Petunia Complicates Vacation Plans, 1981

Petunia was about to farrow and we went on vacation anyway. Our family didn’t take elaborate vacations, choosing instead to either camp in the little pickup camper or visit my grandmother in Chicagoland. This particular time, we were off to visit my Baba, and Geoffrey was a nervous wreck. Petunia, his FFA project sow, would be left behind, tended to by the Baarlie’s, our neighbors and veteran professional pig farmers. Petunia, they assured us, would be in good hands. Pig reproduction is pretty clockwork, so she should farrow after we returned. But if she did go early, the Baarlies would be right there to help her out, knowing all the signs so well as they did. So we left them with Baba’s phone number (no cell phones in those days, of course), and drove south through Wisconsin and into the Land of Lincoln.

I have no idea what Petunia thought of the abandonment by her caregivers. It’s quite possible that between the boredom and sadness of being left alone, she suffered a bit. Petunia was a long pig, known as a white pig, but really she was very pink. She was friendly and fun-loving. She liked to be out of her pen and hanging out in the yard with us, where she would snuff and dig and grunt happily nearby. But we were under strict rules not to keep her out in the sun too long as she could get sunburned as easily as we could. Petunia was kind to the kittens, bold with the dogs, and eager to see what might be coming out of the kitchen. She loved, loved, loved to be scratched behind the ears and under the chin, and did not have any sort of nasty smell about her. She was also a wonderful barometer, and would stir in her pen loudly to alert us all to get inside if bad weather was on its way. She also seemed to glow in the dark. When we would visit her pen after dark, she would leave her shed to greet us, luminous and swift. We all rather liked Petunia, a much more fun FFA project than the dull Holstein steer calves that chewed and stamped and swatted flies.

But leave her behind we did. Our vacation went well: probably this was one of those times when we did some hanging out at my grandmother’s large backyard, gobbling all her raspberries, and complaining that we bored. And maybe, to get us off her back, a trip to Great America (before it was part of the Six Flags franchise), to ride the coasters and lock our keys in the car.

Then Geoff called the Baarlies. Mike was in my class in school and Julie was in Geoff’s, and we were good friends, and I’m sure I’d like them still. Bad news: Petunia was missing from her pen. So as we returned north to our home and barn west of Bruce, we tried to imagine the best. We speculated that she was shy of the Baarlies, who probably smelled of strange pigs, and she was just hiding when they came over. Yes, that must be it. We tried not to imagine the worst, but those thoughts crept up. Maybe she hid in the woods to farrow, and died giving birth. Or the coyotes attacked her when she was down. The hawks had stolen her piglets. We were surrounded by miles of woods and fields, and our part of the county was sparsely populated. She could be anywhere.

So the night we arrive home to learn she still had not been found, we were all worried. This certainly cast a shadow over our vacation and the regrets began to mount. The Baarlies had already notified all the neighbors, and just to make sure, Geoff called them, too. On the party-line phone, really we only needed to make sure that Mrs. Dixon overheard the conversation, and then it would be all over the countryside that our pig was missing.

The next day, we got a call from the golf course down south by Amacoy Lake: they had our pig. She had been found excavating the 9th hole, rooting for grubs or worms or acorns. Geoff was so relieved. My dad was mortified: who knows how much the golf course repairs would cost? But the course owner took it in stride: so many golfers were amused by the friendly pig and the funny roundup to catch her, that they took it as an excuse to stay late, buying each other rounds in the clubhouse.

So Geoff and my dad fetched the silly girl home, traveling 5 miles in the back of the temperamental Ford Bronco. She was a bit scratched up from berry briars, and muddy from head to toe, but she was otherwise fine and still pregnant. So Petunia was installed back in her pen, with some fresh food and water. She farrowed the next day, producing a fine collection of the most adorable baby piglets, all as luminous and pink as she was.

Semester Buzzkill

It has always seemed to me to be the worst way to end a semester: final exams. You start out by taking a perfectly fine class full of (mostly) perfectly fine students (hey, you know who you are) and then we gang up on them. After working all semester to create esprit de corps, cooperative work habits, and something approaching fun, the instructors all launch into full-scale clobbering mode. Yep, one or two cumulative exams a day for a week ought to do it. Three exams in one day is not allowed. That would be piling on.

Does it leave a bad taste in the students’ psyches? I don’t particularly look back at final exams from my student days with distaste toward my professors. I remember thinking that they were just doing their jobs. But now that I’m the one “just doin’ my job, ma’am,” I feel so bad about it. Does it have to be this way? Couldn’t we instead have a final party? Nope. Instead, we create a class memory moment wrought from exhaustion, discomfort, worry, and just plain wanting it be over. Maybe they are so exhausted that they don’t remember it at all? Can’t say that I remember any of my final exams.

But then again, maybe the final exam is a way to signal that the relationship is over and they can turn away from us and move on. A formal way of shoving the fledglings out of our nests and into somebody else’s bigger and more sophisticated nests. Where they will strengthen their wings and learn some new moves.

But still – the tradition is a bit rough on the students. And on the instructors who grow fond of their fledglings. See ya ’round, chemists.

Twin Peaks

This site is a mirror to my original "Molehill Mountain" blog at molehillmountain.wordpress.com. I'm going to post both of them, and then later decide which format I'd like to stick with. So for the time being, there are two Molehill Mountains. When one of them gets leveled in a fit of pique, or by falling in love with Blogger or Wordpress, I'll let you know.

Snow in May - A Blast From the Past

It’s freezing cold in May. Frost warnings for this weekend, and snow advisory for the north, expecting up to four inches of snow. So, naturally, my thoughts turn to fishing.

The most extensively-prepared-for family outing when I was a kid happened to be the opening day of Fishing Season on May 5 in my high school days. Sandwiches were prepared. Creels were located. Trout fish size limits and bag limits were carefully reviewed. Poles? Check. Reels and line? Check. Hooks? Check. Brothers? Check. Snow? What? Snow? Yes, that morning it snowed several inches on top of us as we sat just after dawn in the Blue Hills, lines in the water. How ridiculous!

Back when I was an outdoors girl growing up in the north woods, I used to go fishing. Not obsessively, but frequently. Some of my favorite memories are sitting with some family member or another beside a body of water, casting a line out and jawing. But quietly jawing. As anybody knows, fish don’t like to be eaten by raucous chatterboxes, preferring to be masticated by demure young ladies.

All kinds of important information was passed along during these fishing trips. With my grandmother, I got the other side of the stories that I had always been too little to hear. Those stories changed my mind about things a bit. She taught me to never forget to bring toilet paper, so that you wouldn’t run the risk of having to use poison ivy leaves when wiping up. She knew this from first-hand experience. Also, it’s a good idea to keep hand lotion and crochet supplies in your tackle box.

With my brothers, I got all the high school gossip that swirled and stormed and jack-knifed through the halls and missed me every time. Sometimes my jaw hung agape at what they told me. To my brothers, I gave more cautionary tales than they were in the mood for. (I was an EXCELLENT big sister: bossy AND a know-it-all.) Plus there were bait fights. Noisy affairs which guaranteed no fish. But Randall did catch a clam on a sinker once. Clams apparently could care less about noisy fisherfolk.

With my step-dad, I learned all kinds of stuff: how to reel in the really big ones (I never did get any practice with that skill), how old sturgeon can grow to be, why Johnny Cash was supreme ruler of the music kingdom, how to remove bloodsuckers with a shaker of salt. I also learned that if I were to again embed a hook and worm in my scalp, I should be very still and not panic. And to wear a hat next time. I also learned how to put a little bit of white paper on the tip of your pole so you can see nibbling and striking action in the dark. A lot of lore and instructions about Coleman lanterns was shared, but the lantern intricacies were never less than mysterious. For example, how can those little mantles burn and burn and never burn up? And a very good lesson: when to cut the line and go home.

I would listen keenly to my mom and her friend Pam talk about disgusting grown-up women stuff. I always pretended to ignore them, of course. But from them I learned the ins and outs of boyfriends and babies, the best recipes were the ones you got from friends, the pros and cons of teen pregnancy, and that even grownups can have a lot of fun being with their friends. Which was a bit of a shock, because of course, to a high-schooler, the only possible fun thing is to be with teenaged friends.

My uncle Mike was the one who would keep us entertained for hours telling jokes and making us sing along to the “Duke of Earl.” And even when we’d be skunked after hours of fishing, he could fling a cigarette butt into the water and we’d be darned if a fish wouldn’t come up after that butt. Stinkin’ fish wouldn’t eat our carefully selected and applied bait, but a cigarette butt would be devoured. Although once we saw it get sent back up the top, having been found lacking. Some fish can be discriminating.

And as I grew older, I would join my high school friends out fishing for river catfish at night, playing cards and sitting by fires in the dark. They were cheaters, putting bells on their poles and bobbers on their lines. Bells, for chrissakes. This was insurance to give them time to catch their poles before they got pulled into the river, so distracted were they by their card games.

And so as we await the first May snowstorm since I was a high school girl, I remember my six perfect trout from opening day and my mouth waters at their delicate taste, all buttery and crisp from a quick trip through the frying pan. And I’m thankful for those quiet and fun moments shared with my family and friends.