Mondale Escapes!

I was raised on lots of foods that are really, really bad for you but taste really, really good. We grew our own vegetables in the garden and we kept chickens, rabbits, goats, pigs, and anything else that we could get our hands on. Now all of that stuff isn’t necessarily “bad” for you. However, the way it is prepared can be. You see, in our minds, the only way that foods taste good is if you fry them. We fried practically everything. Fried chicken, rabbit, taters, tomatoes, okra (which we pronounce Oak-ree) sausage, bacon, ham, pork chops, and the list goes on and on and…well, you understand. In order to fry our foods, we made our own homemade lard (see the attached picture of my dad making lard), or we bought Crisco or Cloverleaf brand lard at the store. That’s one reason that, as an adult, I have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and am overweight, but… this post isn’t about my health problems, it’s about Mondale.

My very favorite food in life is, without a doubt, sausage. I love it, love it, love it. There is nothing better than waking up to the smell of fresh sausage frying in the pan. Add that, along with the aroma of JFG coffee and buttermilk biscuits, and you have stolen my enlarged, grease-filled heart. We used to make our own sausage. We would raise pigs (or Hogs if you prefer) and around Christmas time, when they were all fat and sassy and the temperature was nice and cold, Dad would get out the old .22 and assassinate the pig. Then, we would commence to butchering. I would go into details of hog butchering. However, this post isn’t about that, it’s about Mondale.

My dad always had a knack for finding just the perfect name for any animal that we had. For example, we once had 3 beagles in which he promptly named Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, in honor of the 3 children of Israel who survived being thrown into the fiery furnace because they would not bow down to King Nebuchadnezzar or worship the golden idols. A few other names Dad bestowed upon our animals were Bob, Limb, Stranger, Sooner, and General Lee, but… this post isn’t about all of those guys either, it’s about Mondale. Yeah…I’m getting to it. Just hang on.

One year, Dad bought a new pig. It was a distinguished looking animal; it wasn’t the cute, pinkish-looking pig like Wilbur from Charlotte’s Web. No, this pig was black. Now, don’t ask me why but dad took one look at that pig and decided to name it Mondale after the former US Vice President, Walter Mondale. Whether Dad meant it as a compliment or an insult, I don’t know, but that is what he named it. That pig seemed to like the name. Any time that I was around him and called out “Mondale”, he seemed to perk up and listen.

Instead of keeping Mondale in the usual pigpen up on the hill on my papaw’s land, we decided to keep it out back in a pen that we had constructed beside the chicken house. If you know anything about pigs, then you know that they like to root. A pig will root itself right out of a pen in a hurry unless you take preventive measures against it. The very first thing to do is to “ring” its nose. No, this isn’t for high-fashion pig status; it’s to keep them from using their noses for rooting. For some reason, we had not gotten around to ringing old Mondale’s nose yet.

I remember this day just like it was yesterday. It was a Saturday morning, I was sitting on the couch watching cartoons, when I heard dad in the kitchen talking to mom. “The daggum pig is gone!” “Gone? How could that be?” “Ah, I guess he rooted his way under the fence.” “I wonder where he’s went?” “There ain’t no telling. He probably went up into the woods.” “Well, I guess we better go look for him.” I walked into the kitchen, “Mondale has escaped?” “Yep, let’s go see if we can find him.” So, the whole family set out to find Mondale.

We were all over the backyard and in the woods behind our house searching and calling out “Mondale, here boy, Mondale!” Not a grunt or a squeal was ever heard. We asked the neighbors if they had seen Mondale. Not a hide nor hair was seen by anyone. It’s as if Mondale had vanished into thin air. We never did find that pig and we had to go without homemade sausage that year. Perhaps it was old Mondale’s way of trying to help us eat healthier, who knows.

So, if you are ever out in rural Knox County, TN and you happen upon a distinguished looking, black pig, it could very well be old Mondale. Tell him that Tug says hi and that I am still upset from having to do without homemade sausage back in ’78!

Stories from an Appalachian Market

Red and the Missus'

I saw her across the crowded dirt track that was the thoroughfare of Morristown, Tennessee's First Monday Market.

I had just had to convince my friend to NOT buy me a trio of ducklings. I was disarmed by the little bundles of fuzz as always, but remembering how taxing it is to brood waterfowl, I didn't want to bring them home with me. Plus, they needed special un-medicated feed and I didn't have a brooder set up. So I left the three baby Muscovy's there with some reluctance.

I turned and saw her. Her carriage was part of what drew my eye to her. She was thin like a reed with narrow shoulders and seemed to sway with a wind that only she could feel. Her smile was soft and sweet. She stood behind a booth fashioned from two card tables stuck together and planks that rested on the bed of the farm-weathered pick-up truck. She had a pile of T-shirts and some dolls laying out on the table. Some of the dolls were complete and some were just bodies and heads laying about like infants at a crime scene.

You know the sort of doll. It's a plastic doll with an over-sized head that has been lovingly dressed up in doilies and crocheted bits of garb. You don't play with these dolls. I'm never quite sure what you really are supposed to do with them other than show them off at the craft section of the county fair. I've seen their lower bodies removed so the bell-shaped skirt can be a tea cozy or hide a tissue box.

I smiled shyly at her and asked, "Did you make these?"

She looked very closely at my mouth as I spoke and I realized she was nearly deaf.

She brushed her wispy hair from the side of her face. "No, I jess picked them up at auction."

I knew what she was talking about. I liked to attend the auctions too. They will sell stuff in lots and one lot might have one thing that you are highly desirous of and everything else is just junk. I once picked up a bronze Chinese gui vase that someone had mistaken for a tractor part at auction but had to buy quite possibly the ugliest hand crocheted afghan in the world along with it. I sold it on EBay, labeling it, "Ugliest Afghan I've Ever Seen." I couldn't believe someone bought it.

She had a darkening bruise on the side of her chin that she reached up and stroked self-consciously. She felt compelled to explain it to me. I think she knew what it must look like.

"Well, I was chasing the great grandchild an' trying to keep up with him and I slipped on the wet grass. It could have been worse, I might have broken something."

I agreed with her and I did believe she has slipped and fallen. I couldn't imagine anyone striking such a delicate and lovely old woman.

As if he had heard, a jovial male voice boomed from the side of the old pick-up.

"She showing you where I clocked her one?"

He was like a trim, jolly, Appalachian Santa with his snow white beard and rosy complexion. He was 78 by his own admission. He still had some of his own teeth left though they weren't in the greatest of shape. But there was nothing sinister in the grin he seemed to perpetually wear. He wears the new, pressed Liberty overalls that seem to be the trademark of so many older Appalachian country gentlemen. A watch fob dangles out of the bib pocket.

As a couple, the two made perfect sense. She was the shy and sweet one and he was the gregarious one. They came here to the market every First Monday from their farm below Sevierville. They didn't seem to have much to sell, but I suspect this is more of a social outing than anything else for them.

She sits with the stand while he wanders about socializing. Neither of them can hear so good anymore. She is very quiet while he can chatter on a mile a minute.

He tells me that he and his wife like "old-timey" things. They like to live that way as well. This is a matter of familiarity and comfort for them. She still cans. He still makes a garden. They keep goats and birds. He shows off the set of ring-tailed doves he bought today to add to their dove cote.

He used to work with mules. He actually worked at Dollywood for a time and some TV commercials hired him and his mules. I could see how he would appear to be straight out of Central Casting to the outside world. Here, at Morristown's First Monday Market, he blends into the crowd.

They didn't ask him to talk much, he said. "Some of those fellers could talk more plainly, but I couldn't. I don't just look like the real thing, I told them, I am the real thing."

He had a stroke some years back and can no longer work the mules. He apologizes several times and says that since the stroke he "don't string together his words so good anymores".

I tell him that I hadn't noticed.

"So, how did you two meet?" I ask. It's my favorite question.

He looks at her with unbridled affection. She looks back and smiles.

"Well, we been married fifty-eight years." He says.

She smiles slyly and says, "My, has it been that long?"

He chuckles.

The first time he saw her he was at a church social. The point of the social was for each girl to bake a pie and then the boys would bid on the pies. The boy with the winning bid would then have the pleasure of sitting with the baker and sharing her pie with her for the evening.

"I didn't have no money so I didn't get a pie." He said. "But that was the first time I saw her and she was just a skinny little slip of a thing! Her arms weren't no bigger'n this!"

He demonstrates the thinness of her arms using his thumb and forefinger.

"She were only 13 at the time though. We didn't get married though until she were 17."

It took a while to disentangle myself from the threads of their conversation. I was happy that they were living their traditional Appalachian life on their own terms. But I can't help but wonder what is going to happen when all of them are gone. All of the ones like Red and the Missus'. I know they are disappearing, even though I live so firmly in their midst that the outside is what now seems strange to me.

In my mind's eye, I don't see them dying out. I just see them disappearing into the blue mist.

I guess I'll join them there some day.