Petaluma’s Graveman honed meat-cutting skills in Army

A trip to the meat market isn’t what it used to be. Just ask Joe Graveman, a career butcher who deftly carved up hefty slabs of meat into steaks, roasts and chops for more than 35 years at local butcher shops.|

A trip to the meat market isn’t what it used to be. Just ask Joe Graveman, a career butcher who deftly carved up hefty slabs of meat into steaks, roasts and chops for more than 35 years at local butcher shops.

The old markets were very different from most of today’s supermarket meat departments, where much of the meat is prepackaged and displayed in plastic wrappers. In Graveman’s day, customers hand selected individual cuts from the meat case, which were then wrapped in white butcher paper to take home.

The biggest thrill for young kids accompanying their parents to the old fashioned meat markets, along with watching sausage being made or grinding beef into hamburger, was when the butcher reached behind the counter to grab a hot dog, which he’d offer to them as a treat.

Combining meat cutting skills and physical strength, the butcher’s job was often challenging and exhausting. But to Graveman, who was raised on copious amounts of hard work in Depression-era Alabama, it usually accounted for just half of his day’s labor. A tireless worker, for most of his life he held two full-time jobs, requiring stamina that few men possess, but to 93-year-old Graveman, a Petaluma resident since 1946, it was all in a days work.

The oldest of six children, Graveman was born in Cullman, Ala., where his father and grandfather operated a small dairy until the Depression hit and “everybody lost everything.”

Fortunately, his father found work, but the family lived mostly off of what they grew, and ate lots of cottontail rabbit. As a kid, Graveman’s first paying job was walking behind a horse-drawn plow planting corn seed. At 14, he earned $15 a month milking cows and cleaning up, but he gave the money to his parents to help make ends meet.

Graveman volunteered to join the Army-Air Corps in 1943, where he was trained as a butcher and was expecting to be sent overseas. While stationed at Hamilton Field in Novato, the military brass learned of his meat cutting skills and assigned him to the officer’s mess. Not long after that, he landed a night job loading heavy feed sacks at Petaluma’s Golden Eagle Milling Co.

On a 1945 visit to Petaluma, Graveman met Mary Meaghi, an employee of Volpi’s Grocery. The couple married at St. Vincent’s Church in 1946 and were one week shy of celebrating their 70th wedding anniversary when Mary passed away in April.

Released from the military, Graveman accepted a $40 a week butcher’s job with Petaluma’s Safeway store, before leaving in 1948 to help construct the meat market at the new South City Market. In 1949, Joe and his wife were looking for a house to rent when Petaluma developer Ken Colin convinced Graveman he could afford the $83 a month payments on a new west side home, which they purchased.

In 1956, he left Purity to work at Studdert’s Meat Market, where he cut meat, made sausage and handed out free hot dogs to kids until it closed in 1971.

After learning the auto body trade at night school and by working at M&G Auto Body, Graveman along with his son Danny, opened D&J Auto Body on Petaluma Boulevard North in 1978. Like his father, Danny Graveman also had another full-time job, working as a firefighter for the Petaluma Fire Department. Graveman continued to work at Carl’s Market and Bateman’s Meats before packing away his knives and hanging up his butcher’s apron for good in 1982.

Last April, Graveman was treated to one of the most rewarding days of his life when he was selected to fly to Arlington, Va., courtesy of the Honor Flight Network, which provides veterans with honor and closure by transporting them to visit war memorials dedicated to honor their service and sacrifices.

Putting thousands of miles on travel trailers and motorhomes, the Graveman’s crisscrossed the country and camped extensively with their kids, Diane, Danny and the late Donna. In good health and sporting a great sense of humor that he punctuates with smiles and laughter, the convivial Graveman, with an abundance of support from his family, friends and neighbors, is gradually adapting to the latest chapter in his life.

(Harlan Osborne’s column Toolin’ Around Town appears every two weeks. Contact him at harlan@sonic.net.)

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