Promptly and with the Hides On

There can't be too many things more difficult to photograph than an entire yard stick.

Too bad, some of them have fascinating advertising on them.  One of my favorites is featured today but I had to take the pictures in overlapping segments.

I consider this a highly effective ad.  I mean, if there is one thing you are looking for in the matter of dead animal removal, promptness would be it.  Not having to skin the defunct critter prior to said removal, well, better still.

Wait.....you're going to pay ME to take away the dead animal?  It can't get much better than that!  I tried to do a bit of internet sleuthing on the phrase "Sanitary Green Truck".  It seems to  have been widely understood back in the 1930s or 40s to which this artifact dates.  But I drew a blank.  Oh, I am sure there is some reference somewhere but those search terms hide it under myriad references to "Green" recycling services.

Obviously dead animals had some monetary value to the Chippewa Falls Rendering Company. Rendering is one of those lines of business that pretty much everybody would prefer not to think about too much.  There are no doubt big vats.  And if you worked there you would come home at the end of the day with smells on you that showering would not touch.  You may not have had many friends, other than the guys at work of course.

Rendering is an interesting word.  You can chase it all the way back to Latin where reddere meant "to give back, restore or return".  In that sense rendering unto Caesar meant giving him his denaris back. In the Middle Ages it meandered through French and picked up related definitions.  When a jury comes back with a decision it "renders" it.  The sense in which render is used above is that of extracting fat and does not turn up until 1792.  The related term rendition as it applies to performances of plays and songs is later still, from the 1860s.  One wonders if drama critics had the foul stench of a local factory in mind when they started using it in this fashion.

Rend, by the way, in the sense of tearing has nothing to do with rendering.  That comes from  rende, a Germanic source word that also gives us rind and rent.
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Be forewarned, it is going to be a week of slightly odd stuff.......