Lessons in the Loading

I bought the swine from my granddad after he made some cash selling pigs thrown by two sows he kept in a pen on our property.  At the time, I lived with my parents at the family homestead in Leon County, while pursuing a teaching certificate at Sam Houston State University.  My folks had moved from the big city to the country, in search of a quiet life.

Dad and I built a pen for my sows, which I named Weezy and Helen.  Somewhat crudely constructed by men who'd lived most of their lives in Houston and its suburbs, the enclosure did work to keep the animals captive.  We rotated three buckets of souring wheat shorts on the back porch at all times, since each took a couple days to ripen.  A wooden chute on the fence closest to the house allowed us to pour the mash into a trough for the ever hungry beasts.

The first time I went to the tiny town of Flynn to buy a sack of feed, I had a strange conversation with the lady who ran the store.  “Why'd you put that hog pen so close to your mamma's back door?” she asked me in a condescending tone, staring at me with derision.  I could tell she harbored no love for outsiders, especially city folks.

I wasn't previously aware the woman knew about our new hog farming venture.  “What are you talking about?” I asked her.  “We put it pretty far out there.”

With a deep sigh, she looked down at the money I'd placed on the counter.  While processing the transaction, she claimed, “Your mamma ain't gonna like the mess.”  Her head shook from side to side as she handed me my change and we made eye contact again.

I didn't appreciate a stranger being so nosy, but I didn't really know what to say, so I just took my money, picked up the sack and left.  “That lady needs to mind her own business,”  I mumbled to myself as I cranked up my old Cutlass. 

I fed those pigs every day while I lived at Mom and Dad's place; in mere months, both blew up like balloons, into big fat hogs.  We bred them with Granddad's boar, and soon enough, we had fourteen little piglets in our pen.  By then, the hog's home had evolved into a mushy mud hole with a distinctly sweet and sour odor.  Time came for me to move to Huntsville to finish my work at the University.

No more than ten days after I left my parent's place, Mom called on the phone.  We had a short, pointed conversation; mostly, I listened.  “You need to come up here and help Dad load these animals in the trailer.  They got to go.  All of 'em.  I want this stinkin' mess out of my yard.”

I knew better than to argue, so I agreed to drive there and help dad load Weezy, Helen and their offspring into the trailer, so we could take them to the market and end our short-lived stint in the hog raising business.  When I pulled off the highway into their front yard, I could see Dad had started the process of loading the livestock without me.

Before I could even don my mud boots and start trying to help him, Mom came storming out the back door, her face flushed, the veins in her neck bulging and pulsing.  “Kenneth, that is NOT going to work.  You need to figure out some other plan.”

“Trish, go back in the house.  I told you I'd take care of this.  Just stay out of the way,” Dad said from where he stood, leaning on a shovel, ankle deep in shiny hog pen mud.  He addressed me after Mom whirled around and left, slamming the back door behind her.  “Get that rake over there.  They're kinda quick.  They keep jumpin' around me when I try to force 'em into the trailer.”

I noticed he'd already caught all the piglets and placed them in a wire cage.  I then assessed the rest of his plan.  He'd backed the trailer up to the gate of the pen and opened both, to create a kind of funnel.  By walking toward the two hogs, we would get them started moving, convince them to circle the perimeter of the pen, so they would eventually arrive at the open door of the trailer and jump in.  Plan seemed logical and easy enough, that is, until we tried to execute it.

Weezy and Helen had no way of knowing where we intended to take them, but they knew they didn't want to go.  Time after time, the savvy sows cooperated fully with our desire to make them move a certain direction, until they came to the trailer.  Then, they turned to face us, juked left and right until they had us off balance, then sprinted past us into the center of the pen, forcing us to start the process over again.  This they accomplished despite our heroic efforts, waving the shovel and rake at them.  Our sweat poured into the mud, adding salt to its pungent perfume.

Eventually, Dad and I became winded, and I started laughing.  “They're fat, and it don't seem like they would be, but they're quick!”  Dad didn't seem to share my amusement.  About that time, the back door opened again, and Mom walked out, more calmly this time.  Dad met her at the fence separating the yard from the pen, as though she had summoned him.  There, they faced off.

“Go get the deer rifle and shoot 'em,” she said, through clenched teeth.

Dad's chin dropped to his chest; I could see he might indeed do what she wanted.

I had to intervene, so I said, “No, Mom, we're not gonna shoot 'em.  How would we even get 'em out of the pen if we did?  Just go back inside.  We'll figure it out.”

“This just burns me up!  Get those filthy animals outta here!” she yelled, making a sharp upward gesture with her right arm as she whirled around and stomped away.  As luck would have it, my grandmother pulled up in the driveway right then.

I greeted the family matriarch, “Hey Nanny.  Us city folk ain't havin' such an easy time loadin' these hogs.”

Nanny chuckled and sat down on a lawn chair to “supervise.”

I took a moment to reassess the situation.  Weezy and Helen looked pretty fresh, despite the calisthenics.  Dad and I did not; the reeking mud had migrated up our pants' legs, threatening to merge with the sweat on our shirts.  We turned back into the pen, got the hogs going again, herded them to the back of the trailer and failed once more to force them to jump in.  The end of the process resembled a drill at a high school football practice, with fakes and starts and quick changes of direction, all accompanied by snorts and squeals and the sounds of squishing mud.  The swine triumphed because hogs have much better moves than wanna be hog farmers.

Nanny watched us for a few minutes, as we started again.  Then she called time out.  “Son,” she said, pointing with her walking stick, “take one of them little ones outta the cage.”  While I caught a piglet, she turned to my dad and said, “Kenneth, back away from the gate.” 

Dad had too little energy left to ask why.  He just moved.

When I had one of the little piggies in my hands, Nanny pointed at the front of the trailer,  “Take it over there.”   I did what she said.

She turned and directed my dad, “Kenneth.  Be ready to close the trailer gate once they go in.”  Then the old country queen made a circling motion with her cane and said, “Flip it upside down.”

When I did, the squirming critter in my hands screamed like a banshee in a B-grade horror movie.  Weezy and Helen raced across the pen, leaped into the trailer, and rushed to its front so fast they crashed in a pile on top of each other, mere feet from where I stood with the squealing piglet.  Casually, Dad strode over and clamped the back door of the trailer shut, almost triumphantly, as if taking credit for the win.

The two agitated sows stood on their hind legs and stuck their snouts through the sides of the trailer, snorting and growling at me.  I flipped the piglet back over, and it stopped screaming.  By the time I put it back into the pen, the two hogs realized the mistake they'd made, also that they could not correct it.  We had them where we needed them.

“How'd you know to do that?” I asked Nanny.

She chuckled, “Heh heh! Maybe some things are easier to see from this side of the fence.”

Mom came out the back door and stood on the porch, beaming from ear to ear.

The events of this narrative might seem irrelevant on the pages of this publication.  For me, this isn't the case.  I glean at least three pertinent lessons from the story of how two city slickers managed to make a muddy exit from the hog farming business that day.  One relates to the need to recognize a bad plan sooner than later.

When an angler tries something enough times without any success, said person should change the plan in some significant way.  This might mean changing locations, tactics, lures, or presentations.  Continuing to do something unproductive and expecting the outcome to change devolves into a form of insanity.  Some might certainly find such a crazy scenario amusing, but in the end, it's just sad and stupid.

Another lesson I take away from the tragicomedy which unfolded in a county with more cows than people relates to the willingness of folks with more experience at something to give advice to those with less.  When an experienced angler sees someone in the group doing something unlikely to produce desired results, the more experienced one should offer helpful advice to the other. 

And when someone who has ample knowledge of something suggests changing a plan to a beginner or novice, following the instruction makes more sense than sticking with what isn't working.  Surely, some of my fellow fishing guides can relate to this.  Maybe because some things are just easier to see from where we stand.