The Pig Has Landed

Last Christmas, I received a stone pig. Cast from volcanic material (so it says), it was from a courthouse colleague who was leaving after a year and a half of starting a new court program that I had helped design.

Why a pig?

Early on in our relationship, she told me that her husband was a deputy at the Franklin County jail, a large urban system. Inmates would often complain to him about being in jail, adding "it's not fair," and he would respond "Fair? Fair? Isn't that where people show pigs?"

When I heard that story, I told her about the pig showmanship class I had seen many years before at a county fair.

A showmanship class is one in which the handlers, in this case all 4-Hers, demonstrate how well they can show off their pig's fine points. It usually consists of walking the pig around a ring with other handlers and pigs while a judge watches both the pig and the ease of the showman. In a pig showmanship class, the kids often carry canes. They use them to tap the pig from time to time to keep it walking in the right the direction. In extreme moments, they might one to correct the pig in case it had any thoughts of getting pugnacious with its neighbors. A pig's nose is especially sensitive and sometimes a quick tap there will catch its attention.

This particular class took place on a very hot and humid Ohio summer day. Contrary to the saying about "sweating like a pig," pigs don't sweat. That is why they wallow in mud: to stay cool. Obviously, there are no mud wallows in a fair ring as the pigs are well groomed and clean.

It was a very, very hot day.

Early on in the class, the pigs started to become irritable. There were some porcine mutterings, some deliberate bumping (pig to pig), while the 4-Hers looked concerned and briskly tapped their charges. The ring announcer asked parents to bring sprinkling cans to the ring and help water the pigs to cool them down.

It didn't help. The pigs became more and more irritated. They didn't want to be paraded around a ring. They didn't want to be tapped. Bumps became nips, grunts became squeals. The 4-Hers, most of whom looked to be about 12, look worried, then distressed.

Finally, the pigs began fighting. Three or four bunched into a corner, catching their handlers with them, even pinning one to a fence, and began tussling. There were yells, there were squeals. The ring was dry and the dust rose. Pretty soon you could not see much of anything in the corner except a cloud of dust, an occasional pig rump, then a lone cane rising high up in the air and descending over and over.

Whack! Squeal! Whack! Squeal! Whack! Squeal!

At that point, several pig farmers jumped in the ring and helped shove the fighting pigs apart. The cane turned out to be wielded by a small boy who I had noticed originally because he was wearing a vest over his shirt. Now his hair was disheveled, his face was dirty, and his vest was askew. His pig, though, was once again walking docilely in front of him.

I told that story to my colleague and she laughed to the point of tears. After that, pigs became our touchstone as to the ups and downs of starting a new program. Sometimes we had to whack something - a rule, a procedure - to get it to settle down and behave. And sometimes things weren't fair and one of us would remind the other, "Fair? Fair? Isn't that where people show pigs?"

The pig was sitting on my doorstep, a bow around its neck, when I arrived home one day last December. It sat under the Christmas tree throughout the holidays, then sat in the former family room (currently the construction staging area and overflow shop storage until Warren moves materials into the newly finished shed) until yesterday.

Last night, I looked at the pig, I looked at the garden, and I plopped it down in front of the tomatoes. I imagine the pig will migrate as the summer wears on; with a grin like that, I see it in the pumpkins come the fall.

For now, though, the pig has landed.

John Steinbeck's motto was ad astra per alia porci - to the stars on the wings of a pig - "not enough wingspread, but plenty of intention." He even had a stamp made up with a small winged pig, "Pigasus." In the early days of our start-up program, we certainly had plenty of intention even if we were occasionally short on wingspread. It's not a bad motto for my sod garden either.

Come to think of it, it's not a bad motto for life in general.

To infinity, and beyond, on the wings of a pig!