This is a section of my farm story
Jacob couldn’t do a pig jig but he did climb up
‘Jacob’s Ladder’
One day my sister told me that I should have a
pig.
I said, ‘No way.’
She said, “You would just love a pig.”
I said, ‘I would not!!”
They brought me a pig.
I don’t mean a cute little piggy.
I mean an overgrown, fat bristle haired hog, named Jacob. They said he was pot-bellied pig. Baloney, he was a ferrule hog. He was the biggest woozy I ever
encountered. He never did like me very
much. I would try and pet him when I
fed him corn, but he would just squeal to high heaven like I was taking an ax
to him or something. At least he never
butted me in the knee like Claudius the Ram did.
I made him a wonderful woven branch a frame tipi
house. He loved it. I piled it full of
straw and he made a cozy nest to sleep in. He would crawl in one side and when
he got up he came out the other end.
It was great until the goats tried to climb up it to stand on the
top. It didn’t last long after that.
The goats were always destroying things.
I think they were jealous. Kind
of figured they had horns because they were always so devilish.
Jacob lived a long time. One day several years later, he didn’t come to eat. I couldn’t find him for about three
days. I finally went to look and sure
enough I found him under a stand of cedar trees. He had expired from the excruciating summer heat. He lay under the trees bloated twice his
normal size and covered with flies.
Oh, boy, that is all I needed when I was ready to drive
to Houston for a job. I called my
cousin Catherine’s new husband and he came over. We decided to scoop him out with a piece of tin wrapped around
his body and somehow roll him over onto another piece of tin. That way we could
drag him with the truck on his tin sled without him bursting. He weighed almost 400 pounds. This was a time consuming deal, but we
finally made it to a tree branch pile I was burning. We dumped him off the tin, but he didn’t come close to landing in
the fire. We had to roll him
again. This time he gurgled a little. All the while I was hoping he wouldn’t bust
open. This time he landed in the middle
of the fire. I piled more branches on
him and left him to burn. He stunk to
high heaven.
I came back
from Houston three days later and he was still roasting. I had to kick his hams into the heart of the
fire to finish the job. Too bad he
stunk and was rotten. He would have
made a wonderful hog roast. He was
solid corn fed. I was almost glad to
see him go to hog heaven. He made so
many ruts in the back yard. I tripped
over them for years after that until the ground finally smoothed back out
again.