Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. It’s a simple holiday, no gifts to buy and wrap, just turkey to eat and a chance to spend time with family and count your blessings.
Recently, Cheryl has been telling us stories of Thanksgivings past.
When she was but a pup, her family was into killing hogs (which rhymes too close for comfort with dogs) on Thanksgiving.
A few years ago, when Cheryl wrote columns, she recounted, in the newspaper, her days as a youngster on a small Iredell County farm killin’ hogs.
She recently read that column to me and my sisters, Lexie and Duchess, as one of our bedtime stories. It went something like this:
Once upon a time when I was a child (which was long, long ago I whispered to the girls), Thanksgiving mornings began at dawn for me and my family.
Mom would dress me in my not-so-finest of clothes and dad would help me into my oldest coat and pair of gloves.
Together we would make the trek out our back door, through the woods, across my aunt and uncle’s yard, between two hay fields, through my grandparents’ yard and across the street to my grandfather’s pasture.
From there, my dad would meet up with the other men, I would find my cousins and my mom would head toward my great uncle’s basement where all the women had gathered.
It was hog-killing time.
I still vividly remember the process of slaying a hog and harvesting its edible parts.
I remember where the hog had to be shot and how it was such a big deal when my cousin, Robert, who is only 18-months older than I, became of age to shoot his first hog.
I remember how the lifeless hog was dragged across the fallen leaves and then hung upside down.
I remember how the hog was de-
“Wait, wait, wait,” I said stopping her. “This is too graphic. I cannot let you go on. Lexie and Duchess will have nightmares for months and those PETA people will be all over this.”
She continued, skipping over some of the most graphic parts and came to the part where the pig intestines, which I hear a News Herald reporter actually ate, ended up in a wheelbarrow. Cheryl said her great grandfather would pull out his pocketknife from his bib overalls and slit open the intestines, which she said looked like grub worms on steroids.
Cheryl and her cousins were responsible for running the meat across the street and down to the basement.
“There is nothing like sausage fresh from the hog to the grinder to the frying pan,” she said.
The annual event was over by early afternoon, Cheryl explained, and after the hog meat was divided among the various family members, the traditional Thanksgiving feast would start.
And so would the tradition of giving thanks.Lexie and I decided this year to put paw to paper and make our on list of all the things for which we are thankful. After Cheryl’s story, at the top of our list that it is not common practice to kill and eat dogs. Here’s the rest of our list:
Here are nine other things for which we are thankful.
9. rubs — belly, ear, back, chest
8. naps and stretches after naps
7. sweet puppy dog dreams
6. our back yard, its red dirt, leaves and critters
5. friends and neighbors
4. a fan in the summer and a heater in the winter
3. balls and bones
2. the weather, sunshine, rain, snow (but not thunder storms)
1. the hands that feed and water us
No comments:
Post a Comment