My daddy and Hog Killing Time

Little known facts:

1.    The two-foot long bird called a Kea that lives in New Zealand likes to eat the strips of rubber around car windows.

2.    Snakes are true carnivores as they eat nothing but other animals. They do not eat any type of plant material.

3.    The Weddell Seal can travel underwater for seven miles without surfacing for air.

This Blog entry:

The first 6 years of my life, my daddy raised a hog every year. At hog killing time he always used salt to cure the meat. Dad was a preacher, but he originally was a farmer in North Georgia. So he never lost the idea of having his own meat. He skipped six years we lived in towns.  We moved to Valdese, NC and were still in town, but he made an agreement with Robbie Cook’s family to raise his hog in a pen beside theirs, just out of town. My daddy never always fed and talked to his hog. I can still remember the 5 gallon ‘slop’ bucket he put in the back floor board of his 1951 Buick, it seemed to be level full and he never spilled any in the car. It really did amaze me, I was in the 7^th grade. I rode with him to feed that hog, just to watch that bucket. It never spilled.

Hog killing time was festive. Several families would come together to help each other with the huge task. Three families, three hogs.  Under a tree there was a 55 gal drum ½ full of water over a fire. After they were slaughtered, the huge hogs were lifted up by their hind legs with a block and tackle and lowered into the barrel for scalding. After a few minutes it was pulled back out and the men or women would scrape the hog slick.

Then the hog was de-bowelled.  That was what the kids were waiting for. The Bladder was taken, washed and cleaned by one of the men. Then it was blown up and all tubes tied. It became our ball. The game was something like volley ball without a net that we played. Towards the end it became a football, for a tag game.

 The scraps were grilled, they were delicious. The men would butcher a Hog, set it aside and start on the next one. 

My daddy loved ‘country ham’ (defiled with salt, lol). I liked fresh ham. Some was always saved for breakfast with fresh ham.

I always admired dad. Our house scraps along with some mash, furnished our family with livermush, ham, ribs, sausage, roasts, bacon, side meat liver, and more for the year.  Homemade pig skins for snacks were delicious. You cannot blame the families, no one knew about cholesterol then. Our lye-soap also came from the fat of the hog. Very little of that animal was wasted.

            Nite Shipslog
 The 1950 Ford Crestliner. One of the first 'fancy' two tone paint jobs out of Detroit.