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Updated: June 3, 2025
But pitching grain and hog-killing were on the lower levels of his art, for above all else Daddy loved to be called upon to play the fiddle for dances. He "officiated" for the first time at a dance given by one of the younger McTurgs.
Handle delicately if the wafers are what they should be; they break and crumble at any rough touch. Plenty in the smokehouse was the cornerstone of the old time southern cookery. Hence hog-killing was a festival as joyous as Christmas and little less sacred. There was keen rivalry amongst plantations as to which should show the finest pen of fattening hogs.
But as fall again approached the two friends, Lot and Enoch, planned to go trapping on the upper waters of the Otter and its branches as soon as harvest and hog-killing should be over and the winter really set in. Lot had several steel traps which had belonged to his father, and Enoch was likewise supplied.
He liked him, because he gave him such nice chews of tobacco, and was always so ready to lend a helping hand in hog-killing time, or when a horse was sick; neither had he ever heard him called Timothy before, and the name sounded oddly, but he classed it with the fine ways of his new sister, who called him Anderson, though he so much wished she wouldn't.
Many of the old neighbors died or moved away, and the young people went West or to the cities. Men began to pity him rather than laugh at him, which hurt him more than their ridicule. They began to favor him at threshing or at the fall hog-killing. "Oh, you're getting old, Daddy; you'll have to give up this heavy work. Of course, if you feel able to do it, why, all right!
Close on the heels of hog-killing came sausage-making, when meat had to be chopped and flavoured, and stuffed into cotton bags or prepared gut. Then the heads and feet had to be soaked and scraped over and over again, and when ready were boiled, the one being converted into head- cheese, the other into souse.
With the snow came hog-killing, and among pioneer people this season was usually one of rejoicing. In the old times it had been a sort of festival, for with the first fall of snow all danger from marauding bands of red men ceased. The Indians would not send out war parties when every footstep would be plainly visible to the white settlers.
Had he known how real was his jesting prophecy of danger, he would not have joked. As a rule, walrus-hunting in the Arctic is not a sport, it is a task the day's work of providing food for a village. It is as exciting as the "hog-killing day" of a middle-west farmer. The hog may run amuck of the farmer, and so may the walrus of the hunter; the chances are about equal.
Salt bacon and "greens," with corn bread and thin coffee, composed the common diet, though milk and butter relieved the monotonous fare for the farmers. "Hog-killing time" was always a happy season, for fresh meats were then abundant. Only in the larger towns did the people have fresh meats throughout the year.
As each field became stripped, stock would be turned in to feast upon the peas and pumpkins. With winter came that period of bliss to the soul of Cuffee, namely, the hog-killing, when even the smallest urchin might revel in grease and fresh meat.
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