By Elana Seifert
Susie’s brother Steve Lilovich–who runs the retail component of DeKalb County Marketing, George’s Market, two doors down on South Commercial–met me early on a Saturday morning when 400 chickens were to be slaughtered “Buddhist kill” fashion, which means with head and feet intact. Coops of chickens raised on several Amish farms in Indiana–“drug and pesticide free”–arrive by truck at 5 AM every day but Sunday.
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Ethel and Matthew eventually bought an orchard in Michigan City to provide produce for their market. Their son George took care of the orchard until he bought a duck farm, then shipped ducks to Chicago’s Chinatown until the 1950s, when federal law made it more difficult to ship slaughtered animals interstate. “You could ship over the state line,” explained Lilovich, “but it had to be a completely clean bird–and the Chinese wanted them with the guts and everything still in them.” George bought the 8947 S. Commercial plant that Susie now oversees so he could continue selling wholesale to Chinatown shops and restaurants.
It wasn’t until I mentioned that some of my family were in the restaurant business that Lilovich finally took me inside the plant. In the back room where the chickens are unloaded, a few coops of “hard birds”–older than the usual roaster or fryer, which makes their meat tougher–were stacked up. These were for the “ethnic trade,” Lilovich said. “Haitians and Jamaicans come in for them. They want them for stews–certain types of cooking you want a tougher chicken.” A few of the birds were loose, and one flapped from the floor to the top of a coop to survey us.
The chicken was now ready for the plucker, a circular rotating tub lined with ridged rubber fingers that catch and remove the feathers. “When I was a kid,” said Lilovich, “we didn’t have a machine like this. We had a rotating drum with rubber fingers on it. You held and turned the bird against it. I was the fastest–seven seconds I could pluck a chicken,” he said, and then laughed. In her day, he added, his mother could pluck a chicken faster than anyone. And after he and his wife, Eunice, were married “she could outproduce anyone. She could certainly outproduce me.” But it’s Susie Tornincasa who holds the record today.
T & J has been around for 50 years, but when condos recently went up across the street some of the owners tried to shut the plant down. “A few people complain about the smell,” said Joe Lilovich. “But it’s a livestock smell. You can’t please everyone.” Steve Lilovich said, “We’re at a point now where we have to hide from the public. It’s like a big, stupid secret. It shouldn’t be this way, but it is.”
