Life is Good

We used to have a small farm just South of Wann, Oklahoma.  Our neighbor, about 1/2 mile South of us, raised pigs.  He had a few piglets that he could not keep in the pen.  

On one of his many trips to our area, gathering his stray piglets, he told my Mom that if we could keep the strays in a pen, we could have them.  I set about constructing what I thought was an escape proof pig pen.  

The next time his stray piglets wandered down the road, I had a pig roundup.  I managed to keep two of them contained, so I became a pig farmer.  

I fed them everyday, hosed them down, and attempted to meet their needs.  I guess it never dawned on me that I was makin' bacon.  When the pigs were big enough, my Dad, and Uncle Elmer butchered them, because that's what farmers do.  

Like most kids on the farm, I had raised the pigs as pets.  I'd given them both names, but the only one I can remember is Porky.  When we were eating the bacon or sausage, we would say we were eating Porky.

We also raised a few calves.  Nothing special, just some weanlings that my Mom bought at a nearby dairy.  We would bottle feed them until they could move on to grass, hay or cattle cubes.  We kept round bales of hay to feed them through the Winter.  Not the 1,500 pound bales that are prevalent today.  Back in the 60's, most of the round bales weighed around 65 pounds.  Anyway, we would have a stack of 100 to 150 bales next to the barn.  I would climb all over the stack, and play.  

I think I watched to many Roy Rogers, Gun Smoke, and Hopalong Cassidy shows, so I was always shooting it out with the bad guys.  I was having a major shootout with a bunch of no good outlaws one sunny Summer day.  I had managed to get most of them, but one got off a lucky shot.  I rolled down the side of the hay stack, mortally wounded.  

I lay there, basking in the sun, breathing my final breaths.  When I opened my eyes, standing above me was my Mom, who had been washing dishes and had seen me roll off of the haystack.  She thought I was really injured, or possibly worse.  

What was she thinking?  Would Roy Roger's Mom come to his aid, even if he was knocking on death's door?  I don't think so, but maybe I'm a better actor than Roy.