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You know it is always great to have company and do worthwhile things together. Well back in the late 70's we had such a meaningful gathering at dad's house. Fourth of July, Independence day, a day to celebrate our freedom with a feast!
So with temperatures in the low 100 degree range, dad and Lucky started talking about the ole days when company got together you would butcher a hog and have a feast. Well damn, dad had plenty of hogs and lots of time, hey why not! Welllllllllll, there is reason you butcher hogs, deer and the such in the fall. One is called it is just too hot in July, another is called flies.
But not to be deterred we went on with the celebration out to the hog pen with 22 rifle and a butcher knife. The idea is to shoot the hog dead, then cut the throat to bleed it. Remember that is the idea. Well as I remember the hog didn't just fall over dead like it was supposed to. It played possum, until dad got in there to cut its throat. He sure was fast back then. Good thing for having the butcher knife to finish off the hog and ready the feast. Dad always was good with a butcher knife.
Sometimes things just don't go as expected with dad and his brothers when it comes to doing things they did as kids. Oh yea we had the 55 gallon barrel, we had the water and memories of building the fire under it to get just the right temperature so the hair would just fall off that pig. But you know if you get the water to hot….and we did, it sets the hair. By that I mean the hair is sort of petrified into the skin. Makes kind of a butch hair cut in stone. Well of course that is what we did, otherwise this story wouldn't have much hair in it if you follow my drift. So with the hair set solid in that pig what could we do?
It did not take but a second for someone, you know how sharp us Barnes's can be, I don't remember who to suggest…SHAVING the hair off. Say that could work! We got the soap and lots of razors and began to give that hog a trim. But it was like trimming steel wool. By now we were all laughing and sweating like ….pigs, out of razors and still lots of hair to cut. Someone quickly suggested we should just burn off that ole hair. Yea that sounded like a good idea. So out comes the butane torches, we had two, to get this hog closer to the table. Have you ever smelled hair burning in 100 degree bright summer sunshine on a pig? We didn't stay with that technique very long. It just wasn't working with the silky smoothness we were looking for, plus the added heat wasn't needed. Ok, who has an answer on what to do next? Well dang lets just hang it up from the hickory tree and SKIN that hog like a deer. And so we did. Along with thousands of flies, guiding our every cut, not your ordinary little ole house flies. No, we had that great green blow fly variety, fresh from the cow...dung. Those flies were celebrating the holiday from the pig to our sweating bodies, back and forth. I am not sure which they liked the most. Don't you know everyone was really getting hungry for some of that barbeque pig right about then. Well that stubborn hairy hog, nor the heat, nor those big green flies, kept us from getting that meat from the hickory tree to the kitchen.
Now this is where you do the final and delicate cutting and trimming to get those meat portions just right. So dad got the ax and our big hatchet and we began to trim. It did not take long before we had that beast all divided up, bone chips and all slipped into pretty white packages wrapped and in the freezer.
I think we had sandwiches and chips that Fourth of July, oh but what a great day.

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