Hog Killing Day

Mother was in the mood to reminisce when I visited her at her assisted living facility two days ago.

Mother makes the Lane farm in Independence County sound like a paradise for children. They (the children) worked hard to help sustain the farm, but they always had plenty of good, fresh food to eat – tomatoes, watermelons, squash, beans, greens, apples, pears, peaches, strawberries, blackberries. She left there when she was six years old because times were so hard for Arkansas farmers in 1930 that her parents moved to Oklahoma where it turned out to be even worse. She doesn’t seem to remember the bad times, only the fun she had up until age six and every summer after that.

She can’t remember what happened five minutes ago, but she remembers hog killing day on the family farm. Strong men were a necessity, so each family in the area had its own hog killing day in which all the neighbors participated. When it was the Lanes' turn, families came to the Lane farm to spend the day dispatching pigs, cattle, and the occasional sheep or goat. The men built scaffoldings to hang the animals from or used tree branches in shaded areas. They scalded the pigs to make skin removal easier. The meat was always salted to preserve it and smoked as well, often for days at a time. The adults did all the work while the children played. She didn't seem to be bothered at all by the carnage.

Today, her mood was darker and focused on the last few years during which she lost so much. What happened to her two drawer file cabinet? What did I do with the contents? She needs the important papers so she can make some decisions about selling her property, etc. etc. As always, when the tirades start, I try to distract her, and if that fails, I tell her I’m leaving and she either settles down or continues in the same vein. Today she continued in the same vein, so I left. I did tell her I would bring her some pictures to look at and record the names of the people in the pictures. I hope I can find that box.