|
|
AFRIEND WAS DOWN working on my tractor several weeks ago and, when the repair work was done, we sat around chewing the fat for half an hour or so.
He told me that until a few months ago, he had been unaware there had been a hog farm on the road leading to his house.
"They say there were some wild hogs in there," he said.
More often than not "they" don't know what they're talking about, but in this case "they" were right. Old Man Jim Hawkins did have a hog farm down that particular road, and there were some mighty mean hogs in that pen.
Upon further consideration, calling the operation a hog "farm" is not quite accurate. This was just a big hog lot on a much larger horse and dairy farm.
The lot was about 30 acres in size and a--what else--hog-wire fence encircled the area, which was mostly woods.
These days, there are four or five neat little houses tucked back in those woods. But 40 years ago, any person who ventured into that stand of big oak trees took his life in his hands.
I know I never went in there. I knew better. Bernie Fincham, who tended the hogs for Old Man Jim, warned me time and again about the old boars in there that could kill a grown man if they took a mind to. Some, he claimed, weighed 1,000 pounds and would go after any person or thing that invaded their territory.
These were not hollow words, for other friends had seen the male hogs in question. One fellow told of being chased by one and barely escaping with his life.
Some of these hogs were so wild that they were never caught, never sent to market when they got old, never fooled with in any manner. They stayed in Old Man Jim's hog woods until they died of old age--or were killed by younger boars.
Over the course of 25 years, sows were bred, pigs were born and as many as could be caught were segregated, raised and sold for butchering. Some, however, were never apprehended and remained wild their entire life.
The story of Old Man Jim Hawkins' hogs is an interesting one, but how and what they were fed is just as intriguing.
Every day--or maybe it was every other day--Bernie Fincham got up before daylight and drove up to the Pentagon in Arlington. He would gather up all the garbage from the restaurants there, dump it into the bed of a big old truck and bring it back to the hog lot.
Supposedly, the open body of the old truck, which probably held 1,000 gallons of this slop, was watertight. I remember times, however, when liquid dripped on the road as Bernie drove past my house. It was a real mess.
There was a big cooking apparatus in a field adjacent to the hog woods and Bernie would dump that garbage in the boiler, fire up the old stove and cook up some fine hog slop. Those porkers would smell that mess steaming and come a-runnin'.
The hogs never knew it--and didn't care, I'm sure--but amid the peas and carrots and green beans were probably chunks of chicken, beef and, yes, pork. Those old boars probably lunched on their relatives from time to time, but no complaints were ever registered.
Before the Pentagon slop (these days it comes from the White House) could be cooked up for those hungry hogs, it had to be checked for valuables. Each day, Bernie would sift through the greasy mess in search of treasures that had inadvertently been tossed in the garbage.
He found enough knives, forks and spoons to provide complete place settings for friends and neighbors who needed them--and always had plenty of reusable plastic cups, saucers and plates on hand if anyone came up short.
He also found cuff links, tie clips, ballpoint pens (which worked), pencils and a host of other useable items.
On one occasion, he found a wristwatch in all that slop and--even after a wet and bumpy ride along 60 miles of highway--it was still ticking. John Cameron Swazey would have been proud.
If I remember correctly, Bernie gave that watch to someone as a Christmas gift.
Once, he even came home with an old bicycle whose bar had been broken. How someone managed to get this in the garbage is beyond me, but there it was. Bernie cleaned the bike up and sold it to me for $5. I pushed it three miles to town, got the bar welded back together and had dependable transportation for several years, thanks to the Pentagon garbage.
There's one more thing I remember about that old hog lot. Somehow, Bernie rigged the cooker with a steam whistle. Almost every Sunday morning around 8, he would yank the cord and that thing would produce a toot that could be heard for two miles--further on a damp day.
Like the engineer on a train or a tugboat captain, Bernie would play that whistle for all he was worth, at times tooting out some imagined Morse code message.
And if the hogs hadn't already caught a whiff of the tantalizing slop that was cooking, they were sure to stampede to the big metal troughs near the boiler when that whistle blew.
They say the bones of those old Pentagon slop-fed hogs still lie beneath the grass and leaves of those woods. They also say that if you go up there at night, the spirits of some of those big mean boars will sneak up behind you and
Of course, that's just what they say.
Still, you won't find me up in those woods at night. I didn't mess with those hogs when they were alive, and I sure don't want any part of their ghosts!
Like that old wristwatch Bernie found, those old hogs might be gone, but their spirits still might be ticking.
Those were wild hogs in Old Man Jim Hawkins' lot.
I know that for a fact.
DONNIE JOHNSTON is a staff writer with The Free Lance-Star. Contact him by mail at The Free Lance-Star, 616 Amelia St., Fredericksburg, Va. 22401; by fax at 373-8455; or by e-mail marked to his attention at gwoolf@freelancestar.com.