Chapter 1: Section 6: Page 53: Line 154 (948)

 "Don't think I'll give up steaks just yet," Lew said, "but it does make a man wonder how disconnected those folks down there'd have to be."

* * * * * * * * * *

"disconnected"
That's sort of the Heino's point, I think. That the American Cowboy was far more connected to the rearing and slaughter of cattle than any consumer of beef will be again. The cattle are othered and so drained of any semblance of life in this new process that sightseers can tour the killing floors and be blind to the pain and suffering within. They simply see the place where their delicious hamburgers come from. It'll take writers and documentary film makers to reinvigorate the spirit of the animals so that audiences can see it for themselves, far better than seeing it in person. Sure, not for everybody! But you definitely have to cultivate a certain level of "disconnected" to continue to eat meat. Lew imagines what's going on inside the Stockyards but doesn't see it and, so, he can remain disconnected enough to not give up steaks. But he wonders aloud how anybody can look upon, smell, and hear the things he just imagined were happening in the slaughterhouse and still find a steak mouthwatering.

Chapter 1: Section 6: Page 53: Line 152 (946)

 As the airship descended closer, Lew watched the open vehicle pull up inside the Halstead Street gate to discharge its passengers, and understood, with some perplexity, that it was an excursion group, in town for a tour among the killing-floors and sausage rooms, an instructive hour of throat-slashing, decapitation, skinning, gutting, and dismemberment—"Say, Mother, come have a look at these poor bastards!" following the stock in their sombre passage from arrival in rail cars, into the smells of shit and chemicals, old fat and tissue diseased, dying, and dead, and a rising background choir of animal terror and shouting in human languages few of them had heard before, till the moving chain brought in stately parade the hook-hung carcasses at last to the chilling-rooms.

* * * * * * * * * *

And here is "Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show on its head." The stark opposite of an outside performance of skill and mettle, man against beast; a wild display of life lived to its fullest and, although fictional, at least a semblance of a fair fight. The animals at least somewhat an active participant in its eventual demise (not in the fictional representation of past events which the show portrays, of course!). But inside the dark of the Stockyards, it's the 1890s version of going to see the latest Saw movie. Perhaps the Stockyard is simply more truthful and to the point: this is how it ends so why bother with all the spectacle and theater? Although what's the point of life without spectacle and theater? Even for a cow? We need "Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show" so that we aren't overwhelmed by existence's taint of shit and chemicals, full of disease and cries of animal terror as we're all railroaded down an ever narrowing chute to be paraded out in front of family and friends for one last look before the dirt rains down upon our bodies, erasing us from all human memory in one or two generations.

Chapter 1: Section 6: Page 53: Lines 147-149 (941-943)

 "Yes here," continued the Professor, nodding down at the Yards as they began to flow by beneath, "here's where the Trail comes to its end at last, along with the American Cowboy who used to live on it and by it. No matter how virtuous he's kept his name, how many evildoers he's managed to get by undamaged, how he's done by his horses, what girls he has chastely kissed, serenaded by guitar, or gone out and raised hallelujah with, it's all back there in the traildust now and none of it matters, for down there you'll find the wet convergence and finale of his drought-struck tale and thankless calling, Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show stood on its head—spectators invisible and silent, nothing to be commemorated, the only weapons in view being Blitz Instruments and Wackett Punches to knock the animals out with, along with the blades everybody is packing, of course, and the rodeo clowns jabber on in some incomprehensible lingo not to distract the beast but rather to heighten and maintain its attention to the single task at hand, bringing it down to those last few gates, the stunning-devices waiting inside, the butchering and blood just beyond the last chute—and the cowboy with him. Here."

* * * * * * * * * *

"the Yards"
Raising cattle was once an adventure, an experience, and a way of life but it has been eradicated and replaced by the brutal streamlined efficiency of American capitalism. As seen earlier from a different overhead view as the Chums entered Chicago, the freedom of the open range has been reduced to a labyrinth of tight corridors leading directly to the "last chute" in Chicago's Stockyard, or "Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show stood on its head."

"the Trail"
Heino's metaphor for time. As a trail is a journey with a destination, time is as well. Time has brought the open expanse of the frontier to its culmination at the killing yards of Chicago. Much like the way the Yards funnels the cattle through a narrow path to their ultimate and pre-written doom, with no alternate paths, no choices, no surprise endings but the one (a surprise only to the cattle, one after the other, in turn), time funnels each of us into narrower and narrower paths. When the frontier was young, everything was wide open and free, a cornucopia of choice and possibility. But time eventually tightens its grip and choices slough away, paths close, trails disappear, until we feel we're left with one unending path toward the Wackett Punch, the blade, and the chute. The frontier was America's youth, it's possibility, it's freedom. But that time has ended. America's youth is over. Time to grow up.

"Here."
This is really just part of the next sentence where Heino is going to hand something to Lew!

Chapter 1: Section 4: Page 30: Line 89 (461)

 They went off to a steak house nearby for lunch.

* * * * * * * * * *

I think the word "nearby" is being stretched beyond its limits. They're in the field of balloons somewhere outside Chicago. How "nearby" can a steak house be? Maybe, because of The Stockyards, steak houses have proliferated to the point of nuisance. Maybe by "steak house," Pynchon means a house made out of the extra beefsteaks the Bindlestiffs of the Blue brought along to calm other aeronauts' guard dogs after which they could raid the camps abandoned by young men rushing off to see naked women at the Fair?

Where is Pugnax during all of this?