October brings memories of hog killin' time to me.
My brother has a friend who is an artist. He asked him to paint a picture of hog killin' time from his verbal description. This is the picture.
It is not tonally accurate, but it is close. I remember Mama's big ol' white coffee cup. Daddy had a vat dug in the ground with fire under it for scalding the hogs, not one on a stand. I remember the crisp cold air with the smell of wood smoke drifting in it.
My job when I was 8 or 9 years old was pouring boiling water through the chittlins. The women would cut one end of the chittlins and squeeze the contents out. They would open the top end, and I would pour the water into it. Repeat until they were clean. That smell was not as pleasant as the wood smoke.
Later, when I was older, my job was cooking. We would have collards, baked sweet potatoes, some kind of dry beans, fresh tenderloin, liver. hashlet, and cornbread. It was a feast fit for a king or hard-working people.
