My father made things

He made things out of whatever came to hand. He made things with no consideration of aesthetics whatsoever. He made things to last. What he is known best for among all of us is that what he made, whether it worked or not, was indestructible.

Once a need was identified, there could be no rest until it was fulfilled. there were a number of criteria to be met. First and foremost it had to be free, or at very least it had to cost next to nothing. Second, nothing used in the construction could be new. Third, it had to survive ground zero of a thirty-megaton nuclear blast.

Everything my old man made met all three criteria.

The pig box was a masterpiece. The pig box was built to ship the pigs the old man raised. Built of two-by-sixes spiked together and bolted, it weighed two hundred pounds at least. Dozens of pigs were shipped in it.
The last time the pig box was used was to transport a pig that still exists in family legend. The old man decided to expand his pig operation by raising his own litters and selling weaner pigs. "Mama Lisa" was his first sow. She was a huge and  homicidal, with tusks. Few female pigs have tusks, they're usually only on boars. She was ill-tempered, dangerous and enormous, lurking in the pig pen wishing us all dead.

In the spring of my twelfth year we moved. The last thing we moved was Mama Lisa.

By the time we moved we were on our second truck, a wheezing '53 Chevy with rust holes big enough to put both hands in and clap. My brother, 18 and two of his friends were there, my dad and I, and the pig box. Everything prepared, a dish of food was placed inside. We all assumed she would walk calmly in and be trapped, as simple as that, it usually went  that way with other pigs.

Mama Lisa wasn't like other pigs.

She looked at us with beady-eyed contempt, she snorted derisively as if to say "You don't really expect me to fall for that, do you??" she snuffled around in front of the box for a while as we fumed and waited. We tried unsuccessfully to coax her, cajole her, to bait her, and to force her, nothing worked. The springtime sun was beginning to fade, we were hungry, we were frustrated, we were desperate. The pig had to be moved today.  Finally, a trap was set.

Admittedly, the trap lacked sophistication. It was a loop of rope laid out on the ground. Some food was scattered around, hoping she would stroll unsuspectingly into it. I still think she took pity on us. She nosed around the food for awhile until she had eaten it all, then, almost resignedly, placed her front trotter inside the loop.

We seized the rope with a frantic desperation. firmly trapping her left front foot, the rope had been laced through the pig box beforehand and we heaved with our considerable combined strength. Slowly, painfully slowly, she was dragged shrieking into the box. Beads of sweat popped out on our foreheads, our teeth were bared. we knew we could not fail, god, there was no way in hell we could hope to do this in the dark, dusk was already well upon us.

Inch by desperate inch Mama Lisa was drawn into the box. The flesh pulling from our hands on the rough, unforgiving rope. Once her forequarters were past the entrance I was sent around to the back to push her in. I set to my job with a crazed will. Slapping her ample backside and shouting obscenities at her, I drove her forward until only eight inches of her keester was outside the box. The old man was shouting "For Christ's sake, close the goddamn door!!!"  I was shouting "She's not all the way inside!!!" We exchanged these shouts six or seven times until he finally suspected I might be right. Leaving my brother and his friend to hold the rope he dashed around back to see what was happening. He was wearing his "Jesus Christ! do I have to hold your goddamn hand?" face... until he saw her butt sticking out the door with me clutching it, my boots digging furrows in the dirt as I pushed frantically.

She was a hell of a big pig, as a matter of fact, too big for the pig box.
 

Desperation seized him. Something had to be done, and done immediately. He looked around, his eyes taking on a kill-or-be-killed gleam, his lips curling back in a feral snarl. His mind whirled through a thousand possible scenarios and rejected them all. His tools were already moved, all his precious hoard of odd bits of lumber were at the new house as well. It was the closest I ever saw my father to panic. The problem of lumber was soon solved, he strode over and tore a board off the neighbors fence, (after all, they weren't our neighbors anymore, now were they?)) the nails were bent (of course) and he had no hammer to pound them with. He reverted to the Neanderthal, all that was left to him was what lay on the ground. He had studied anthropology so the solution was obvious.

With four hundred pounds of shrieking pig writhing in the wooden box and sweat dripping from the end of his nose my dad reached down and picked up a fist-sized rock, a stone tool, something that had served man from the very dawn of time. We all watched wide-eyed as the nails were pounded out, beaten straight and readied in the board.

A dark, brooding man strode toward me, a man who would not have looked out of place with the blood of a mastodon gleaming on his hairy skin, a man who would ship this pig or get us all killed in the attempt, the survival of the tribe required it. We both set our shoulders to the pig's butt, and shoved forward with every ounce of our might, something had to give, and it was her, she bent in the middle and for no more than a nanosecond her entire body was inside the box.

It was enough.

The old man lunged, grabbed the board and the rock, slamming the stone in crazed fury. He spiked the 2X6 diagonally across her ample posterior, affixing it questionably at best.

 "Right, let's get the hell out of here" he muttered.

I don't clearly remember doing it but the  five of us somehow wrestled the four hundred pounds of enraged pork and two hundred pounds of groaning, rapidly loosening wood into the back of the pickup. We all piled into the back, the  old man leapt into the cab, gripping the wheel in a fury, grinding the gears and making all six cylinders moan and bellow in protest. The springs were bottomed out as we tore from the driveway, leaning precariously we pulled out onto the road, the four of us in the back holding on for our very lives, Mama Lisa shrieking and roaring. This was how I bade farewell to the first house I ever lived in.

We sped down the road in the gathering darkness. wind whipping through our hair, impossible to hear any conversation below a shout. None of us, however had any trouble hearing the first splintering crack from the pig box.

Mama Lisa's back emerged from the top of the box. I remember it clear as day twenty five years later. I remember being fascinated at how similar it was to an old Japanese monster movie. I remember the stark terror as My mind's eye brought forth a picture of this creature loose among us, I made a firm, cold decision to take my chances with the pavement at 50 miles an hour rather than face her in the back of the truck. Mercifully, we shot into the driveway of the new place. The truck spun around and pointed the tailgate at the barn, it was backed to the door and a crude ramp fashioned at the speed of light.

The boards were cracking at a terrifying rate now, the pig had to be off-loaded immediately or we would lose her at the very threshold. Tony and his friends grabbed the front of the box and poised it over the ramp which led into Mama Lisa's new pen, my father, without a second's hesitation handed me the end of the rope and said "Get in there and pull her out when they tip it up"

I admit, I was a dunce.

Automatically, without a second's forethought I hopped over the fence and stood there as the box was tipped up, I gave a manly heave on the rope.

I will never in my life forget what she looked like sliding ass-first down that plywood ramp. Four hundred pounds of porcine bobsled at three hundred miles per hour. A meaty smack as her hind quarters met the concrete and skidded to my feet. Fascinated, hypnotized, I stood there, unable to believe what I had just seen, believing that it was now all over, safe at last.

Her tusks sliced the air a sixteenth of an inch from my left leg, her red eyes looked into mine with icy, pure hatred, she regained her feet faster than I could have imagined and spun at me again. All I remember after that was vaulting the three-foot fence at a sprint. I landed, gasping,  at my father's feet.
 

It was the first time I ever shouted obscenities at my old man.

Email me