If Pigs were horses, Poultry Princesses Would Ride

  It’s fall, 1975. I am 5 years old. We live in Tate, Arkansas which-as the locals like to say-you can’t GET to from here. It’s dirt roads twisting from Booneville to Waldron, thru “gov’ment” land and follows the Scott/Logan county line.  My entire world is a walk away from my front porch. My papaw Derald and Granny Viv. My aunt Muff and my uncle Skee, who are my mother’s youngest siblings, still live with Papaw and Granny. I adore them both and secretly wish to marry my uncle Skee even though I know I really cannot. Muff’s real name was Shirley and Skee’s real name was Larry, even though I have never called them by their given names. My church, Union Hope Baptist where  I sit by my aunts and cousins and mom and sing loudly to songs I know by heart. I still cannot read, but have most of the songs memorized at this point. I am walking distance from the outdoor toilet with no door, but that is a story for another time. All my mother’s side of the family, all the people I love. I can start down any road and be at someone’s house who is kinfolk. My uncle Gay and aunt Glenda and my cousins Ricky, Randy, Jerry, and Gayla. I adored them all. My uncle Tony and his wife Darlene. Tony is my mother’s brother. Darlene is my daddy’s sister. That made their daughters LaDonna and Patricia my DOUBLE first cousins and we had the same kin on both sides. My mother was born in the house we lived in, which had no indoor plumbing. We bathed in zinc tubs in the winter…in the kitchen, mama warming the water on the stove.

  I was walking distance from the barn, too…where the pigs were kept and the few cows we had grazed.

  We had 2 pigs, Mama Pig and Nancy. Mama Pig had piglets soon after her arrival and there are proud pictures of her nursing them, me just off the school bus, far in the background in my homemade yellow flowered pantsuit my mama made on the treadle sewing machine, my hair so blonde it looks white in the sun.

  A few days later, I got off the school bus and wandered to the barn to see the piglets. I had never seen anything so darling in my life. I squatted down by the wooden rails in that old barn, so old my mother had played in it as a child. I remembered thinking my mother was very old to me at this time…she was 24. She had 3 children at this time..me, my sister Bobbie and my brother Ray. Ray was 2, Bobbie 4.

  I squatted down and looked at the piglets. They were tiny and sweet, sleeping all in a pile, their little noses sniffing and snuffing. One of the piglets was almost to where I could touch it. I wanted to touch it so badly, I felt I’d cry.

  A warning echoed in my head….from my Granny and my mama. “Stay out of the hog pen, those mama pigs’ll EAT YOU UP.”

  I did not want to be EAT UP, but I sure did want to hold that tiny pig.

 I stuck my pale, thin arm through to wooden slats. I stretched with all my power. The only thing that kept me from going through the slats was my bony shoulder, which scratched and rubbed on the rails. I felt the smooth softness of the piglet. I stroked its eensy leg. I gently wound my fingers around the tiny foot and gently pulled the piglet toward me.

                                 WHEE WHEE WHEE WHHEEEEEEEEEEE

screeched the piglet and that mama pig was UP and to the rails so fast and so hard, she knocked me backward onto the floor of the barn. I thought she’s gonna EAT ME UP and scampered backward on my bottom.

  Mama Pig stared at me through the slats, memorizing my little blonde head for future reference. She did forget in time and never had another litter of piglets. She allowed me and my horse crazy sister to tie ropes around her neck and ride her all over the farm. When she tired of us riding her, she would just FLOP down, throwing us to the ground, where we would sit on her side, scratching her ears. Once, the local riding club rode past our old house on their beautiful horses. I was so jealous, wanting a horse so badly. My cousins LaDonna and Patricia were there and we started riding Mama Pig and Nancy all around the yard as they rode by. Some stopped and took pictures and we posed. After a little bit, the pigs tired of this and flopped onto their sides. So we just sat on them, scratching them and smiled for the pictures. Before long we had a little crowd of people on horseback, talking to us and laughing. We were all in our underwear and barefoot. Daddy said he heard voices and horse hooves and walked out onto the porch, shirtless and shoeless. When the riders saw my dad’s angry face, they trotted off. We waved heartily and I watched for the riding club to come back by every day.  We also taught some of the calves to allow us to ride them and even decorate them. We have a picture of my sister Bobbie and I, standing with our hands on Cocoa the Cow. We had raised her from a bottle and she is wearing a NAPA ball cap, sold at the local parts store. We are wearing dresses my mother made. We thought we looked like Laura and Mary Ingalls in them. We rode the cows until they got to big for us to climb on from the ground and too smart to stand close to the fence, which was a good booster to get up on their bony backs.   

  That barn is gone now. The last time I saw it, I took Trevor and Tara out to the old place. They were probably 10 or 12. I showed them where the piglets were and where we broke the calves to ride. I took them to the outhouse with no door. The tree with the tire swing, where daddy pushed me and Nancy Pig wandered out in front of me just as I made my descent and I hit her broadside, sending her and me both flying. I didn’t think to take my camera that day, a decision that haunts me still.

   All my childhood burned a few years later, in a yet to be explained fire. The house. The outhouse with no door. The barn.

  We have an old barn here on our place. It’s 100 years old, made with square nails and hand hewed boards.  Trevor and Tara played in it every chance they could. Hide and seek from the goat. Tag with the horses. Their friends would come over and I could hear them laughing when I went outside. They filmed silly movies and kept cull chickens up there, feeding them every day, giving them silly names. They carried dogs up the stairs to the hay loft, and carefully carried them back down. It is a home to raccoons, snakes and stray cats. It is a home to memories, of hay and rope swings.  

  It has to come down. It’s unsafe now…we will have grandchildren in a few years and it’s an accident waiting to happen. I know this.

  But when I told my children…my grown, married children that we think we have the lumber sold and the barn will soon be gone, I saw sadness in their eyes. They will take pictures and I will make a collage and we’ll build a new barn, one safe for grandchildren, some day.

  And maybe..someday, they will write about THEIR old barn, the one that is gone now. The barn that was built when their grandparents were young…the grandparents who are gone. They will write of old barns, and piglets and their parent’s stories of Grampa Clint and Granny Lichea. Steady, sure Grampa with his common sense and few words. Granny Lichea, with her crazy laugh and funny stories.

  They will tell of old barns…and us.