SOFT SOAPING A PIG--named Gronk
There's an expression about soft-soaping someone and I used to hear it in my childhood, "Oh, he's just soft-soaping you," someone would say, mostly my father.
I think it was like "greasing the pig"-where, during county fairs back in the day (and maybe even now-a-days) in some parts of America, there are pig catching contests. A pig and a human being run around in a pen and the pig squeals and the human grunts and groans and, because the pig is "greased up" for this contest,when the person chasing it around does get his hands on that pig, he usually loses grip and the pig slips away and runs around some more in the muck with on-lookers placing cash bets, mostly ON the pig...
I grew up with horses, ducks, chickens, goats and once we may or may not have had a cow. I can clearly remember having a pig when I was in middle school. His name was Gronk because that was the sound he emmitted when he called out. We fed Gronk grain and table scraps, stuff we normally composted and Gronk seemed to smile and wave his curly tail every time he saw one of my sisters or Dad coming over the bank toward his pen with the sap bucket of food.
Gronk lived there all year and maybe two but I'm not sure and then one day it came--late fall. Lawrence Lechance meandered over from next door with a knife the size of a machete and called out to my Dad. Then the two of them went over the bank and came up the gravel road with Gronk between them with a rope around his neck. They passed the mail box and turned into the driveway and disappeared into the wood shed where, presumably Lawrence slit old Gronk's throat.
I was 14 at the time and I had vowed vegetarianism when I was 12. Naturally I was horrified that my family would raise and then murder an innocent animal, one I had come to tell my secrets to. Dad of course, reminded me what he had said from the very beginning, "Do not make friends with that pig. He's going to be pork chops and ham and bacon come fall." And for effect, Dad would lick his lips and send me running outside. No soft-soaping there.
I was certain that Gronk knew what they were going to do to him that fated day. That day my eyes opened and filled with tears. The day I ran up the road and into the field and cried and cried for my pig friend, Gronk.
