chose a Brooklyn street at random, started looking for some human interest, and found this photograph. I got a kick out of the guys standing on the corner, who know they’re being photographed. You can click on the photograph for a larger, jollier view.
As for no. 77 Kent Avenue, that large building in the background, I looked up Morrell Meats and found that in 1940, they had three locations in Brooklyn:
[Click for a larger, meatier view.]
And then I found that John Morrell has been a brand since 1827. The brand is now owned by Smithfield Foods, with a plant in Iowa. Here’s some detailed history.
And now for some true weirdness: I was jonesing for liverwurst earlier this week. I give in to my cravings and buy liverwurst twice a year, max — I think of it as a seasonal item. The name Morrell in this photograph seemed vaguely familiar, and then it came to me: that’s the brand of liverwurst, or Braunschweiger, now sitting in our refrigerator.
Bonus weirdness: John Morrell Meats advertised in Life magazine and for at least four years ran contests with a top prize of “His and Her” airplanes. You can’t make this stuff up. Or you could, but there’s no need to, because it’s already real.
Related reading
All OCA liverwurst posts : More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard)
Sunday, May 18, 2025
Morrell Meats (and true weirdness)
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comments: 12
Good one!
Thank you!
First off, love the use of “jonesing”; it adds a little flair and takes me back to the ‘70s.
One sentence had me wondering: “I got a kick out of the guys standing on the corner, who know they’re being photographed.” Would the relative clause be better placed right next to the noun it modifies: “I got a kick out of the guys, who know they’re being photographed, standing on the corner.”? Or did you phrase it the way you did, to emphasize the kicker: They know they’re being photographed and may be hamming it up for the camera?
And, yes, I understand that in your version there’s no confusion about what the clause modifies.
The emphasis on their knowing that they’re being photographed falls better at the end. In the middle of the sentence it feels to me like an awkward interruption. You could also have a dash precede it: I got a kick out of the guys standing on the corner — they know they’re being photographed.
By the way, when it comes to liverwurst, the jonesing is real. It’s a food that takes me back to childhood.
https://content.mpl.org/digital/collection/histrecipe/id/4534
sandwich recipe
At first, I was totally puzzled with "jonesing for liverwurst": wait, what? Thanks Michael: I learned something today!
Not for the fainthearted, I’d say.
It’s in Green’s Dictionary of Slang, where one of its meanings is “to want very much”: “I’ve been jonesing for a good steak.” I’m not sure that “jonesing” goes beyond the U.S.
Like hankering, I’ve generally considered jonesing a regionalism, used more in the northeastern US, and hankering used more in the South and Midwest.
I can’t say, but the Dictionary of American Regional English might have the answer. Hankering goes back to the 17th century. Jonesing is 20th-century slang and seems to have originated in drug culture.
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