Over Here: 19 - Slop Dujour
..."Come on out," I sweetly invited Cousin Dana. "You can see the pigs a lot better from out here." Putting one small patent-leather foot ahead of the other, she daintily tiptoed onto the board, knowing that Cousin Ronnie would be there to help if she should encounter trouble...
But Cousin Ronnie had other ideas!
Ron Pataky continues his entertaining autobiography.
Every Saturday night as they returned back to the farm from the market, Grandpa would stop at Nichols Bakery, where he would load the car trunk absolutely full with bakery bread that had more or less out-sat its usefulness to commerce and the more discriminating of the human species.
The bakery was glad to get rid of it. Grandpa was glad to get it, using it to slop the pigs by water-soaking portions of the ripped-apart loaves and unceremoniously dumping the mess from an elevated board walkway into the spacious pig pen. Frankly, the whole thing seemed a bit uncouth to Gordie and me, although other moments during the day might indeed find us picking mold from the pieces that we intended to consume (directly from the car trunk yet!) We were, after all, growing boys. I can't even imagine the quantity of dough (and mold) we consumed during those years, but it surely must have exceeded the altogether normal
carbohydrate/mold intake of any other two kids in town! (This was before my stint at the family market, remember. It wasn't always that I'd had free reign concerning all the apricots, chestnuts, apples, and sauerkraut I could eat! No indeed! There actually was a no-frills period in my young life when my elective diet consisted almost solely of moldy bread served deliciously stale out of a questionable, ALL-purpose car trunk!).
I can't leave the pig-pen story without including a since-infamous sidebar, oft repeated through the years. I have two cousins on my dad's said, both girls. While I love them today and thoroughly enjoy their all-too-infrequent company, I didn't really care much for the perceived uselessness of girls during my pig-pen days. One bright Sunday, Dana and Donna Pataky, Henry's daughters, visited the farm. They were, of course, dressed in Sunday finery, which made them look like the sort of insipid play-dolls a guy might see in some disgusting store window on any town square in America. They probably were dressed in pink or something, and probably were wearing bows in the back. Yuk!
Whatever their colors and ribbon arrangements, they made the mistake of joining me in back of the barn (where I was in denim finery and bowless). Disgusted with the idea of wasting an entire Sunday in their silly, unrewarding company, I seriously questioned the sanity of Grandpa and Grandma! Surely, they should have known better than to import these two useless girls into our Huckleberry lives! Well! We'd see about that!
Dana was nearly my age, which made her fair game. I was standing perched in the middle of two lengthy two-by-tens, the thick boards supported at either end by barrels and hand-dug posts. It was, as I mentioned above, a kind of primitive walkway from which we could scatter the slop dujour. (With all of the du jours, incidentally, bearing a remarkable similarity, one to the other. Pigs are not known for the subtleness - or the fragrancy, I might add! - of their cuisine).
"Come on out," I sweetly invited Cousin Dana. "You can see the pigs a lot better from out here." Putting one small patent-leather foot ahead of the other, she daintily tiptoed onto the board, knowing that Cousin Ronnie would be there to help if she should encounter trouble. "Hold onto me," she pleaded, "I mustn't get my dress dirty!"
That was about all it took. I wish today that I could say that I'd accidentally let her slip or something. But, no. I pushed her! I actually PUSHED her! Right into the center of what I knew even then was the damnedest, messiest porridge the girl would ever, ever encounter again - even if she lived to be a four hundred!
If Uncle Henry had gotten hold of me that day, the remnants of my bruised body parts would be moldering in my grave to this day! And probably unmarked, thereby guaranteeing everlasting anonymity. The same for the certain grasp of my dad! Or Grandpa! Hell, I think even Grandma would have slapped me silly! Short of being caught, however, I still think that, but for a few curious turns of fate, I might be wandering the large, adjacent woods yet today, forging loincloths out of tree-bark, and foraging wild onions, berries, and larger crawdads from the creek bed!
What has always amused me since is the way Dana, who always has had a curious sense of humor, loves to tell the story from time to time. She sure didn't care for it then! (Dana today has been married for a good many years to Don Myers of Seymour, IN. They have the well-known Swifty gas stations, and raise thoroughbreds on their Indiana estate. My presumption is that she continues to have as little to do with animal droppings as fate and sufficient funds could conceivably allow! Even those of thoroughbreds!).
