Hogs, Mules, and Yellow Dogs: Growing Up on a Mississippi Subsistence Farm

The No-yer’d Bar

111 The No-yer’d Bar In the end we all come to be cured of our sentiments. Those whom life does not cure death will. The world is quite ruthless in selecting between the dream and the reality . . . Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting. —Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses The ancient pre-Hellenic Greek practice of making sacred the slaughter and consumption of a domestic animal was far from a miraculous process, but it contained an element of induced nobility on the part of the animal, and perhaps was cathartic for those Homo sapiens whose blood was not spilt. Our hog-killing ritual was a festival for the Hillman family. It was not Dionysian, but we marked the practice with special theater: washing, dressing in clean garments, and adorning aprons, gloves, and ear muffs. Animals were chosen, sprinkled with “holy water,” which is to say their slaughter had been accepted and blessed, and by some strange interpretive action, such as a look in their eyes or a nodding of their head, I believed they had assented to their own sacrifice. Before the discovery of agriculture, it appears that man practiced the ritual of the sacrificial meal, which focused on the hunting of big game as a source of food. Killing to eat, as Walter Burkert describes in his book Greek Religion, was an unalterable commandment, yet the bloody act was not without danger and fear. The evolution of animal sacrifice and slaughter for consumption continued in Near East and Semitic cultures, culminating with the famous command from God to Simon Peter on the rooftop of the house of the Roman centurion Cornelius: “Rise, kill, and eat.” Nothing blessed by God, and sacred, was to be considered “unclean.” Thus it was that through the centuries animal slaughter for food became a sanctioned part of Beginnings 112 Christendom, and Western tradition. And so it was that decades of Hillman family practice took very seriously the slaughter of animals as a necessity for our survival and well-being. Our custom of winter hog killing had become a ritual, but not one with ulterior intent. It was not pagan in the sense of the ancient Greek ceremony. Perhaps there was some unspoken feeling between man and animal, because, after all, both had eaten the same corn, potatoes, and herbs. But there was nothing more than a momentary reflective pause on the part of the man whose job it was to stun the hog’s brain and bleed the gullet: no killer regret, nor remorse for his actions. The process was an act of senseless reflection. Sacrifice in this sense was not a word in our vocabulary. And most assuredly, the animal showed no sign of tacit or feigned understanding of the oncoming act. In our culture, there was ritual but no suggestion of religious motif in the killing of hogs. Yet as a farm lad on these occasions, I sensed a mystery. We were taking one animal’s life so that another might endure, replacing temporal with immortal. Over time, “kill and eat” became more disturbing to me, although I never became a vegetarian. Only decades later did I discover what the Greek word koinonia really means: Community must sacrifice flesh and blood in order to renew humankind’s journey toward Being. Hogs were ubiquitous and played a quintessential role in the earlynineteenth -century development of Greene County. By the 1920s and 1930s, all human routine of the extended family of Charles Hillman was focused on subsistence living. Hogs were central to every activity. While not revered in a religious sense, they were respected for their role. We never mistreated them. Although Mississippi custom did not equate hog and man, one local sage had it: “Even a hog’s got his rights.” The Crash of 1929 deepened the already depressed economic conditions in Greene County, causing both man and hog to suffer. These economic disruptions had hastened the flight of the destitute in the cities to their families and friends in the rural countryside. We grew subsistence crops, but since cotton and timber were the foci of commercial activity, acreage was always devoted to them, as they were 113 The No-yer’d Bar the only source for cash. Hogs supplemented our marginal living, and pork dominated all meat consumption. Aunt Gin, my grandmother, was one of the few who were not afraid to confront Grandpa...