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Here goes:

I was about nine and my dad (Superman) had spent half the spring and all of summer carrying 100 pound sacks of feed up this steep hill we lived on way back in the holler to feed this pig he bought to raise for meat to feed his starving family of wife, two brats and his old hag mother (my grandma Superwoman).

Finally the day came in mid fall to whack the fat, senseless thing in the head, gut it on a tripod and carry the carcass a bit farther up the steep hill to a wooden shed atop the cellar.

Superwoman told Superman that he didn’t have the slightest idea how to sugar cure a whole hog let alone start on it in an old drafty shed after dark but Superman, being the stalwart sort he was, shrugged her off with a wave of his mighty hand and bade me follow him to the ritual site to assist in the sacred ablutions.

Being a bit sleepy and more than a little nauseous from the day’s sights and smells, I dutifully followed him up the path, around the back and into the tomb-like musty environs.

Instantly I saw at the flick of a switch that he had carefully laid out the operating theater beforehand as there were brushes, bags of sugar, two or three drop cords and a big old wooden table where the now ripe, corpulent carcass awaited.

Like a village smithy he stripped to his waist, bare chest glistening in sweat; with his brow furrowed in concentration he handed me the nearest dropcord with bare bulb affixed and instructed me to hold it high as he began the gruesome task.

As he began massaging the lifeless corpse he grinned and smacked his lips as though he could already taste the succulent ribs to be presented with great flair when the cupboard ran bare.

Me, I began to sag from all the activity and the awful stench that now filled the entire shed. He reached in his pocket as a magician might pull an endless handkerchief and presented me with an all-day sucker.

Unwrapping it, I figured that this was all I was going to get until the ordeal was over and greedily began to suck on it for whatever nourishment I could glean.

Then the true boredom set in and the lollipop lost its flavor and my eyes began to droop as my hand holding the dropcord began to tire. I switched hands from dropcord to sucker and back as the night dragged on, now becoming quite dark and mixed with unitelligible cursing as the “curing” process appeared to be going terribly awry.

As my head was about to drop to my chest, Superman yelled for me to wake up and slapped his huge hand on the sow’s swollen belly for emphasis.

With a start I lifted the lollipop high in the air, licked the lightbulb and the whole scene disappeared in a wink.

Man, do I hate pigs.