The Shoat

BY BILLY SNEAD

Whether or not my life after age 10 would be as perplexing as my first ten years remained to be seen. During my early years, all adult conversation overheard concerned the Depression and then, after 1941, all the talk focused on the War. But it was the resulting economics from those two events in history, which was so confusing to someone my age.

During the Depression there were plenty of things to buy but nobody had any money. The War brought jobs and people had plenty of money but very little to buy. No cars were being built, gas was rationed along with meat and sugar, but almost every product other than vegetables was scarce. A word I heard probably ten times a day. Even soap was scarce. "Scarce as hen's teeth."

I wondered why?

Do soldiers overseas take more baths than they did at home? It was real confusing. "It's the War effort", adults said and it would stay that way for "the duration." A term I understood to mean, maybe, forever.

But all this for me meant very little as I saw no change in my or my family's and neighbor's life style.

One night at the supper table Daddy made an announcement. "A fellow told me he was raising some pigs and that he would have plenty of meat for the winter".

"Who was telling you, Bubby?" Pop, my grandfather inquired.

"A man on the job, Imo doit too", Daddy replied.

He liked his meat. "How you going to keep the meat?" Minnie, my grandmother asked, thinking of the freezer in our icebox which held little more than two ice trays.

"Imo smoke it at Pop's. Pop had a farm out on Broad Street Road that he rented part of to tenant farmers. We called it "the country" and Daddy had grown up there. An uneasy feeling came over me during this conversation as I knew that it boded my participation in some way that I could only imagine would not be pleasant.

It was early spring and sure enough, the next Saturday morning Daddy said we're going to get the piglets and take them to the country. We drove to some other farm where Daddy paid for two piglets. The farmer had them in a small chicken coop, which we put in the trunk and tied the trunk door down to the bumper.

"I need that coop back", the old farmer said.

At the country, we released the piglets into the old pigsty about 100 yards from the house and next to the pasture.

Daddy had already fixed the sty with some new boards and some wire to block the piglets escape plans.

Boy, they were cute and I was already a little saddened to be in on Daddy's intent.

He paid the tenant farmer to slop and water the piglets during the week, but every Saturday afterwards, we would go back to the country carrying buckets of our household table scraps and stale bread he got from somewhere, to slop the pigs.

I blamed all of this endeavor on that darned "War effort" and even though we had already beaten the Germans last fall, we still had the Japs to go, prolonging "the duration."

I watched those pigs grow from that spring until late fall amazed at how much larger they grew with each passing week. Daddy was now calling them shoats or small hogs and I knew it was getting closer to their time here in this world.

The Japs had surrendered a month or so earlier bringing a closure to "the duration." I had helped an older neighborhood boy sell "Extra" newspapers at the Jefferson Davis statue on Monument Avenue on the day after the surrender.

Once scarce items were appearing back on store shelves and there was talk of new cars in production, but I knew Daddy had gone this far with the shoats and he would not give up his efforts. He explained to me that on the next cold Saturday, we would slaughter the shoats.

Slaughter? "Why does it have to be cold", I asked.

"So the meat won't spoil," he said.

It was mid December before the first cold Saturday and the Friday night before he told me that we would get up early in the morning and do the job.

It was pitch dark when I was untimely shaken awake.

"Dress warm and come on, breakfast is ready."

Momma was in the kitchen when I came down fixing bologna sandwiches for our lunch. "Go get your gun and some 22's and hurry up".

I had gotten a .410/22 over and under shotgun last Christmas which I fetched from my closet. Daddy gathered up the lunches and some other bags and we were off.

"Be careful!" Momma looked worried.

We rode to the country still in pitch black darkness on one of the coldest days in the world and in dead silence. Daddy was puffing on his pipe in deep thought of the task ahead. I was sure he had a plan but he had as yet not revealed it to me. He never did.

It was barely light enough to see when we parked and got out into the freezing cold dawn with a more than slight breeze wisping through the pine trees in the grove which was about twenty yards from the sty. The grove, where I had spent so many warm summer nights playing tag and hiding with the farmer's children, but today was not a play day and it was not warm either.

Work started immediately. I saw a large black three-legged cauldron propped up on bricks under an oak tree near the sty.

"Bring that wood over here and put it under the pot", he ordered.

"Not like that, stagger it", as he impatiently rearranged my pile into another pile which, to me, looked no different.

He then balled up newspapers and stuck them in with the logs and lit the papers with matches. The breeze fanned the fired papers too fast for the wood to catch.

"Find me some twigs." I was freezing and wanted this day to end and so I quickly gathered ample twigs and small limbs from the grove and stuck them under the pot, crammed in more paper which Daddy lit and in a short while, fire was achieved.

I still had no idea how the pot would play it's role. "Take this bucket and go get some water". I didn't know why as I ran to the well, but I didn't care, things were happening.

Running from the well, bent hard to one side trying to balance my load, the water was sploshing on my knickers, down my socks and into my shoe. It took about six or seven loads to fill the pot and by that time the outer side of my right leg was frozen from the water.

Meanwhile, during my trips, Daddy had strung up a heavy chain across a tree limb with one end tied to the tree trunk while the other end dangled over the pot with a large hook on it's end.

"Help me move this table." We moved a picnic table from the grove over next to the cauldron. I had a thousand questions but asked none. I looked at him for my next chore because I didn't want to waste any time.

He saw my eyes and said, "We gotta wait till the water boils."

I didn't ask or care why, but took the time to dry off my pants by the now roaring fire. I couldn't help but glance at the shoats from time to time and they were both staring back oinking and squealing and just as ignorant at what they saw as I was.

Dawn broke wide as did the bubbles of water in the cauldron as if one could not have happened without the other and I was more than eager to get on with the day.

"Go get your gun and load it and get that bag of carrots off the back seat." Carrots?

"Is it loaded?"

"Yes sir, the 22 is."

"With longs?"

"No sir, shorts. I didn't have no longs." "Damn!"

He took one of the carrots and walked into the sty where the shoats, anticipating slops, circled his feet. He led them with a carrot to the door of their shed, threw the carrot inside and when the first one entered, he slammed the gate behind it, leaving the other shoat in the open.

He then came outside the sty and picked up the gun and handed me a carrot.

"Awright, you kneel down here by the trough and poke your carrot between the rails and I'm gonna shoot him in his head. After I shoot him, go get me that short knife on the table so I can cut his throat and bleed him."

The horror. The horror.

He cocked the rifle, I stuck out my lure, and the victim eagerly came to dine. I could feel his breath on my hand as the gun went off. The ringing in my ears, the smell of gunpowder, and the high pitch squeal of the shot shoat threw me into a momentary trance.

When I came to, Daddy had dropped the gun and was climbing the fence yelling for the knife. I stared at the poor shoat. Daddy got him right between his now crazed eyes and blood was spurting from the hole like some fierce dragon.

What happened next was not in Daddy's plan. The uncooperative shoat rared up on his hind legs, turned and took off running. He ran through the side of the sty, boards, wire and all, and into the open pasture.

"Get him", Daddy yelled.

With each beat of the poor beast's heart, blood shot skyward as he raced in circles with Daddy in pursuit. Now I was over the fence and into the chase. He would run straight at us, slip between our legs, circle around us, and take off again.

"We've gotta tackle him."

Oh, if some candid camera could have captured those moments. Daddy was making diving, desperation tackles missing each time while sliding along the wet grass.

"Did you bring any shotgun shells," he yelled, struggling to get up off the ground.

"No sir."

"Damn!" he said for the second time that day at my thoughtlessness.

The chase must continue and it did until the shoat ran out of blood and collapsed, my job to fetch the short knife now being superfluous. It was only 10 o'clock.

Although the temperature was in the teens, we had sweated into a lather from the chase and we were blowing for breath.

We each grabbed a hind leg and dragged the dead pig to the cauldron. The fire had almost burnt out and the water had lost its boil. I got more firewood and soon the flames were licking from under the pot again.

Daddy made slits in some part of the back legs and stuck an iron rod through the cuts. He hooked the end of the chain around the rod and started hoisting the pig up over the cauldron.

Just as he got it raised over the cauldron, the rod slipped out and the pig fell into the water, sloshing it all over us.

Before that, all that sweat was freezing on us, and now almost boiling water had all but doused us. We were both sights, our clothes covered in mud, grass stain, and blood.

Daddy got him raised up again, secured the chain to the tree and told me to hold the water bucket under the pig's rear to catch the entrails.

He took a sharp knife, slit open the belly and with his bare hands started pulling out the insides trying to guide them into the bucket, which soon filled and got really heavy. "Throw that in the trough." For the brother to eat?

I did and returned, but a little too late to catch more stuff which had oozed into the now boiling water. It was right then that I realized something scary; that Daddy had never done this before, but had only been an observer or lackey, like me, and he was remembering the process as he went along, I hoped.

The entrails were now out and I had to get more water. He took the bucket and sloshed out the remaining blood and slime from inside the carcass. The pig was lowered slowly into the boiling water.

"We gotta pull all his hair out and you can't do it with gloves on."

It was misery. My hands were scalding and when I took them away to rest a minute, they would freeze.

"You finish this, I'm going to the smoke house."

When he returned, I had finished with the hair. He unhooked the carcass and threw it on the picnic table, which he had covered with an oil cloth. The butchering began.

It was getting dark and all I could think of was that we had to do all this again with the other shoat. After he made several trips to the smoke house with his cuts, he said, "I'll take the rest home and cut it up tonight. You hungry? We'll eat those sandwiches going home."

We didn't because they were frozen solid. We emptied the caldron, put out the fire and cleaned the knives. He wrapped the remaining meat in newspaper and bagged it. We got home way after dark.

Nothing was ever said about the other shoat left in the shed. I guess Daddy sold him.

I can vividly recall the look on Momma's face, when we walked proudly into the kitchen that night plopping bags of meat on the table while we were covered in mud, blood, grass stain, guts and pig hairs.

We had plenty of meat that winter, but so did everybody else.

Childhood Fears and Misconceptions

BY BILLY SNEAD

I was an only child for the first five years of my life. Had I known that there was such a thing as a privileged class, certainly I would have been among its members.

My parents took me everywhere, bought me any toy I saw in the store, and read to me at bedtime and nap time every day.

My aunts and uncles doted on me, each trying to out do the other with gifts and trips. But then my mother went away for a few days and came back with a baby girl. Meanwhile my aunts and uncles had children of their own, and five years after my sister arrived, my mother went away again, only this time, she brought home a baby girl and boy.

All dotage were redirected and I was no longer in a privileged class, even in my own house.

When I was three, we moved to a big barn-like house at the south end of Belmont Avenue.

The Belmont streetcar line ended at that corner and when the car came rumbling and clanging to a stop, my mother would take me over to see it.

The conductor would invite me in and I would help him flip the seat backs so that the riders who got on would be facing in the direction they were going.

What a marvelous machine it was. It was driven by either end and never had to turn around.

To the right of the house was a road, which lead to a city dump.

Trash trucks were constantly going and coming and so were the hobos. Daddy said they lived in a hobo jungle. I knew about jungles from my folks when they read to me, but then they were filled with lions and tigers. Those hobos must have been tough guys.

Sometimes, when I was playing in my backyard with my dog, Spanky, a hobo would stop by the fence and ask me to see if my mom would give him a potato. I would run inside and she would give me two and I would hand them through the fence. He would thank me and head for the jungle. Daddy put a stop to this. "They’ll just keep coming back." Well, sure they would; we had potatoes, I thought.

I loved going to the Swan Lake to feed the ducks, as I called them. Mommy would hand me a bag of breadcrumbs and I would ride in the car standing up in the middle of the front seat taking in everything going on in the streets. One day, she said that we were going to the lake but not to feed the ducks.

"Why?"

They are having a fair; you’ll see when we get there. When we arrived at the park, there were more cars and people than I had ever before seen, and lots of kids. Mommy took me by the hand and led me to the grass. She sat me down facing a tall box structure and told me that I was going to see a show. There were lots of children sitting around me all looking just as ignorant as I was as to what was about to happen. Music started playing from inside the box and everyone got quiet.

Curtains were pulled back and a creature appeared who seemed to have just dropped into sight. What in the world was it? I was glued. It was about my height, but its arms and legs were as skinny as sticks and they were flailing around with each movement of its head. Its face was exaggerated with big red lips, large round eyes and a long pointed nose. It talked. It did!

And then another creature appeared from nowhere, only this one was a girl. Several more creatures came and went; some of them were fighting and arguing. The other kids around me would all laugh at times, but I saw no humor in this thing at all.

I sat rigid and I was frightened that they might jump out of the box and fight me. At last the curtains closed. Everyone clapped, except me. I was still sitting when Momma came to get me.

"Did you like it? It’s called, ‘Punch and Judy.’"

I said nothing as we walked through the crowd back to the car. The traffic was slow as it took us some time to get through the streets. We moved slowly around the lake until we were back to the spot where I was sitting. The crowd had dispersed when I saw an astonishing thing. A man was walking to the curb and he had the first creature that appeared in the box, draped over his arm.

As I stared in amazement, he opened the trunk of his car, flopped the creature in, and slammed the trunk closed. I felt a little sorry that anything would be treated so badly, but I was also glad to know that it was in a place where it could do no one any harm, especially me, cause I didn’t like him.

I felt relieved riding home standing in the front seat, but the images were etched in my mind as if inflicted by a branding iron.

There were lots of books in my bedroom and among my favorites Uncle Wiggily books. Sitting in my mother’s lap as she read to me, I would put my fingers on each page drinking in the pictures. She would not turn the page until I moved my hand, which was her signal that I had seen all there was to see.

There was one picture, which still is vivid to me. A huge bird with a gross beak had swooped out of the sky and picked Uncle Wiggly up by his collar and was carrying him away. It both frightened and worried me at the same time – that this was possible.

In a child’s mind all things are possible. I had one friend to play with – Gene Wills, who lived at the opposite corner of my block. Next to my house was my Daddy’s vegetable garden and the rest of the block was wooded all the way to Gene’s house.

One day I wanted to go to Gene’s house to play. As usual Momma would call Mrs. Wills for the okay, and she would come out on the sidewalk at her house and watch me on my way.

I started out walking and just past the garden; a brown bird waddled out of the woods and onto the dirt sidewalk. I froze. Then two more came out, and another two and another three, until there were more than my arithmetic abilities could count.

They were not making a sound, just waddling around in circles pecking at the ground. I thought of the gross beak bird in my Piggily Wiggily book, and although these guys were small with little beaks, I was convinced that there were enough of them to carry me off to I knew not where.

Up the street I saw Mrs. Wills come out to her sidewalk and she waved, but I was still frozen in my tracks, not returning the gesture.

Some time went by and now she started to wave me on but I did not move a muscle. She obviously did not see the peril that faced me.

The birds were getting closer and closer to my feet as I saw Mrs. Wills turn and go back to her house. An eternity passed and when I was sure of my doom, I heard Momma call me from our porch.

"What’s wrong? Mrs. Wills is waiting for you."

But I did not turn around or answer. She yelled my name several more times before I heard her coming down the wooden steps. My only thoughts were, would the birds take her too?

Just as she got to me, an amazing thing occurred, the birds all took off at once appearing to me as one giant bird and with a loud whistling sound from their wings.

"Were you afraid of them? They’re just quails. They can’t hurt you… They are more afraid of you than you are of them."

Momma didn’t remember about Uncle Wiggily, I thought.

Walking back to our house with a tight grip on her hand, I knew that we were both just out of extreme danger, but I decided not to tell her about it.

Momma gave me a gold ring for my fourth birthday. It was a simple band of gold, but I loved it. I spent hours just twirling that ring around my finger using my thumb. I guess I spent that time pondering life as I knew it.

Dr. Hulcher, our family physician, came to see my sick grandmother. Momma said as he was leaving, “Show him your ring.” We were standing at the top of the steps and as Dr. Hulcher was descending he called me, “sissy britches.”

“Boys don’t wear rings, he said.

It incensed me, probably because I wasn’t sure he wasn’t right. I ripped my golden ring off my finger and threw it down the steps at the doctor. He only laughed as he left.

I never wore the ring again and I have always regretted it.

The time had come for me to go to school and we moved to 216 South Addison Street, three houses from where we had lived once before. It was close to John B. Cary School on Idlewood. Now I had many friends both boys and girls. We played hard everyday and just before being called to dinner, we would all gather on the curbing and discuss the day, tomorrow and our life in general. Harken, to me parents and future parents: things discussed at curbside are not for your ears. If you see your children talking at the curb, do not hesitate, interrupt them and disburse them and take them immediately to one of those clinics where they debrainwash people.

There was a red-headed kid, a teenager, who lived around the corner on Parkwood. He was normal looking down to his waist, but his legs were very short and he walked on crutches. He always wore suspenders and was never seen without his mother. They walked by one day on the other side of the street, as we, sitting on the curb, watched in silence.

“What happened to him,” one said.

“He disobeyed God,” another said who was in the second grate and spoke with authority.

Silence followed leaving each of us with our own thoughts.

What? I thought. You mean God had spoken to this boy. Well, he had not spoken to me yet. Maybe you have to be in school. I had been going to Sunday School for as many years as I could remember, but none of my teachers had given me this warning. Well, I made up my mind right then that if God ever spoke to me, I would obey his every wish, no matter what it was. The last thing I needed was short legs.

It was time for my first haircut. Daddy took me to Truslow’s over on Idlewood Avenue where he had taken me before when he got his hair cut. The shop was about a half block from Byrd Park. I learned later that block was the remnants of an amusement park, which ran all over Byrd Park, but long before my time.

I have a vivid memory of my life all the way to my early childhood and I don’t know why, I just do.

Truslow had a three-chair shop with him working out of number one, his brother second, and third, the dreaded Dominick. He was a bitter man, who rarely took part in Barber Shop banter, which was a big part of the Saturday morning ritual.

He had lost his left leg up to mid-thigh in a Wolrd War I explosion and he had it replaced with a wooden replica, which bent at the knee and ankle. Of course, no one ever saw it because of his pants, but one could imagine its sight. I was fascinated by his every movement as he circled his chair plying his trade. He was the butt of everyone’s jokes to which he retorted with a snort. Even though I listened intently to the banter, I understood very little of it.

Each new customer to the shop had to listen to the regulars’ favorite Dominick story.

As the “story” goes, it happened on a fairly slow Saturday. Dominick was sitting in his chair reading the paper when all of a sudden, he leapt to his “foot” on the shop floor dancing, screaming and swatting at this crotch.

The onlookers thought at first, that he had finally cracked from his WWI days, but then they too noticed a large bulging movement in the crotch area.

Dominick was swatting the thing down his wooden leg, but it wanted to go down his right and finally won. With his wooden leg somehow locked stiff, he swung his real leg straight out and kicked hard until a huge rat came hurtling out looking just as baffled as everyone else.

From then on, he wore bicycle clips around his ankles every working day.

Daddy, like me, was also very observant of his surroundings and I was watching the goings on around me, he was watching me.

Walking to the Barber Shop the morning of my first cut, he asked me what I thought of Dominick. I looked up at him in awe. How did he know what I had been thinking about all morning?

“He will probably cut your hair this morning and he will try to scare you. Don’t let him. Be braver than he is. He looks mean, but he is harmless and besides, I’ll be watching.”

This was very comforting as I had seen Daddy in “action” before. Sure enough, no sooner had we sat down, Dominick motioned me to his chair. My legs were a little wobbly but there was no turning back.

As I neared the chair, he reached behind it and pulled out a board, which was wrapped in black oil cloth, placing it across the porcelain arms of the chair.

He gently reached down and swooped me up onto the wooden board, wrapped a cloth around me, sealed my neck with a tissue, reached into his drawer, pulled out his comb and scissors and went to work.

Just before he started, he turned his chair so that my head blocked his from the front. He very intimidatingly whispered in my ear, “If you move at all, I will cut your ears off.”

At which time he started snapping his scissors in a menacing manner. It worked. I never told a soul and Momma loved my haircut.

Most of our worst fears are never realized. I think someone more famous than I said that first, but it’s true, no matter the origin.

Some childhood misconceptions are not resolved until their true meaning is resolved by the child’s own eye. In other words, their mystery is so large as to not beg any question or answers from parents or peers lest you look stupid and therefore, you simply wait out the inevitable revelation.

One of my several revelations, involved the delivery of new cars. On our Sunday car rides, I had seen many large, brightly colored trucks pulling long trailers that looked like big sections of bridges. The top and bottom of each section carries three brand new cars all chained to the sides of the trailer. They were being delivered to their new owners, but how. How did they get them down to the ground without serious damage? Can you see my wonder?

Well, I was about to have this mystery revealed as one night at dinner, Daddy told Momma that he had bought that new car they were looking at and he was getting it the next day after work. I could hardly hold my excitement and began to make my plans.

As I said earlier, this was a lack of conception about to be revealed. That afternoon, I gathered a group of my same age kids and explained what was about to happen around 4:30 that afternoon.

“Meet me at the curb in front of my house for this mystery to be revealed.”

They did not seem that enthralled so this must not have been one of their childhood wonders, but they both showed up. We were staring up and down Addison Street for some time after 4:30, but still no sign of the big truck. Then standing at the street edge, Daddy came up driving in his new ’39 light grey Chrysler, parked and got out.

“Ain’t she a beaut,” he said, and she truly was.

Me and my buddies walked all around and crawled through it.

“You don’t like it,” he said.

“Yes sir, I do, but how did you get it down off the truck?”

He stopped and stared at me and he knew my wonder.

“I got the car from the dealership. They took it down from the truck, washed it. I stopped by after work and paid for it, and drove it home. We will ride around this weekend and find one unloading for you to see. The boys can come too if they want to.”

And thus, the mystery would have to wait another day to be revealed to me, and it was.

Little has been discussed in this childful narrative about a most important subject – the existence or not of a supreme being. Awed, revered and feared, but rarely if ever debated at this age group level.

I fell silent during these rare debates ceding to the older boys’ knowledge and experience. But one caveat, an add on to the true belief, recurred in every discussion and that was always something like this, “Oh, I believe in God, but not in bringing the dead back to life or parting the Red Sea, etc.

Even I recognized the absurdity of these comments. Why, I thought, belief meant that ALL things were possible and none of his life occurrences are subject to debate.

However, there was a person to us who commanded an almost as great, if not greater importance, and that was none other than Santa Claus. You see, we were asked to see and believe in God in blind faith – easy to accept for a child, but also to take for granted on a day-to-day basis – nothing to really remind or make you aware of his importance.

Santa Claus, although around for about one month a year, left clear and tangible evidence of his existence. He was widely discussed, debated and welcomed among millions of believing kids and at almost any time of the year.

Notice that I said, “believing kids” because with age became wisdom and with wisdom there became questions and the questions brought answers that most kids did not want to hear – I being one.

I had begun having some personal doubts on my own as of late, but had managed to suppress them with some success. It was about three days before Christmas and several of the older and younger boys had gathered on a front porch around the corner discussing the subject of existence.

The older boys talked over the heads of the young as if they were not there, but all knew to whose ears the convincing arguments were aimed.

We were silenced and had no real cogent comebacks or counter points for their onslaught of reason.

My long one block walk home in the evening dusk was as sad and reluctant as I had taken in my short life. I felt grown up and didn’t like it. I was now burdened with this awesome secret that must be shielded from my bothers and sisters as well as all other young believers.

Whether it’s the curbside or front porches, parents question your childrens’ conversations and, at least, give them some counter thoughts to weigh into what they have heard in the wild.

The Outhouse

BY BILLY SNEAD

I am a fiscal conservative born in 1935 in the middle of the Great Depression. Of course I never knew what a depression was then, but I knew it wasn't good because my folks talked about it all the time in tones of utter despair.

"Eat all on your plate," my Momma would say to me. "People are starving in Armenia."

Now I didn't know what or where Armenia was either, but it must have been a long way away because I didn't see a lot of skinny people in my neighborhood.

But my folks did know what a depression was, and they lived their lives like another one was coming, and sometimes, it seemed to me, were almost disappointed that one didn't.

My daddy was a bricklayer and he brought home from the job every piece of discarded construction trash that he could get in his car.

"They were just going to throw this away," he would say.

I just wanted to ask, "What, those brickbats and broken 2x4s?" But I didn't.

My Momma, to this day, will turn an empty milk carton upside down in a glass and let every last drop drain overnight.

"It's enough for my coffee in the morning," she says, conservatively.

Well, I lived in this type of conservative atmosphere long enough for me to learn and adopt, through some sort of economic osmosis, its principles.

Which leads me to the story of a certain unpleasant event that occurred when I was a boy.

My father's father, Pop, had a farm off of West Broad Street just behind what is now The Boy's Home. My Daddy and his brothers were raised there. We all referred to it as "the country," and most warm Sundays after church we would jump in Daddy's '39 Chrysler and head for the country.

Pop lived in one half of the farm house during the summer months and lived with us at Stafford-On-Alley during the winter.

He rented the other half of the farm house and the cleared farm land to a tenant truck farmer and his family. I loved that family, and indeed, the farm itself.

Pop's side of the house was only one story while the other bigger side had an upstairs attic bedroom. The house had no electricity and no running water, only a well in the yard with a cast iron pump.

The tenant family consisted of the old German father, his much younger wife, and two boys and two girls, all close in age to me. I learned the ways of farm life from them, most of the time, the hard way.

Now out the back doors of the farm house there was a yard about 20 yards wide, and then, from the left, a two bay wagon shed and tool house, a canning house, and a hen house. Behind the shed stood the outhouse.

It was years later (probably 50) before I heard the term, "free-range chicken." It refers to chickens raised on a farm and allowed to roam anywhere they please all day before retiring on their own, to the hen house at dusk. Their free range restricted human range, as we tried to avoid the droppings, but invariably would find ourselves looking for a grassy spot to wipe it away from our toes from which it always seemed to ooze.

But back to the outhouse. How many times have you seen comic drawings of outhouses, most of them with crescent or half moons cut into the doors?

I do not know the derivation or meaning of the moons unless they were there for ventilation which believe me, they all needed.

Our outhouse had an old horseshoe on the door. I don't know that meaning either, unless it was for good luck.

I have never seen an outhouse built, but I have seen one moved.

First, you pick up the house and move it a few feet away. Then, you simply dig a deep square hole slightly smaller than the perimeter of the structure, filling the remainder of the old hole with the dug dirt. And then, you move the house over the new hole. When the new hole gets full, the above procedure is repeated.

This outhouse was rather square with a simple bench in back and an ample hole cut into the bench. The roof was tar paper over wood and slanted towards the rear. None of it was painted.

It was easy to see where the outhouse had formerly sat by the lush patch of beanstalk height weeds. The outhouse was used by males for sitting only.

Anything we could do standing, was done behind a tree or shrub or just about anywhere if no one was around.

Females were excepted and had both options.

About once a week, they would throw lime down the hole. I don't understand the chemistry that took place, but it did seem to help with the smell. It was like a dry flush. And that was the way of the farm.

In the summer of 1944 about a month after D-day, I was invited to spend a week on the farm living with the tenants. I was as excited as I could be.

Momma packed a small suitcase and bade me to take notice of two brand new pair of fruit-of-the-loom underpants that she had put inside, admonishing me to make sure that I "wiped good."

It was Sunday and we took off for the country.

That week, or at least part of it, was one of the happiest times of my life.

When we arrived, the farm mother took my suitcase and placed it under her bed telling me to get clean clothes whenever I needed them and put my dirty clothes on the bottom.

Since Sunday was not a farm work day, the four children and I took off for the creek to play. The oldest boy, Sonny, crawled from the edge of the woods to the watermelon patch and plucked a nice ripe one, and laid it in the creek to cool. It became a later feast.

Monday morning started the work week and it was right in the middle of the tomato harvest. We all picked all day and after dinner, we would flop into bed. There wasn't much time for play, but we managed that little time well, throwing rotted tomatoes or dirt clods at each other when the adults weren't looking.

Wednesday morning came and I was told to change my clothes, as the ones I had worn all week were filthy.

That morning we were digging potatoes. There was a sleigh-like cart that was called a drag, which was hitched to "Fly Mule," (a name he inherited for the big black flies that always lighted on his back) and we would carry the potatoes to the drag.

When it was filled, the old man would prompt Fly Mule to haul his load to the packing shed.

Sometime before lunch, my stomach started to rumble, and I felt consumed with gas. Now, since I was eating at the old man's table, all this work I was doing was only paying the rent.

I was expected to work just like that rest of the clan and that didn't include many breaks; so since it was close to lunch, I thought I could last.

But the rumbles and the gas got worse and I knew I had to go and with some dispatch.

I stood without speaking and started on a deliberate pace in the direction of the outhouse. Now my pace quickened as I walked two steps and trotted two steps and walked two steps and trotted five steps on past the fields.

Now I was approaching the backyard in a dead run and hoping that the horseshoe on the outhouse door meant what I had guessed, luck. I needed it.

I was in the yard, but now I had stopped running and was just walking real fast with my right hand pressing firmly on my butt like that would really matter. As I passed the well, I exploded and pulled to a stop. Further hurry was no longer necessary. I then waddled the remaining distance to the outhouse with my legs stiff and spread far apart.

When I got inside the outhouse, I stood still for a while pondering my predicament. Then I just started sobbing. Flies and several bees were buzzing and flitting inside the outhouse and I guess that distracted me for a while, but I soon came to realize (maybe it was the stench) that something had to be done and I had to do it. Who else?

And so, I started, carefully taking off my shorts. They were still clean. Then, even more carefully, I took off my underwear. And as I was working them slowly down my legs, I saw that unmistakable label – Fruit-of-the-Loom.

I wanted to rip that horseshoe off the door and fling it into the woods.

I then cleaned myself off and picked up the underwear from the floor. They were a mess and I had no sink or hose to turn to. I tried wiping them out with paper, but that proved futile. You eat a lot of greens when you live on a farm.

Then, I stepped outside and found a stick. That worked better, and I went out again for more sticks. After several swipes, they were looking a little better, and then I thought of the well. I dashed out of the outhouse and ran to the well, pumped the handle up and down until water spouted out and stuck my pants under the stream.

I glanced back at the fields just in time to see the farm mother headed to the house to prepare lunch. I was out of time.

I waited until she had passed behind the corn crib and then ran into the house, into the bedroom, pulled out the suitcase, pulled up my clothes and stuck the soiled and now, soggy underwear in the bottom, rearranged my clothes on top, closed the suitcase, put it back under the bed, ran out the back door and around the other side of the house.

With heart pounding, I peeked around the corner just as she was going in the back door. Then I ran on to the outhouse, slammed the door hard and casually walked back to the house and back into the kitchen.

"You alright? Looked like you had to go real bad," she said.

"I'm alright," I said, trying to conceal my heaving chest.

And I did feel all right, in fact, I felt downright good about how I had diffused a potentially embarrassing situation.

Yeah, I felt good and not just a little bit proud, and at the age of nine!

By Saturday, I had completely forgotten about the event. We were playing in the yard around the well, when the mother came to the door and called me.

She said that my folks would be here soon to pick me up so I needed to take a bath and get dressed.

"Come on in, and I'll pick out a nice outfit for you to wear home," she said.

I was a little apprehensive at this suggestion but then I thought my clean clothes are on the top in the suitcase. She certainly won't go rummaging all the way to the bottom.

I walked into the house and followed her into the bedroom with all four of the children behind me. She reached down and pulled out my suitcase and placed it on top of the bed. She then, with her thumbs, pushed on the latches and they sprang open. I held my breath and as it turned out, it was the smart thing to do. She lifted up the top, and five sets of knees buckled!

The stench, which I had not considered, had baked up in the July heat and it was just plain awful!

She then started rummaging through my clothes until she discovered the source, which she plucked out with two fingers, holding up my underpants as far away from her nose as possible.

She said in a stern voice, "Who did this?"

She was blaming her boys! They were lying on the floor, holding their noses in riotous laughter. The girls were too!

“All of you get upstairs right now and don't get down ‘til I tell you!" she scolded.

They scurried up the stairs but it took them a while. They would laugh up two steps and down one. I can still see them.

Now, she took a closer look and I could almost hear her thoughts. "These pants don't belong to my boys and surely, they wouldn't steal his pants and do in them on purpose what he must have done in them by accident."

She knew, and she turned away from me, and I could see her retching in muted laughter. There was nothing I could do or say and so I didn't.

She walked into the kitchen and placed the pants in two paper bags and tightly rolled down the tops and then picked out an outfit for me to wear and told me to go to the well and draw my bath. With my head hanging, I went to the well and pumped the galvanized tub half full.

A few minutes later, she came out and poured a kettle of boiling water in to warm the tub up.
She handed me a towel and bar of soap and when she turned and walked back, I could see that she was still slightly retching. The window in the upstairs bedroom faced the front of the house, but I could still hear the children's laughter all the way to the well in back.

"Y’all better shut up, up there," she yelled. If I were up there, I know I would have been laughing.

My folks arrived soon after. The farm mother handed daddy my suitcase and my Momma the bag.

She spoke to them in low tones, as if I didn't know what she was telling them. The ride home was quiet except for the few times my Daddy would get to laughing so much that he would have to slow down and pull over. Momma looked straight ahead not wanting me to see her frozen grin.

Now, I didn't have to and probably shouldn't have, but I've told this story many times in the past and listeners would always snap back with, "Why didn't you just throw your underpants down the hole in the outhouse?" Well, sure. I considered that route, but that would have been wasteful and my conservatism simply would not allow that to happen.

Conservatism is why I did what I did. Those pants would last another two or three years. A man sometimes pays a terrible price for standing up for his principles.

I do wish that I had thought of the paper bags, though.