Archie the Pig

One summer we didn’t have a dog, but we had a pig. In East LA Daddy was considered the person to go to when you had problems, legal or otherwise. He had done the income tax for somebody who had a litter of pigs, and they gave us a pig in exchange. The pig was weaned and we built him a little pen back by the chicken coop. We put the pig in it and started feeding him. I don’t suppose there was any law against a pig or a cow in the back yard in those days.

It was a boar piglet and we wanted to castrate it. Our next door neighbor, Bill Melford, half German-half Mexican and our good neighbor for years, knew how to castrate pigs and agreed to do it. We got the pig down and held him, and Bill did the job. You’ve heard the expression “scream like a stuck pig.” This pig screamed and screamed. About two days later somebody from the Health Department showed up and said, “We understand you’ve got a pig here. There’s been a complaint about dirt and things like that.”

Mom said, “Well, yeah, we’ve got a little weanling pig.” He went in the back yard and said, “Oh, it’s one little pig and things are very clean.” He looked over the fence. We knew who’d complained. And these people had family members living in old trailers and a shack. He said, “Do people actually live in that stuff back there?” So they may have brought something down on themselves. And Mother was very careful after that to keep the pig area clean.

We named him Archie and this time we took Archie the Pig to Paiute with us. We’d scratched him a lot and he was tame, so we took him up to the cabin and turned him loose. About the second or third night, the coyotes got him cornered on the porch. Lots of hullabaloo there. After that, we couldn’t drive him away from the cabin.

We fed him the day’s scraps, potato skins, bits of onion, things like that. We’d stew ‘em up. Then we had a big bag of mixed grain we’d cook in, and we’d feed it all to the pig. Well, this silly pig. Dinner was always boiling hot and we’d say, “Archie, it’s hot, it’s hot.” But he’d put his nose in there and start eating, screaming because it was burning him. He’d eat his dinner fast and sloppy. The food would go in his mouth and a stream of water would come out one side. It was amazing how he could handle food.

Once somebody gave him a piece of gum. He chewed the gum until it was time to feed him. We fed him and he went through the whole thing. When it was through, he walked by chewing the gum. The ability of a pig to handle food is amazing.

We had running water in the cabin when Archie was there because by that time we’d piped it in from the spring. The sink had about a 20-foot pipe that went out into the yard where the water ran out. Little bits of stuff would come out the pipe sometimes and form a little puddle. The pig would go through the puddle eating what was in it. Then, when he wanted water, he’d stick his snout up the pipe and grunt. It would echo in the deep sink, and somebody had to go give Archie some water. Of course, he had the creek to drink out of. And he loved the equisetum that grew by the creek, boy, he loved that.

Archie was our dog that summer and he would go for walks with us. If we went, he went. If we went to the sawmill, he would follow us. It didn’t matter where we went, Archie would go. And then he got older and heavier. What was amazing was the quickness and agility of that pig, as quick and agile as a cat. He’d play with things, a blanket or something, the way a dog or a cat would. It was just amazing watching him. Once he found a fruit jar lid, just the ring, and he used to carry that around on his nose.

If you sat on the porch, he’d come up and sit on your lap. That was fine when he was little. But he was growing up, and by the end of summer he was about 80 pounds. If you sat in this old chair, built low to the ground, he’d get in your lap. There would be the middle of the pig in your lap but a lot of the pig on both sides.

We had a dutch door going into the cabin which we kept locked. But he’d learned to jiggle it and open it. If we weren’t there he’d see what was around in food. One time he ate a berry pie. And then he got on the couch. This pig was spoiled.

Because he was afraid of the coyotes, you could not leave him home. Going for a ten-mile hike, wandering to this cabin and that cabin, would take all day. As he got bigger, it got hard on him because he was heavy and we weren’t anywhere near water. But he wouldn’t be left behind. If everybody left the cabin, you could not force him to stay there.

We figured he could count to nine or ten. Sometimes there would be four or five of us sitting at the cabin and a lot of company would come up. During the Second World War and at the end of the war my father worked for the Air Force as a civilian, but had lots of military friends. The cabin became the place to go. If you could get Sid to invite you to the cabin… . It was a wonderful place. It had a lot of magic for a lot of people. Anyway, we learned that if we were all going to go some place in the car, if we took off, the pig came galloping after the car. There was no leaving him. So we would have one person climb out the bay window on the east side of the cabin, sneak up the hill to the ditch, to the mine dump, walk along the ditch to the road and be picked up later. After this happened, everybody else left, maybe nine people, then the pig would stay. But if everybody went out that front door, you couldn’t make that pig stay. This happened all the time. If the pig thought that there was someone in the house, he would be content to stay at the cabin.

Archie was destined for the end of the year party. This was after the world war. We had a “closing of the mountain” party on Labor Day. This was the first one. The party was going to be at Art’s place at the Bowman Mine, and the Archie was going to be the guest of honor. The pig had been our pet all summer, so all three of us kids, Audrey, Fritz and I, refused to stay on the mountain. We left a week early. We weren’t going to be there for the barbecue. The pig was duly done in and, scraped, put in a pit and they had a big barbecue.

You know, when you spend your life eating game, shooting animals, having to clean them, things like that, you become a little bit inured, a little hardened to the realities of life. I don’t know if “hardened” is the right word, but you show a strong streak of practicality. So when friends are going down the tubes, being eaten, it’s not such a strange thing.

Even though we weren’t willing to eat part of Archie, we had all done all those things. And you know, the strange thing is, we all hunted all those years. Fritz and I would go out and ambush quail. We got very good at the calls of the quail. We never shot quail before the first of August because the coveys were too young. We wanted the young to be able to survive because that was part of next year’s food. Also, we did not tolerate any predators close to the cabin. If we saw a bobcat or something like that near the cabin, we shot them. So, where it sounds cold blooded, it’s kind of like a farm life. You have to accept the fact that there are different life styles and you learn some of these things.