Up until now, I’ve always been in too much of a hurry, either driving by one end of Pig Street on the way to a friend’s home or passing the other end while taking the “back road” to a local diner. Once I stopped and photographed the sign, but I went no further.
There’s an old joke about the City Slicker who was walking down a country road and spotted a farmer standing under an apple tree with a pig in his arms, enabling the animal to eat the ripe apples on the tree. The City Slicker – eager to prove that the intellect of City Slickers is not to be sneered at – stopped and called out to the farmer:
“Wouldn’t it save a lot of time if you left that pig on the ground and just shook the tree?”
The Farmer considered the suggestion for a moment and then replied, “Well, I suppose it might… but what’s time to a pig?”
Which brings me back to Pig Street.
On the way to the diner this morning, Raymond noticed the road sign, Pig Street, and it prompted him to recount how that name might have come about. “I remember somebody telling me the story of how, a long time ago, maybe back in the thirties, a couple of fellows tried to steal a bunch of pigs from one of the local farmers. In the middle of the night, they drove to this fella’s farm and were trying to herd his pigs onto their truck, except that as soon as they’d get some on, others would jump off. Realizing they needed some help with the heist, they knocked on the farmer’s door. He answered it, and they explained that they had this load of pigs to deliver and they had gotten some of them off the truck when they realized they were at the wrong address. They said they were having a devil of a time getting them all back on the truck, and they asked the farmer if he could give them a hand. The farmer said, sure, he would, and presently all the pigs were loaded and the truck on its way. It wasn’t until the next day that the farmer realized his barn was empty of pigs!”
So I drove the length of Pig Street this morning. It’s a pleasant dirt road, but the farms are gone. What was once pasture and hay fields has returned to woods and cedar marshes encouraged by the arrival of beavers. I didn’t see a single pig.
Wizened Wizard 