Oral Histories: The Pig Story
Lynn Gardner shares a short story about his family's pet pigs.
Editor’s Note: This is the first of an ongoing series we call Oral Histories: Photo Stories of Hinesburg Residents. We ask participants to tell a story about a memorable photo — something from their lives or from history — that reveals something about them. The feature is open to all ages and to newcomers and old-timers. The aim is to help us get to know each other better and, sometimes, to learn a little history of our community, to meet our neighbors. If you’d like to tell a story, contact Geoffrey Gevalt at editor@hinesburgrecord.org
This is a bonus story from Lynn Gardner, long-time owner of Clifford Lumber and, for many years, a Hinesburg selectman. For Lynn’s story of the devastating fire at the mill in 2007, click here.
Over the years, when my son Peter was like maybe eight years old, over at the store, Reggie and Brenda Blaize ran the store. and they had a butcher there, his name was Fred. And Fred approached me that he wanted to raise pigs.
And I had an empty barn up on top of the hill and the deal was, Fred would raise the pigs, and we'd get two pigs a year out of the deal, and he raised about 30 pigs. Over the years, with raising the pigs, there were certain ones that we kind of liked, that were friendly or whatever. One was named Red and Babe was the last one.
Red was the middle one. Curly was the first one. Oh, Amanda and Peter, they'd ride that pig up through the yard. They just, you know, just loved the pigs.
And we kept them in straw. They weren't dirty, you know, they fed them, not garbage, we fed them good grain and everything. Of course, they just get huge.
After Curly, we didn't eat the three pigs that we had for pets, we didn't eat them. After a few years, Fred didn't want to raise pigs anymore, but we we had some pigs here, so we just kept them, and you know, we kind of, they were pets or whatever, and sold a few. We had a boar and we used to breed the sows and sell the babies.
So we did that for, you know, quite a few years. And Babe, the last one, she was a really special pig. She would be up in the woods. You'd call her she'd come just like a dog. Some of the employees here, we used to have a picnic table up there and they'd eat lunch. She'd come down, and they'd give crust from their sandwiches to her.
We had this one employee and we called him him Putty, but he was, you know, a good guy. And we'd always kid him that Babe was his girlfriend. I don't like that goddamn pig, I don't like that goddamn pig. But he he'd always give her a sandwich or, give her a candy bar. And he'd buy the candy bar to give her and stuff. And he liked the pig.
Well, anyway, you know, she got older and when she was about 12, we had that ice storm in ’98, and for some reason, she came in heat and she was an old pig and she just got so upset or whatever. She had a stroke. I had to shoot her.
But when I went to shoot her, there during the ice storm, I had caught hepatitis, and I was terrible sick. I mean, you thought I was going to die. I didn't work for six or seven weeks.
Well, anyway, I had hepatitis and I was, you know, I was dying, but the pig, I had to go and put her out of her misery. So I get my gun and I go to shoot her. My mother says, “I hope he didn't take two bullets” because I was as sick as the pig.
So that was the end of Babe. I felt bad about it, but that's, you know, how it was.
I didn't take two bullets. I'm still here, but oh I was sick.