When I was a little girl, I lived in a very small town in the hill country of South Carolina on the North Carolina line. There was a Mr. Turner who owned a shoe store located beside my Daddy's TV Repair store uptown, but there was another Mr. Turner who lived out in the country. That Mr. Turner had pigs!
I just loved pigs.
Daddy and both Mr. Turners were friends, but we only ever went to visit the Mr. Turner in the country. I LOVED going to Mr. Turner's house. He had a very long porch that was excellent for running when it was raining. I would run and run and run on that porch until Daddy made me stop. Back and forth and back and forth with my arms stretched out wide or swinging in time to my feet. Elbows bent as I ran and ran.
Oftentimes I'd look down and watch my feet as I ran. I fancied myself very fast. I'm guessing I was about three or four years old at the time. Hair flying behind my back as I ran and ran and ran.
If it wasn't raining when we visited, Mr. Turner would take me to see the pigs. He would carry their food in a big metal bucket and say, "Soo-ee! Soo-pig! Soo-ee!" and here they'd come a'running. Snortin' and gruntin' and carryin' on like only pigs can do.
Sometimes Mr. Turner would let me call the pigs. I'd yell as loud as I could, "Soo-eeeeeee!!! Soo-pig-sooooo-eeeee!" in my little girl voice and clap my hands and dance with delight when they'd finally come. Daddy and Mr. Turner would just grin.
Mr. Turner would "slop the pigs" by pouring the contents of that big metal bucket into a long wooden trough. The "slop" was mostly day old bread, old vegetables from the garden, milk about to go bad, and such. It had a smell I will never forget. Pig slop always smelled like that.
The pigs ate that food like they were starving to death. They stuck their little flat noses in that trough and ate and ate and ate and grunted the whole time. Their fat bellies got rounder and rounder every time I saw them.
Mr. Turner took good care of his animals. I can just see him. He was very tall compared to me and he always wore an old hat which made him look taller. He wore overalls that had about a million pockets to hold apples and such to give the Mama pigs as treats.
Sometimes those pockets even held a piece of hard candy or a penny for a little girl. You just never knew what to expect.
I used to look forward to visiting Mr. Turner with my Daddy. We used to visit him a lot, but when Daddy got sick we didn't visit anyone anymore.
Many years later when I was a teenager I happened upon Mr. Turner's old house. It was deserted then and had fallen into disrepair. Everything overgrown and rotting. No pigs to slop. No Mr. Turner keeping everything in order. But the saddest thing I saw was the old porch on the house. It look like the years had shrunk it, just like putting a wool sweater in a dryer. The porch looked narrow and not long at all. My teenage legs could run that porch in a just few leaps. It made me so very sad.
Mr. Turner and his porch and his pigs still live larger than life in my memory though. He's standing there smiling with a chaw of tobacco in his mouth and his thumbs stuck in a couple of those pockets while he's listening to the latest news from town told by my Daddy.
Those were the days, dear readers. Yes. Those were the days.
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