Mornings at our home during my first year in grade school consisted of listening to the radio and eating a breakfast with my parents and three older brothers. Aside from dad working in the local coal mines, he raised chickens, pigs and vegetables. We gathered the fresh eggs from the chickens. Sold some — ate some. The pigs were butchered around Thanksgiving which gave up pork for most of the winter and spring. Dad cured the hams, bacon and made sausages from the fresh pork. Dad raised white and sweet potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, corn, onions, green beans and greens. Mother canned the summer vegetables and made jams and jellies of the berries and fruits my brothers and I would gather. She would can between 400-500 quarts of fruits and vegetables each fall. Mother baked large loaves of bread, usually four at a time. The loaves had a thick, soft brown crust. We anticipated baking day because it meant she would shape the leftover dough into large, flat circles, fry in oil and sprinkle with sugar. It was like a "poor man's doughnut". The aromas which came from our house lingered in the air for blocks. My parents were excellent providers. Breakfast consisted of: several fresh laid eggs fried sunny-side up; a slab of cured ham, sausage or bacon; fresh made bread which had been toasted and smathered with creamery butter, a large spoonful of mother's canned jelly washed down by a large glass of fresh milk from Mr... Smouse's farm. The responsibility for feeding the chickens and pigs went to my three older brothers. They were also assigned to clean and sanitize the chicken and pig pens. You might ask at this time, what was I doing during all of this work. I was the lucky baby of the family and my brothers who were six, eight, and twelve years older than me used their spare time taking care of me. Where do I fit in all of this work? I was the "circus ring master" of the animals and they were all my play mates. I never did get attached to any of the chickens but when dad would bring home the little piggies in the spring, they were just too much for me. I would give each of them a name, scratch their heads and play "circus" and "rodeo" for hours. Those little piggies eventually grew up to weigh 250 to 300 pounds each. My favorite game was to ride them around and around inside the pig house. Seldom did I ever get thrown from my bareback saddle; however, there was one occasion I remember quite vividly which didn't end so well. One day when I was riding the largest sow....she took a quick turn and ran into the pig lot. The old saying, "Watch that first step -- It can be a killer", will be etched in my memory forever. When the large sow took the turn to go into the pig lot, the first step was into a hog-wallow. A hog-wallow was a wet place consisting of water, manure, urine and food scraps where the pigs lay to cool themselves on a hot day. It can be a few inches to a couple of feet deep. It has rained this particular day and the wallow was about 2 feet deep. The headlong first plunge completely submerged me in the mud mixture. I was dislodged from the hog and had to wade out of the lot. My neighbor Rod West, who had been participating, ran home. This left me to figure out how to get clean. I went down to the local swimming hole in Buffalo Creek and washed as much of the stinking mud from my body. I then went up to my neighbor's house, proud that I had cleaned myself, when to my surprise, his mother would not let me in her house. She just stood at her screen door holding her nose, yelling at me to go home. I was so confused and embarrassed by my neighbor's reaction, I figured there was only one thing for me to do -- go hide on top of the chicken house and never go home. As I lay on the scalding black tar paper of the chicken house roof, I could hear my mother yelling for me. "Joe, please come home. Your dad will becoming home soon and you need to get cleaned up". I could not figure out how she knew I was on top of the chicken house. Then of course, I never thought that Rod's mother may have told her about the whole ordeal and she could look from her porch, and see me on top of the roof. But you may have guessed it, Rod had spelled the beans and told on me. I didn't hold it against him because his dad usually gave him whippings with his mining belt and it was about 3 to 4 inches wide. I can still hear Rod's screams from those whippings. Even though I had forgiven him, I gave him a few extra hits in his back, when we got into our daily fight. The "Tub Bath" as I call it, has been engraved in my memory for 52 years. If I think about it real hard, I can still smell the galvanized tub and feel the cold well water that was poured over me. I could accept the cold water but it was the 2 gallons of tomato juice she scrubbed into every inch of my body which stung me like a beehive full of bees. This kind of bath was the real McCoy. To put the icing on the cake, my mother then scrubbed me with a bar of home made soap. I recall the soap felt like it had small cinders mixed in the lather and whatever skin was still left was scrapped off my body. I don't know how many tubs of cold well water my mother poured over me but the grass always grew especially green in that area for several years. After the bath my mother dressed me up combed my hair and had me sit on a chair until my father came home. My father's arrival was greeted as usual: mother had washed, put on her makeup, and put on a clean dress. My mother believed that greeting her husband was like meeting him for the first time and believed in making a good impression. I don't care how hard she worked picking vegetables and canning that day, mother always showed her appreciation to her husband for his hard work in the dangerous coal mine. To get things off on the right foot, my mother would have a fresh pot of coffee prepared and had a cup of coffee waiting on the table for him. I can still see his and her smiles when they greeted each other at the door. The love and affection they showed for each other was a thing of everlasting beauty which I visually hold in my heart. Having greeted my mother, being the baby of the family, I was next in line. I always climbed up and sat on his leg as he drank his coffee. This day instead of asking me, how his baby boy was, my dad asked me how everything was going. How my father knew that something had happened always amazed me. I always believed that my mother and father had some kind of silent Morse Code going on between them. There was no use to fib to my dad, so I told him most of the story. How I slipped over the rail trying to scratch sheila's head, fell into the pig pen and how they ran into me and pushed me into the hog wallow. God forbid if he knew I was riding the families ham and bacon. After the narrow escape, I started going over to John Ice's after Sunday Mass and rode their six large sows. You could pull the pig pen door down and prevent them from running outside. This meant no hog wallow and the wildest ride in town. A ride on a pig is not as simple as just getting on and riding like you would ride a horse. You must hold on to one ear and hold on to their tail at the same time. This allowed your legs to hang over their sides and your feet drag the ground a little. In this position, the pig let out a blood curdling squeal which could be heard for a mile and a half. I used to put cotton in my ears so I wouldn't go deaf. They would all get bunched up in one corner, and hide their heads underneath each other's bellies. With some coaching, they would then start running around the lengthy pig house in semi-darkness. It was almost dark because I had to shut all of the windows so their squeals couldn't be heard across town. The Ice's, who were not Catholic, always went to church as we were coming home, the schedule was perfect for a good Sunday morning pig ride. The perfect plan, as we called it, went this way. I waited until my dad finished reading the Sunday paper and went in the house. This was a perfect time to start the ride. Sometimes it would last a minute and other times several minutes. It took a good lookout like my neighbor Roddy. Someone you could trust with your life. It never dawned on me the pigs at Ice's could be heard at Rod's house which was located a little higher on the hill and closer than my dad's house. Apparently the sound was traveling quite well this day and without warning, Rod's dad had entered silently through the feed lot door. We were not noticing anything because Rod was looking through the cracks in the wooden walls to see if my dad was outside yet. Every once in a while I would ask, "Is he outside yet? Hey, can you hear me? Is he outside yet". Without warning, Rod's dad entered the pig house and grabbed him by the collar and hoisted him in the air. The light shining through the door was half blinding me; but the one thing I did know, someone had got Rod and I was likely to be next on the list. I jumped off the sow and made a skidding dive on my belly to exit the pig house door. Managing to open the door, the pigs were determined to get out first, and they thoroughly stomped me into the floor. I felt like a train had run over me. My fright overcame my pain as I slithered out the door on my belly to find my dad bent over and looking at me at eye level. My dad took me to the watering trough and doused me several times getting me partially cleaned up. There was one main difference to the cleaning up this time. My dad gave me the tub bath and this time it was not so gentle like my mothers soft hands. I also became a member of the tomato canning club and attended a two hour seminar on ‘do not abuse my neighbor goods'. That ride was a good one, but the after affects have lasted long into my fifty-eighth year of life. I guess you could say, if you are going to do the ride, you should be ready to do the time. After that experience I stuck to riding cows and horses and made sure they were on or near the second hill. The key to getting a good ride........don't ride anything that can talk or squeal. Back to Story Menu