Road Apples
May 11, 2009


 Did you say swine flew?

By Tim Sanders

Several years ago an editor armed me with a notebook and a page from a supermarket tabloid, and sent me on a fact-finding junket to a remote Cherokee County hog farm. At the farmer’s request I simply referred to him as Virgil in my notes. Here are some excerpts:

“I can tell you most anything you want to know about hogs,” Virgil said, “although they ain’t really very complicated.”

“Well,” I said, “is it possible for a pig to–”

“First off,” he said, “the big ‘uns ain’t pigs. They’s hogs. Pigs is the young ‘uns. That big ‘un over there by that first shed is my old Chester White boar, Maurice. He’s nearly seven-hundred pounds. Eats more corn in a day than a man could eat in a month. Maurice can drink Cocola through a straw, and used to ride a bicycle before he put on so much weight.”

“Ride a bicycle?”

“Yeah, but generally only in cloudy weather. Chester Whites tend to sunburn easy. In a minute he’ll get up and go into his shed. Then when he comes out he’ll lay on his other side. I was raising him for bacon, but he ain’t a bacon hog. Yorkshires is better for that. I just like keeping him around.”

“That’s interesting,” I said. “But I’ve got something here I’d like to show you.” I had with me the editor’s copy of that supermarket tabloid, The Sun.

I showed Virgil a photograph of a tremendously large hog flying over a tiny North Dakota farmhouse. Beneath it was an article contending that state officials were investigating 125 confirmed sightings of flying swine.

Virgil scanned the article and looked carefully at the photo. “Absolutely the silliest thing I ever seen in my life!” he said.

“Aha!” I said. “So in your opinion, hogs can’t possibly fly?”

“Not that hog,” he sneered. “That’s a Spotted Swine. I call ‘em Specks, and a Speck couldn’t get off the ground in a hurricane. They ain’t aerodynamic.”

“You mean–”

“Just between you and me, this here article is all wrong. It says them hogs flying up in North Dakota was probably mutations. Mine certainly ain’t mutations! My best fliers are perfectly good, well-bred Berkshires. ’Course occasionally one of my Yorkshires or a young Poland China might get airborne for a few minutes, but they ain’t got the stamina for long flights.”

“You mean you’ve got flying pigs right here in–”

“Hogs. Flying hogs. And like I said, it’s mainly the Berkshires. They ain’t got much fat on ‘em, and is more aerodynamic than the others. It has to do with lift and drag and gravity and such.”

“You’re serious?”

“Of course. It’s a well known scientific fact. First off, if you look at that there white sow over by the fence, and if you kindly squint, you can see how she has the lines of an airplane wing. Now, if Tammy Faye–that’s her given name–could get up a big enough head of steam running down an incline, to where her thrust was greater than her drag, and if the air currents passing over her back was to create enough lift, then the drop in air pressure would overpower gravity and pick her right up into the air. Not that Tammy Faye can fly, of course. She ain’t never took no interest in it. All she cares about is rolling around in the mud and then staring at herself in the water trough.”

“So almost any pig–er, hog–can learn to fly, right?”

“Not exactly. There’s more to it than just body build and desire. Some can and some can’t. Sometimes you’ll see a litter of ten, and only one or two of ‘em ever gets off the ground. To be honest, I think it’s a gift from the Lord. Like how some folks can speak in tongues, and some can’t. It ain’t learned as much as it’s a gift. We useter have an old fat Poland China boar that could fly like a Piper Cub, despite the fact that he wasn’t no more aerodynamic than a cow. And then, there’d be just oodlins of them lean, aerodynamic Berkshires who couldn’t fly worth a dern.

I had one, old Nicodemus, who was just pitiful. He’d watch his brothers and sisters buzz around the barn like so many horseflies, and he couldn’t fly an inch. Old Nick even got to where he’d climb that oak tree over yonder and bail off of that crooked branch there, figuring it would help him catch an air current. Never worked, though. He always just hit the ground like a sack of cement. Killed a tomcat that way, once.

He finally got so depressed he quit eating altogether. We tried explaining how flying wasn’t everything. We told him at least he had his health. But it didn’t do no good. He just pined away and dried up. Nothing but skin and bones when he passed over. Couldn’t even get a pound of sausage out of him.”

I was still a little dazed. “Do you . . . ah . . . would you have any flying pi–er, hogs–around that I could see? See fly, I mean.”

“Well, there’s Howell, but I wouldn’t want to send him up right now. He got his tail caught in an electric fan last month, and he tends to fly around in circles now until he hits something. He’s grounded until his little horizontal stabilizer grows back. All the other fliers has flew south for the winter. Fourteen of ‘em. They like Sarasota, Florida. Lots of Jewish retirees there, an’ they don’t none of them care for pork.”

“Oh.” It seemed awfully convenient, somehow.

“Listen Virgil,” I said, “if you had all of these flying hogs for all of these years, why haven’t I heard about them? Why haven’t you told the media?”

“I thought about that, but it just didn’t make much sense. They ain’t of no commercial value, since they can’t carry no passengers. An old sow can’t even carry her litter on a flight. Grounds ‘em quicker than wind shear. Can’t use ‘em for crop dusting–it affects their allergies something awful. And besides, if people was to find out my name and where I live, we’d be eat up with hunters. Think what they’d give to bag a five-hundred-pound flying Chester White boar and take him home strapped to the hood of their Toyota! Let them fools up in North Dakota shoot off their mouths all they want to, I like things just the way they are.”

Virgil invited me to stay for supper. They were having breaded pork chops, but I declined. What I’d heard that afternoon was more than enough for one man to digest.

In retrospect, I believe I was set up.