meet the people behind the meat

For Geno Ramage, 3 a.m. comes too quickly. \nAs soon as his fiancé Evyette shakes him out of bed, there's work to be done. It's still dark when he unlocks the wooden door to his little shop on North Walnut Street, tucked between El Norteño and the Bluebird. He flicks the lights on and sees everything still in its place; the shelves lining the room are stocked with cereals, canned goods and other items. Ramage steps behind the counter that snakes around the middle of the store and hangs his coat on a hook. He plays the messages on the answering machine, gathers all the milk orders for the day and sends Donnie Edwards, his 66-year-old delivery man, out to supply customers in town with their milk and bread. At 4:30 a.m. Faris Meat Market Inc. is open for business.\n"I do more between 4:30 a.m. and 9:30 a.m. than I do the rest of the day," Ramage said in what he jokingly called his southern Indiana accent.\nRamage spends the rest of the morning in the meat shop, a chilly room at the back of the store that smells a bit like blood and spearmint gum. He works for hours to fill each customer's order. Ramage shaves ham and hard salami, cuts slabs of steak and puts sausage and beef through the meat grinder twice to get the best consistency. The most highly requested meat is hamburger, and Ramage said he sells an average of 350-400 pounds of ground chuck each day. He takes pride in the services he provides to his customers, especially his guarantee that all his meat is fresh and hasn't been sitting in the freezer for more than a day. \n"Everything is fresh cut to the order," Ramage said. "If you want your steak a certain thickness, we'll cut it like that. We base ourselves more on customer service than anything else." \nAnd that's the way things have always been done, a tradition that Ramage believes has helped keep the store alive for more than 80 years. In 1923, Jude Faris and his three brothers, Tommy, Vannoy and Emil, first opened the business as Faris Market. Jude's son Bud later took over and ran the store until his death in 2002. When Ramage learned that none of Bud's five children wanted to own the market, he and his father bought it and renamed it Faris Meat Market Inc. They have kept Bud's locker the same, though; his coat and hard hat are still hanging up the way he left them.\n"My dad is 69 years old, and this is the only job he's ever had," Ramage said. "He started here when he was 15. I started in 1985. So he's been here all his life, and I've been here most of mine." \nRamage's father is now on medical leave. Ramage runs the store with the help of his mother Becky, his fiancé Evyette, Donnie the delivery man, his two young sons and Delores Bell, whom they call "Aunt Lores" and most customers call "Grandma." \n"It's like a big family here," said Bell, a small-framed woman with short white hair. "I'm not related to them, but the people I work with are all great."\nBell has been working at the market as a clerk for eight years. She knows most of the customers by name when they call and by face when they walk in the door. \n"I really like the customers, and after eight years you get to know them; you just do," Bell said. "You know their names and their families. They sort of become friends." \nHilda Stubbings, a 90-year-old Bloomington resident, can attest to that. \n"I feel like they're my friends," Stubbings said in a tiny voice. "Whenever I call, they recognize me right away. They send Christmas cards out every year, and they're signed by everyone in the store. And the man that delivers, he's very dependable. Nothing stops him. He delivers through all kinds of weather." \nStubbings heard about the market's home delivery service on the radio nine years ago. She's legally blind and doesn't drive. She thought the delivery service could take care of her problems. And it has. \n"I don't know what I'd do without them. Just about every day I order from them," Stubbings said. "I usually call before 9:30 a.m., sometimes earlier because they start up very early. And I order everything. Meat, vegetables, canned goods, fruit -- they have a good variety."\nAside from their home delivery service, Ramage said the market supplies roughly 75 other businesses in town, including some fraternity and sorority houses, with meat, produce and milk. Ladyman's Café, Nick's English Hut and Café Pizzeria all have been calling on the market for more than 40 years. \nLarry Webb, owner of Café Pizzeria, said he knows the Pizzeria has been ordering from Faris Market since at least 1962, when he first started working there delivering pizzas. Webb said he still orders from the market and plans to continue for as long as he owns the Pizzeria. \n"They've brought us what we've tried to bring over to our customers, which is quality," Webb said. "We can buy meat fresh on a daily basis without having to buy it frozen a week or even a month ahead of time. And of course they've always been friendly. They're kind of like hometown neighbors."\nWebb's wife Sharon, who is in charge of the soup and sandwich kitchen at the Pizzeria, added that she likes ordering from Faris Meat Market because she knows she's ordering from a business she can depend on and trust. \n"They do their own meat cutting, and I just feel like it's a safer product," Sharon said. "Plus, it's good. It's darn right good."\nRamage said he tries to buy his supplies locally whenever he can.\n"We try to keep the money around here as much as possible, but sometimes that's not feasible," Ramage said. "We get daily deliveries of produce out of Indianapolis, and our steaks are grain-fed out of Iowa. They aren't pumped full of steroids."\nAs of now, Faris Meat Market Inc. is never open for more than eight hours a day because it and all other markets of its kind are under state inspection. Ramage said the state has a rule saying he can't produce past the eight-hour mark unless he pays the inspector $24 an hour for every hour overtime. Incurring overtime costs would not be financially smart in the long run, he said.\nBut Ramage has wanted to extend the hours of the store for years. He said he and his fiancé complained enough that the state has decided to waive the rule in their case. Beginning in February, the market will stay open until at least 6 p.m. on weekdays and Saturdays.\n"Now we can stay open later and catch some of the downtown and afternoon traffic," Ramage said. "More students can order steaks, we'll cut 'em and they can pick 'em up on their way home." \nAt about 12:30 p.m., when Ramage's workday is almost through, his two sons, Steven, 10, and Sheldon, 6, run into the shop and jump on their dad. Steven puts on Bud Faris' old hard hat and grins; he wears it whenever he helps out in the meat room. But Steven said he doesn't plan to run the store when he's older. \n"I'm gonna play baseball," Steven said, "for the Yankees."\nFor Ramage, it's worth it to work during the early morning hours. Although he has seen 10 p.m. only a few times in his life, his heart, he said, has always been here at the shop. \n"This place is my life," Ramage said, gazing through his glasses at the white molded ceiling that has stayed the same all these years. "I'm working for me and the good of my family. I love being a part of the Bloomington tradition, just being here at the Faris Market doing what I do."\n-- Contact Staff Writer Lindsay Lyon at lrlyon@indiana.edu.