July 4

The True Story of Little Lloyd

Once I had a pig named Little Lloyd (after a local congressman who had fallen from favor). He was a big pig in spite of his name. Big and truculent. His favorite food was chicken, which is another story. Ah, hell, I may as well tell that one, too.

Little Lloyd was the first pig I bought who wasn't already cut. Meaning he was still a boar. If you are raising a pig to eat, you do not leave him a boar because boar meat tastes like a boar smells and if you haven't grown up eating food that tastes like a boar smells it is highly unlikely that you will find it tasty. Or even edible. And you will have about 150 pounds of it. So the thing is, you neuter your piglets.

Anyway, I bought Little Lloyd without checking for extra equipment and being new to the pig business I had to hire someone to fix him. The guy I hired (well, traded a salmon to) arrived with a friend and a razor blade. The friend was for holding Little Lloyd's back legs off the ground, and the razor blade did the rest. I almost fainted but when Lloyd's feet were returned to terra firma and a dish of food presented to him, all squealing ended. He began gobbling up his dinner, giving a critical look to one of the chickens that was running off with his private parts.

It's hard to imagine that a pig could hold a grudge, but there was more than one morning I went out to feed the animals and found Little Lloyd with feathers on his snout, picking his teeth with a chicken foot.

Sooo...Little Lloyd grew and the day came when I had to take him to the butcher. I borrowed an old truck for the occasion and had a few friends come over to help me get him loaded. It was two hours of ure hell. Everyone ended up bleeding except Little Lloyd. He fought like a tiger. But in the end we prevailed, the tailgate was tied onto the truck and off I went to drive the thirty miles to the butcher.

At the slaughterhouse, I backed into the unloading ramp and waited as the boy who was working there came around to ask my name. "I'm Marilyn Jones, " I said, "I called ahead about this pig."

The boy looked at me blankly. "There ain't no pig, Lady." Suspecting some strange abatoire humor, I crossly said, "Of course there's a pig." "Look for yourself, Lady," he said. "There AIN'T NO PIG."

There was no pig. No pig, no tailgate. Oh God. Hastily I jumped back into the truck and took off in search of Little Lloyd and the tailgate. I soon located the latter in the middle of the road about five miles back and the former in the middle of a freshly plowed field about six city blocks away (giving you a measurement you can imagine). He was a mere white dot, kind of bouncing around.

Remembering all too well how difficult it was to get him in the truck the first time, I felt hopeless about getting him in a second time without help. But some help arrived. This was a novel sight even in the country and I was starting to draw a crowd. Oh, what to do! Finally I decided to try the ridiculously simple first and putting my humiliation aside screamed at the top of my lungs "LITTLE LLLOOYYYYD." The little white dot stopped bouncing and started to move in my direction getting bigger and bigger and when he finally arrived at the truck he happily allowed four gentlemen to heave him into the back.

He was really happy to see me! He thought we were going home! We weren't.

The End

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Saints o' the day include Elizabeth of Portugal (patron saint of Portugal), Ulric (invoked against difficult birth, dizziness, mice, and moles), Bertha, Andrew of Crete, and Odo of Canterbury.

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Birthdays today include Stephen Foster (1826), George M. Cohan (1878), Rube Goldberg (1883), Dear Abby and Ann Landers (1918), Gina Lollobrigida (1927), and Neil Simon (1927).

Three presidents died on this day; John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died in 1826 and James Monroe in 1831. Adams and Jefferson had both been signers of the Declaration of Independence exactly 50 years before their deaths.

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On July 4, 1956, 1.23 inches of rain fell in one minute at Unionville, Maryland, setting a record for most intense rainfall. As far as the Saint Report can tell, this record still stands.

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There are many celebrations nationwide today at which it would be pathetically easy to scoff. While the Saint Report ordinarily strives to do better than poke fun at others (except, of course Indiana and Michigan, our designated targets for year-round ridicule), it is a holiday, and since fireworks and farms do not mix, this is all the fun I am going to get. I will limit myself to two.

Garden City, Kansas, holds its annual Zoobalee today at their Lee Richardson Zoo. Five thousand people are expected to participate in such fun as a 2K run and timed walk, pie eating contest (which could produce some spectacular entertainment if it were held prior to the 2K run and timed walk), an animal mimic contest (and by this, they carefully note, they mean mimicking the sound of the animal--makes you wonder just what those Jayhawkers would do if they weren't supervised), ethnic foods (in Garden City, Kansas, I suppose that could be another way of saying spaghetti feed), and a celebrity dunk tank. Who is a celebrity in Garden City? The UPS guy?

Chaparral Park in Lovington, New Mexico, is the place to be today if you want to see reptiles run. The annual World's Greatest Lizard Race, the attendance at which no one is guessing, is only part of the scaly fun...there are more, and I quote here, "lizard events" besides the race. And trophies, too! The mind boggles.

Onward to July 5
Back to July 3
Back to the Farm

© Marilyn Jones 2000-2008