Having almost completed my transition from my recent deployment, Wifey and I decided that since we had digs big enough to accommodate some guests that perhaps a cookout was in order.
Discussion ensued with the neighbors.
“Why not cook a Pig?” sayeth neighbor and Jack of all Trades Mike Wyrick.
“Why not, indeed”, sayeth I, as I reached for another Michelob light.
Intrigued, I ask my first and only question-
“How do you cook a whole pig do you cut him up and stuff him in the little grill I got or do you dig a pit in the backyard and where will we find this bovine to be named Jerome and will he (or she) cost a lot of money and how late do I have to stay up cause I really gave up the night years ago and I like to sleep 6 to 8 uninterrupted hours unless I get up to pee and will you be helping me cook it?”
Mike explained to me he used to cook pigs “When I was farming” and they did it several times a year---he then went into a dissertation ---a kind of a Hog Cooking 101.
I had hung out with enough backyard grilling experts and seen enough of the Food Channel to realize that this wasn’t rocket science—I had also consumed enough beer to commit to “Project Pigs Feet” right then and there—
The decision to do it was the easy part.
Fast forward a few days.
Wifey calls on the phone and tells me “I bought one of those pools at Wal-Mart”….her reasoning to me is so the kids can have somewhere to go cool off---Lord knows we wouldn’t want our little angels to have heat prostitution---or prostration, I forget which word…
She and I had this conversation a few days prior. “We need to buy one of those inflatable Wal-Mart Pools”, says she.
“Nope”, says I.
“I don’t want our little babies having heat prostitution, or prostration”, says she.
“They can use their young legs and double time it to the end of the street and damn well jump in the lake if they are hot”, says I, glancing in their direction as they were stretched out across the furniture in front of the television like a bunch of cats.
End of conversation.
I ate Frosted Cheerios for supper that night. Sue and the kids ate out.
Go figure.
The score after one inning, Man of the House 1, Family zilch.
More on the Pool later. Back to the Pig.
The reason for the cookout was quite simple. I wanted to see my family and friends, give them all a hug, tell ‘em I love ‘em and missed them, and also celebrate the birthday of the greatest country on Earth—its not everyday you turn 230 years old, you know.
Now, back to Jerome—I named the pig Jerome because the great Southern writer Lewis Grizzards’ heart valve came from a Pig---in his comedy routine he said the pigs name was Jerome—
Mike Wyrick, my friend and neighbor, and also a 200 pound equivalent of the Swiss Army knife (the man can do anything), tracked down the location to where we would buy Jerome, which was a 30 minute outside of Macon in Jeffersonville. Since the party was to be on the 1st of July, we arranged to pick up our little piece of porcine paradise (say that 5 times fast) the day prior—mainly because a 133 lb pig will not fit into the vegetable bin of my refrigerator. Yes Siree-bob, we were going whole hog.
Part 75 of the one and only question I asked Mike about was what to cook Jerome on—by this time we had decided that instead of just using an ample supply of cement blocks and fashioning a temporary cooker, that for a mere pittance Mike could gather the materials to make a permanent one from sheet metal. I am not ashamed to admit it, but while we were talking about building us a sho-nuff whole hog pork cooker, the smell of testosterone was so thick you could have cut it with a knife. I got so darn excited about it I ran off to see brother Bubba and got his copy of “Willingham’s World Champion Barbeque” ---and started reading it at bedtime every night. I was psyched.
But back to my adventures as a pool owner….
I get home from work and Wifey has this huge pile of plastic and vinyl sprawled out in the center of the backyard. “There’s gonna be one hellacious dead spot here when we are done”, I tell her. “We might not ever be able to grow any grass here”…
“I ain't raising grass, I’m raising kids”…., as she pulls out a pile of white poles that would soon be a ladder. “Besides, I ain’t seen you cut the grass we do have!”
The score is now one all. I go inside, change into work clothes, and help Wifey put together the pool. I am crazy but not stupid.
Assembly is a snap, even for a mechanically deficient goob as myself. Mike the Knife shows up, and offers assistance in blowing the inflatable ring up with his trusty homemade air compressor complete with wheels and a handle to pull it along. We both go get it, and I take it back across the street with the promise of delivering it back myself when I am finished with it. The cord on the compressor is long, but not quite long enough, so I get an extension cord and with that I am able to roll the compressor down the steep bank into the backyard. In a matter of minutes, the inflatable ring is full of air, and so I gather up the compressor to take back across the street.
I hadn’t figured out how heavy the compressor would be coming back up the hill. It went down the hill just fine. I started to pull, it went a few feet, and stopped. I gathered my strength, planted my feet a little firmer, and heaved. Another couple of feet. It was obvious that I had been at a desk too long. And where on Earth is all the heat (or is it humidity?) coming from. I begin to sweat—profusely.
I will be damned if I let this thing whip me. I take a deep breath of stale, hot, not a breeze in sight unless there’s a tornado coming Macon Georgia air, and start giving it the old one two. I tug, pull, grunt, groan, moan, but am steadily gaining ground..I am going up the hill, up the hill, I think I can, I think I can….
I reach the Summit.
I am drenched. I am out of oxygen. Wifey hasn’t even turned around, and remains busy with the pool. I attempt to stand upright and pretend to breathe normally, but small bugs, grass clippings, and a neighborhood dog are all pulled in my direction as I inhale..
“Don’t let that thing whip you”, Mike the Knife says as he walks up, obviously impressed by my manly prowess.
“Too late”, I reply. While he chuckles, I adjust myself to make sure I didn’t lose a testicle or soil myself. At this moment I could have done both and wouldn’t be the wiser.
In less than 24 hours, the pool would be filled with 5000 gallons of water from the well, and my little angels would suffer from Heat procrastination no more. At the rate I was going, I may very well have jumped in with them……
But back to the Pork…..
We are a week or so away from the event, and Mike has now acquired the materials and begun assembling the cooker—Friends and neighbors, this thing is a work of art. Had there been Pig cooking or grilling around back in the days of Picasso or Rembrandt, maybe Mike would have had some competition. The cooker, about 4 feet wide and almost 8 feet long, is of a very simple design, but it is the simplicity that sets it apart from its peers. We hoisted the cooker into the bed of Mike’s pickup truck and carried it over to the backyard, placing it under a shady Oak tree. It stood there in all its glory, a manly structure if ever there was, and I contemplated posting signs near the cooker—WARNING: This is a high level Testosterone area. Act Accordingly.
We were almost set. The pool was being filled, the cooker was finished. We were approaching zero week, and it would be asses and elbows in getting the house I could ill afford cleaned up, going to get the rest of the food, etc….things were looking pretty good, and then it happened.
Disaster.
Two days later, Wifey calls me in quite the tizzy. Actually, Apoplexy is the right word, since I am trying to clean up my mouth and not say s--- hemorrhage anymore.
Mans best friend, Joe Fisher, the 14 yr old son who I want to grow up to be just like, was out on the mower cutting the backyard when a rock flew into the side of the pool, putting a gash in the side near the bottom.
Wifey, already under duress in cleaning the house and preparing for the first real shin-dig we ever had, calls with apoplexy and was in process of sharpening a kitchen knife and fixing it to where Joe would be unable to provide us any grandchildren ----BUT, I was able to talk her “off the ledge”, so to speak, and we could and would fix it.
OH THE HUMANITY!!!!!...............
The gash in the pool was minor, and it took nearly as long for the 5000 gallons of water to empty as it did to fill up---a full day and half the night—once empty, Sue put a patch on it and let it dry, and on Friday afternoon (party was Saturday at 1300) we started filling up the pool with another 5000 gallons—we have a well, so my water bill is ok…and as far as I can tell, the well has at least 10,000 available gallons of water….
The one disadvantage of cooking an entire pig is you have to stay up with him (or her)----I ain’t good at staying up at night. People are supposed to sleep at night, that’s why they made night dark. But, being the troopers we are, Mike the Knife, me, Mans best Friend, and even Winnie stayed up with the pig—Winnie lasted until 0300, Joe 0330, and Mike and I took a nap while no one was looking—possibly as long as 30 minutes.
Instead of the 10 hours we thought the pig would require, it took only 7. We kept him warm until about 1230 pm—by that time our first guests had arrived….
The pool was full and ready for action at 0600 Saturday morning. At one time during the event I looked in and counted a dozen little heads churning the water as if by a school of piranha. At any moment I suspected the patch would fail and in an instant 5000 gallons of water and a dozen young’uns would be swept away…it didn’t happen.
The patch is still in place. The Pig was dee-lish. There were no fights, and the cops didn’t have to show up. Someone counted about 80 folks not including the kids. Clean up was a snap, my testosterone level is back to normal, and I don’t think there was a single reported case of heat castration.
Jerome may have been a Jemima instead. But it is too late to find out now—the freezer is full of leftovers.
Life continues to be good. Did I mention how good it is to be home?
Discussion ensued with the neighbors.
“Why not cook a Pig?” sayeth neighbor and Jack of all Trades Mike Wyrick.
“Why not, indeed”, sayeth I, as I reached for another Michelob light.
Intrigued, I ask my first and only question-
“How do you cook a whole pig do you cut him up and stuff him in the little grill I got or do you dig a pit in the backyard and where will we find this bovine to be named Jerome and will he (or she) cost a lot of money and how late do I have to stay up cause I really gave up the night years ago and I like to sleep 6 to 8 uninterrupted hours unless I get up to pee and will you be helping me cook it?”
Mike explained to me he used to cook pigs “When I was farming” and they did it several times a year---he then went into a dissertation ---a kind of a Hog Cooking 101.
I had hung out with enough backyard grilling experts and seen enough of the Food Channel to realize that this wasn’t rocket science—I had also consumed enough beer to commit to “Project Pigs Feet” right then and there—
The decision to do it was the easy part.
Fast forward a few days.
Wifey calls on the phone and tells me “I bought one of those pools at Wal-Mart”….her reasoning to me is so the kids can have somewhere to go cool off---Lord knows we wouldn’t want our little angels to have heat prostitution---or prostration, I forget which word…
She and I had this conversation a few days prior. “We need to buy one of those inflatable Wal-Mart Pools”, says she.
“Nope”, says I.
“I don’t want our little babies having heat prostitution, or prostration”, says she.
“They can use their young legs and double time it to the end of the street and damn well jump in the lake if they are hot”, says I, glancing in their direction as they were stretched out across the furniture in front of the television like a bunch of cats.
End of conversation.
I ate Frosted Cheerios for supper that night. Sue and the kids ate out.
Go figure.
The score after one inning, Man of the House 1, Family zilch.
More on the Pool later. Back to the Pig.
The reason for the cookout was quite simple. I wanted to see my family and friends, give them all a hug, tell ‘em I love ‘em and missed them, and also celebrate the birthday of the greatest country on Earth—its not everyday you turn 230 years old, you know.
Now, back to Jerome—I named the pig Jerome because the great Southern writer Lewis Grizzards’ heart valve came from a Pig---in his comedy routine he said the pigs name was Jerome—
Mike Wyrick, my friend and neighbor, and also a 200 pound equivalent of the Swiss Army knife (the man can do anything), tracked down the location to where we would buy Jerome, which was a 30 minute outside of Macon in Jeffersonville. Since the party was to be on the 1st of July, we arranged to pick up our little piece of porcine paradise (say that 5 times fast) the day prior—mainly because a 133 lb pig will not fit into the vegetable bin of my refrigerator. Yes Siree-bob, we were going whole hog.
Part 75 of the one and only question I asked Mike about was what to cook Jerome on—by this time we had decided that instead of just using an ample supply of cement blocks and fashioning a temporary cooker, that for a mere pittance Mike could gather the materials to make a permanent one from sheet metal. I am not ashamed to admit it, but while we were talking about building us a sho-nuff whole hog pork cooker, the smell of testosterone was so thick you could have cut it with a knife. I got so darn excited about it I ran off to see brother Bubba and got his copy of “Willingham’s World Champion Barbeque” ---and started reading it at bedtime every night. I was psyched.
But back to my adventures as a pool owner….
I get home from work and Wifey has this huge pile of plastic and vinyl sprawled out in the center of the backyard. “There’s gonna be one hellacious dead spot here when we are done”, I tell her. “We might not ever be able to grow any grass here”…
“I ain't raising grass, I’m raising kids”…., as she pulls out a pile of white poles that would soon be a ladder. “Besides, I ain’t seen you cut the grass we do have!”
The score is now one all. I go inside, change into work clothes, and help Wifey put together the pool. I am crazy but not stupid.
Assembly is a snap, even for a mechanically deficient goob as myself. Mike the Knife shows up, and offers assistance in blowing the inflatable ring up with his trusty homemade air compressor complete with wheels and a handle to pull it along. We both go get it, and I take it back across the street with the promise of delivering it back myself when I am finished with it. The cord on the compressor is long, but not quite long enough, so I get an extension cord and with that I am able to roll the compressor down the steep bank into the backyard. In a matter of minutes, the inflatable ring is full of air, and so I gather up the compressor to take back across the street.
I hadn’t figured out how heavy the compressor would be coming back up the hill. It went down the hill just fine. I started to pull, it went a few feet, and stopped. I gathered my strength, planted my feet a little firmer, and heaved. Another couple of feet. It was obvious that I had been at a desk too long. And where on Earth is all the heat (or is it humidity?) coming from. I begin to sweat—profusely.
I will be damned if I let this thing whip me. I take a deep breath of stale, hot, not a breeze in sight unless there’s a tornado coming Macon Georgia air, and start giving it the old one two. I tug, pull, grunt, groan, moan, but am steadily gaining ground..I am going up the hill, up the hill, I think I can, I think I can….
I reach the Summit.
I am drenched. I am out of oxygen. Wifey hasn’t even turned around, and remains busy with the pool. I attempt to stand upright and pretend to breathe normally, but small bugs, grass clippings, and a neighborhood dog are all pulled in my direction as I inhale..
“Don’t let that thing whip you”, Mike the Knife says as he walks up, obviously impressed by my manly prowess.
“Too late”, I reply. While he chuckles, I adjust myself to make sure I didn’t lose a testicle or soil myself. At this moment I could have done both and wouldn’t be the wiser.
In less than 24 hours, the pool would be filled with 5000 gallons of water from the well, and my little angels would suffer from Heat procrastination no more. At the rate I was going, I may very well have jumped in with them……
But back to the Pork…..
We are a week or so away from the event, and Mike has now acquired the materials and begun assembling the cooker—Friends and neighbors, this thing is a work of art. Had there been Pig cooking or grilling around back in the days of Picasso or Rembrandt, maybe Mike would have had some competition. The cooker, about 4 feet wide and almost 8 feet long, is of a very simple design, but it is the simplicity that sets it apart from its peers. We hoisted the cooker into the bed of Mike’s pickup truck and carried it over to the backyard, placing it under a shady Oak tree. It stood there in all its glory, a manly structure if ever there was, and I contemplated posting signs near the cooker—WARNING: This is a high level Testosterone area. Act Accordingly.
We were almost set. The pool was being filled, the cooker was finished. We were approaching zero week, and it would be asses and elbows in getting the house I could ill afford cleaned up, going to get the rest of the food, etc….things were looking pretty good, and then it happened.
Disaster.
Two days later, Wifey calls me in quite the tizzy. Actually, Apoplexy is the right word, since I am trying to clean up my mouth and not say s--- hemorrhage anymore.
Mans best friend, Joe Fisher, the 14 yr old son who I want to grow up to be just like, was out on the mower cutting the backyard when a rock flew into the side of the pool, putting a gash in the side near the bottom.
Wifey, already under duress in cleaning the house and preparing for the first real shin-dig we ever had, calls with apoplexy and was in process of sharpening a kitchen knife and fixing it to where Joe would be unable to provide us any grandchildren ----BUT, I was able to talk her “off the ledge”, so to speak, and we could and would fix it.
OH THE HUMANITY!!!!!...............
The gash in the pool was minor, and it took nearly as long for the 5000 gallons of water to empty as it did to fill up---a full day and half the night—once empty, Sue put a patch on it and let it dry, and on Friday afternoon (party was Saturday at 1300) we started filling up the pool with another 5000 gallons—we have a well, so my water bill is ok…and as far as I can tell, the well has at least 10,000 available gallons of water….
The one disadvantage of cooking an entire pig is you have to stay up with him (or her)----I ain’t good at staying up at night. People are supposed to sleep at night, that’s why they made night dark. But, being the troopers we are, Mike the Knife, me, Mans best Friend, and even Winnie stayed up with the pig—Winnie lasted until 0300, Joe 0330, and Mike and I took a nap while no one was looking—possibly as long as 30 minutes.
Instead of the 10 hours we thought the pig would require, it took only 7. We kept him warm until about 1230 pm—by that time our first guests had arrived….
The pool was full and ready for action at 0600 Saturday morning. At one time during the event I looked in and counted a dozen little heads churning the water as if by a school of piranha. At any moment I suspected the patch would fail and in an instant 5000 gallons of water and a dozen young’uns would be swept away…it didn’t happen.
The patch is still in place. The Pig was dee-lish. There were no fights, and the cops didn’t have to show up. Someone counted about 80 folks not including the kids. Clean up was a snap, my testosterone level is back to normal, and I don’t think there was a single reported case of heat castration.
Jerome may have been a Jemima instead. But it is too late to find out now—the freezer is full of leftovers.
Life continues to be good. Did I mention how good it is to be home?
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