God Bless Texas and Hogzilla

And God warned the Israelites that great beasts would rise from the darkness and defile the land. So what sort of great beast did the Lord beset upon Texas? Descended from Russian stock, this creature is one of the meanest, most ill tempered critters ever created. Its only enemy is man. What is this formidable beast? Armed with six to eight inch tusks and weighing in at up to 1000 pounds when fully grown, it is none other than the feral hog, and have I got a hog story for you.
These critters by the hundreds destroy prime ranch land in north Texas and they have to be controlled. So our friend, James, runs a trap line across nearly 1500 acres. The hog traps are made of wire, 4’ wide by 8’ long with corn as bait and a trapdoor that slams shut when the animals enter. Those stupid enough (as if their pea-sized brains make them intelligent) to get caught, get fattened up for market or sent to Brother Melvin, the Baptist preacher, not for saving but for sausage makin’!
We took our grandkids with us on our last visit to Texas to see our friends, James and Elizabeth. Their granddaughter, ‘Lizbeth goes hog trapping with her Pawpaw and Meemaw and she was so excited to introduce Mason and his grandparents to wild hogs.
The first two traps were empty, but as we reached the third, we could clearly see that it held eight small, 30-pound hogs. They’d get shushed into James trailer and hauled to the ranch for fattening.
“Mason,” ‘Lizbeth offered. “Y’all wanna pet a pig? Pawpaw, catch us a pig.”
Mason is our hunter and all around outdoor boy. Of course, he wanted to pet a pig. He marched beside the little girl to the hog trap. James grabbed one of the pigs by the back leg, it let out a blood-curdling squeal, and Mason’s scream matched that pig’s decibel for decibel. He lit out for the truck like he’d been peppered with buckshot. He grabbed the door handle … locked! Mason panicked. Finally, I realized what was happening so opened the door. He dove in. If that little fellow could have gotten any closer, he’d have been under my skin. So Mason decided that hogs are good for nothing except bacon.
So later that day, James had a load of hogs to deliver to a Cambodian couple that lived in Jacksboro. They said they would take all that James could supply. Those folks didn’t know what they were asking. We left the kids with ‘Lizabeth’s mom and headed for town with a load of eight, vile 300 pound hogs crammed into a trailer. They snorted, squealed, and raised a ruckus that could be heard as far away as Mexico. As we rode through town, I noticed Elizabeth sliding down in her seat. James laid on the horn and waved.
“Hey, Elizabeth,” he laughed with a Texas roar. “Ain’t that your uppity friends from the Bunco club?”
“Y’all shut up ‘n keep driving,” she spat. I have always said that Elizabeth reminded me of a pre-nipped and tucked Dolly Parton. She speaks with an even more pronounced Dolly accent. I know y’all would just love her.
Finally we arrived at the Cambodian folks’ ten-acre place. James knocked and this tiny woman barely four feet tall answered the door. Elizabeth explained that Soo does all the work because her husband, Coo Ma, is paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair.
Soo motioned James to take the hogs around back. She walked ahead of us, Coo Ma watched from his wheelchair on the back porch, and their Pit Bull snarled and tried to gnaw its way into the hog trailer. James backed the trailer up to a rickety wooden hog pen. By this time, the Pit Bull had the hogs ticked off and ready to fight. James opened the trailer gate and here’s where the story get exciting. If you know anything about hogs, you know they all follow the herd. They rushed the door at the same time but by the time the last one broke free of the trailer, the first ones hit the opposite end of the hog pen and were on a beeline back to the trailer. Two of them made it back inside, but the gate swung shut and the next two bounced off and busted through the wooden fence. James plugged the hole, trapping the rest inside the hog yard. But two fugitives were loping for freedom with the Pit Bull in hot pursuit. The dog turned them and now they were thundering straight towards us.
Walzie and James leaped onto the side of the trailer, Elizabeth and I jumped into the truck, Soo clung to the trailer hitch spouting out about 15 yards of her native dialect, and James drew his 2-shot derringer. Should he just shoot himself and let the rest of us deal with the wild hogs, shoot the Pit Bull, shoot and shut Soo’s mouth, or shoot the two hogs? He fired! The dust flew in front of the charging hogs. James never did claim to be good shot; the Hogzillas were still thundering like a missile straight at us.
Suddenly, we heard two loud rifle cracks. Just like an old cowboy, Coo Ma, sitting in his wheelchair on the porch, dropped those two hogs about 10 paces from James. Coo Ma calmly laid down his gun and shouted to Soo. The tiny woman, still ranting, scurried into the shed and returned with a wheelbarrow and a hacksaw. They’d have pork chops tonight. And the Pit Bull? When the first shot fired, it lit out across the prairie! Probably the smartest one of the bunch.
As we headed back to the ranch, we all said a prayer of thanks for that old Cambodian cowboy’s straight shooting. Elizabeth chewed on James about never selling any more wild hogs. Little did she know that James had already sold two more trailer loads. In fact he told her he was going to put a sign on the side of his truck that said, “Hogs for Sale, call Elizabeth”.
So now you know why we love to vacation in Texas. It’s always an adventure.

Gramma

Walzie’s Gramma was near 85 by time I met her. She was a feisty old gal; a very slight woman barely five feet tall and every bit of ninety pounds when soaking wet. I remember her always wearing flowered housedresses, a sweater, and fur trimmed snow boots (yes, even in the summertime). She kept her long, silver hair braided in pigtails, and if she’d donned a headband she’d have been a dead ringer for Willie Nelson. Tobacco juice dripped evenly from both sides of her mouth so we knew she was a level headed gal. She lived way up on the side of the mountain by Stover Station with Uncle Bruce and Aunt Lizzie.
Walzie was Gramma’s favorite boy. Sometimes, certain ways I look at him (especially if he has his teeth out), I can see Gramma (or is it Willie?). I think that’s where he inherited his packrat habits and hillbilly ways.
One muggy August afternoon, as Walzie and I returned from the store, we found Gramma sitting on our front porch. Now this lady lived about two miles down the road and ½ mile up the mountain from where we live. Oh yes, she was wearing her sweater and snow boots. Like a cow chewing her cud, Gramma’s puckered jaws were grinding away on a wad of chew, and in her leathered, bony hand she grasped a bottle of Paragoric (She claimed that she used it for medicinal purposes; Gramma reeked of the smell). One foot was tucked under her behind and the other rocked the porch swing back and forth.
“Leroy,” she screeched and took a swig from her bottle. “I’m tired and sick of those folks on the mountain. I’m movin’ in wit ‘ya.”
“Gramma, how did you get here?” I asked curiously.
“Walked. Got my clothes in this here Acme sack.”
“But, Gramma, do they know where you are?”
“Don’t know, don’t care. I’m runnin’ away from home. Gonna move in here, and I ain’t takin’ no fer an answer.”
Walzie and I gritted our teeth. We didn’t have room for a ninety year old lady, bless her heart. We had two sons and a bedroom full of chinchillas. (No kidding, we raised them supposedly for their fur, but when skinning time came, we couldn’t bear to do it. We had roughly 30 of the little furry critters in cages.)
“Well, Gramma, you’ll have to sleep in the chinchilla room.”
“Them little rats? Don’t care. They’s got to be better than the big rats I been living with.”
Just then our phone rang. It was Aunt Lizzie inquiring about her mother. We promised to bring her home just as soon as we could reason with her. Well, it took some coaxing and the promise of a Texas hot dog to get Gramma to agree to go home.
So we loaded our boys and Gramma into the pickup truck and headed off to the hot dog stand. (At this time, Texas Hot Dog was located in Pinecroft on old Rt. 220) Gramma insisted on riding in the back with the kids. With her pigtails flying in the wind, she looked like a Bassett Hound with its head out a speeding car window, and every time I looked back, she was sucking on her Paragoric bottle. Honestly, I’ll bet we looked like the Beverly Hillbillies. The only thing missing was Granny’s rocking chair.
At the hot dog stand, Walzie and I stood in line and then picked up our order. When we returned to the truck, Gramma was gone.
“Gramma had to go to the bathroom,” our son told us.
“Oh my gosh, there’s no public restroom here,” I said. “Walzie, you better go find Gramma.”
As I turned around, I spotted her squatting in the yard with her wrinkled grandma junk in full view. And she wasn’t just doing number one! What an embarrassing sight. Glad she belonged to Walzie, not me.
Unfazed, Gramma tidied up her housedress and shuffled back to the truck.
“Ya’ git me one wit onions?”
A red-faced Walzie lifted Gramma into the back of the truck where she settled between our giggling boys. She ate her hot dog and finished off the bottle of “medicine”. By the time we got her back to the mountain, she was feeling no pain. Gramma smiled sweetly as Aunt Lizzie put her to bed. I guess whatever had her riled got softened by the hot dog, or was it the Paragoric?
To this day, every time we go for a Texas hot dog, guess what we think of? And now you will too!

It seemed as though the entire world was at war. The Americans were fighting alongside the Allies in a face-off with the Germans. The Nazis fought to control Europe. Japan was secretly planning its attack on Peal Harbor, and the Enola Gay was just one of a fleet of B-29 bombers; unaware that it would be delegated to carry a bomb with the destructive power of twenty thousand tons of TNT. That was yet to come.
It was the early 1940s when the twins, Bob and Ab, turned seventeen. Girls and cars filled their minds; war was a demon far, far away - unless one counted the war of the sexes. That war was even fought on foreign soil – Houtzdale. What do you suppose those Polish mountain girls had over Tyrone’s valley girls? Evidently, the Tyrone girls had wised up to the twins, so Houtzdale, Ramey, Moran, and Viola was their new stomping grounds … at least until the mountain boys chased them back home.
Youth was a very short phase back in those days. By the time they turned seventeen they had already been employed at Juniata Packing for four years and smoking for nearly six. They bought themselves a real gem of a car: a 1936 Chevy. Of course, the tires were bald, it was a bear to get started, and it labored in second gear as it hauled them and their buddies up the Janesville Pike. But it was theirs, free and clear.
They got wind of a dance at the VFW, the perfect place to fish in the chick pool. The boys were handsome, strapping, mirror images of each other, and they attracted a lot of attention. The girls flirted and their mountain boyfriends stewed. Somewhere between the Polka and the kielbasa, flirting turned to fighting. Being better lovers than fighters, those valley boys went running with their tails between their legs.
As they sped down the Pike, an orange and white striped sawhorse suddenly appeared like a deer in the headlights. Too late, they plowed it over and dropped into a foot deep, ten-foot-long gouge in the highway where repair work was being done. Bob floored the gas and the Chevy leaped out of the hole, landing hard and blowing one bald tire. Do you think they had a spare? Of course … but it was flat, too. They limped all the way to Tyrone on a now worthless rim.
They made it to Park Avenue, when the car chugged to a stop. The fuel pump died, and they were almost home. Their buddy, Chalmer, found a full can of gas in the trunk. Getting home shouldn’t be a problem now. They had a plan. All they needed was to keep the gas pouring steadily into the carburetor, and the car would chug its way home. That was Ab’s job. Chalmer walked along side to guide, Bob, the driver, who was blinded by the open hood. Ab sat on the fender with the gas can, his feet propped on the motor.
As Ab dribbled the gas in, the car slowly limped quietly along. It worked! Until the engine backfired … Ab lit up like a marshmallow held too close to a campfire. Evidently, he hadn’t stayed in school long enough to learn about stop, drop, and roll, because he shot off running like a flaming arrow. Woosh! The flames blazed, and Ab screamed. Chalmer and Bob finally caught and tackled him, rolling him onto the grass, snuffing the flames. Ab’s flailing arms and legs singed one perfect burned snow-angel shape into a green Park Avenue lawn. Luckily he wasn’t burned too badly; his mom greased him down with lard and he healed fine.
And so after all that excitement, they decided that it might be safer to join the service. Yes, Bob joined the Army, and Ab went to the Navy. The sailor ended up working in a PX in New Jersey. The only time he saw water was when he took a bath. The soldier went aboard a ship destined for the Philippines and eventually Japan.
At this time, the bomb christened “Little Boy” was being loaded into the Enola Gay. Hiroshima, Japan and our soldier boy would never be the same.

At the end of every movie, Roy and Dale sang “Happy Trails” and rode off into the sunset on Trigger and Buttermilk. Remember that? The year was 1943 and the cost of those movies was five cents. Imagine that!
Bob was a seventeen-year-old scrapper full of spit and vinegar and a real smooth cookie with the ladies. Oh yes, there were several: like the twins next door who would give him a peek at their bloomers for twenty-five cents, and Evie, the preacher’s daughter who scared him off when she chanted in spiritual reverie and tried her darnedest to save his ornery soul. But he had been romancing Grace for a few months now; she was a city gal all the way from Altoona. Sometimes he picked her up in his older brother, Ken’s, car, but ever since he and Ab sideswiped a tree and tore the door off of it, Ken wouldn’t let them use his car anymore. So on this Saturday afternoon date, Grace arrived by streetcar.
Bob met her at the streetcar stop near the Grazierville Bridge. She was a heavenly vision in jodhpurs, helmet, and riding boots. If this had been twenty years into the future, he would have thought Jackie Kennedy was in those pants. Hand in hand they walked to Hunter’s for an afternoon of horseback riding ($1 per hour) and maybe some hanky-panky in the hay field (priceless), if Bob could convince Grace that he had nothing more than gentlemanly intensions.
From the way Grace was dressed, Bob was certain that she was an experienced horsewoman, so he saddled her the big Tennessee Walker named Hank. He cupped his hands, Grace stepped in, and he hoisted her into the saddle. Her leg brushed his face; her fragrance was intoxicating. Bob sighed deeply and then saddled up Fish, the white gelding, for himself.
As they walked at an easy pace down the trail from Hunter’s barn, they heard Mr. Hunter shout, “Don’t you run those animals. I don’t wanna see them come back here all lathered up and such. You hear me, boy?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Bob waved as he smiled into Grace’s eyes.
As soon as they rounded the bend and were out of Mr. Hunter’s sight, Bob urged Fish into a trot. The Walker responded likewise. Grace easily posted in the stirrups. (For those not too horse savvy, posting is to bounce up and down in rhythm with a horse’s trotting gate.) Hank pulled ahead of Fish, and the view from the rear was a pretty sweet treat to Bob’s eyes; he could watch her post all day.
Suddenly, Hank broke into a lope and then even more surprising, into a full-fledged, flat-out gallop. Grace screamed, dropped the reins, and gripped the saddle. Bob knew just what to do. After all, he had seen Roy rescue many a damsel in distress from a runaway horse. He spurred Fish onward. As the two horses came side by side, Bob reached out and grasped Grace by the waist. He pulled her off of Hank, but somehow it didn’t work like in the movies. She crashed so hard into Bob that she knocked him right off his horse, too. They went tumbling head over heels into the brush alongside the road as the riderless horses galloped off into the sunset.
The two of them lay along the roadside, stunned and breathless. Bob moaned and rolled toward Grace. His heart was pounding. What if she’s hurt really bad? How come Roy Rogers did it so easily? Dale never got mad, did she? Surely Grace won’t be mad. Bob had probably just saved her life.
“Are you okay?” he asked, gingerly.
“What the #@%% were you thinking?” Grace spat. “You could’a killed me. Just look at my new riding pants, they’re all torn. My ankle hurts. I think you sprained my ankle. Is my lip bleeding? I hope you’re happy. Putting me on a wild animal like that …” She rambled on and on and on … and the tears were flowing on and on …
It was a long hike back to the stable, especially with a ranting, raving angry woman. Bob’s shoulder was brush-burned and he limped on a bruised knee, but he still thought Grace was one beautiful little filly. Her fire made her even more attractive.
Well, Grace got over her mad spell and continued to date Bob for another year or so, until he joined the Army and got shipped off to Japan. He and Grace never became and item; it would be my guess that meeting my mom had something to do with that.
A few years after my mom passed, dad told me this story and asked me if I would try to find Grace. (At 82, dad was like a backward teenager, I had to do all the matchmaking.) After a little research, I finally found her. As I told her the story, she was quiet. Finally, she took a deep breath and said, “I’m sorry. I don’t remember. Bob who?”
Well, that took the wind right out of his sails. Perhaps if dad would’ve sung “Happy Trails”, it may have jogged her eighty-year-old memory and things may have turned out differently.