This little Piggy....

Let's just say he didn't go to the market.

Here is what a normal day consisted of when I was a wee lad. I would get up rather reluctantly (still do). My mother would turn on the lights in my bedroom. After getting dressed in a pre-approved outfit I would mosey on downstairs for breakfast which was usually cereal with fresh milk and syrup. Yes, syrup. It's great on Cornflakes. Then we would do the waiting game for the bus. When the bus would come into view up the street the scramble to make sure we had everything would begin. Backpacks? Check. Garfield lunch pail? Check. Shoes and a coat? Check. An hour bus ride to school, some learning, a recess, and a hour bus ride back home and that was that.

But... every once in a while something out of the norm would happen and change your life forever. Something so absolutely random and bizarre that it would be impossible to forget.

For example: One day my brother and I were riding the bus home probably excited that the school day was at an end. Maybe it was a Friday and we were looking forward to the weekend. Who knows?! The only thing that I can remember about that particular day was the pig. The pig that was hung up by it's ankles right out side the barn door. Which happened to be right where the bus turned around. Thankfully the pig was already dead before the bus arrived. I would have hated to see how that went about. Unfortunately though the butcher was there ...........with a chainsaw..........that happened to be working its way down the center of the pig's belly. Morbid I know.
I was surprised the bus didn't tip over because immediately after realizing what was going on all of it's occupants crowded to the side facing the carnage with their little faces pressed up to those little windows, mouths agape, maybe even a few tears from some, hoots and hollers from others. My brother and I got off the bus and I made the mistake of looking again at the pig just in time to see the butcher lop off it's other two hooves. Looking back at the bus I see nothing but faces. It seemed like every inch of the windows were covered with them. I'm sure there were a few of them that would have been better off not witnessing that. I would have liked to have missed it, but it was after all, just another day on the farm.

I think we had pork chops for dinner.

Up To No Good

When I was a wee tyke in elementary school I would go out into the barn and say goodbye to my dad and grandfather before the bus would come and pick me up. Our farm was at the end of the line for our bus route and it would come down our long driveway and turn around in our barnyard. It was like playing a game of hide and seek every morning. Well at least it was a game of seek for me.

Usually my grandfather would be tending the calves in the morning so it was pretty easy to find him. If he wasn’t in there he was probably helping my dad milk the cows so I could kill two birds with one stone. But some mornings dad and Pager (my grandfather’s nickname not to pronounced like the beeper thing worn on your belt. Pa like as in ‘papa’.) would mix things up and my game of seek would get interesting. For example: one morning I found Pager milking the cows and no sign of dad. I was told he was “around here somewheres.” So I went exploring which was difficult because I was really trying not to get poop on my shoes. I didn’t want to be the smelly kid in school. But something tells me I might have been regardless. Oh well.

I finally found dad in one of the holding cells with a cow in stanchions. Yep there he was, two legs, two arms, a head, torso, no…wait, I only see one arm? What happened to the other one? I couldn’t see the other one because dad was shoulder deep in the rear end of the cow. Funny thing was that this was no big deal to me, just another day on the farm. I wasn’t shocked or disgusted or thrown into a state of projectile vomiting. I probably thought the cow did something bad and was being punished and deserved it, but now that I look back on it he was probably artificially inseminating the cow since we didn’t have any bulls on the farm.

In case anyone is wondering: Yes, he wore a glove.