Riding the Pigs ---- January 12, 2007

 

Preface

The challenge post-career, in the second half of life, is to reclaim the soul.

We each have to put blinders on to make our mark in the first half of life -- to "succeed" in college, careers, marriage. What we study, what we do, our set of interests, who we hang around with are all largely influenced by the cultures we try to excel in -- corporate, military, academic.

 As an entrepreneur and business owner, I am grateful and aware of the benefits of the lifetime focus that success required. There are many benefits of the career focus -- position, money, prestige...but at what cost? What was the price of signing up for the 'success' agenda?

What got left behind was the soul's agenda. The early inner voice got put aside. Our initial sense of inner identity and what we really wanted to do got quickly demoted when faced with the rigor and competition of the corporate world.

So now the job is to reclaim and honor the inner child that got demoted so long ago. It's to rediscover what the soul’s agenda was before it got hitched onto the career agenda. It helps to remember early stories and adventures to recapture that sense of wonderment and innocence of early youth; this gives hints to who we really are. Our early friends say a lot. It helps to remember the early friends; many of whom got left behind because they were not on the ‘success’ track.

My boyhood was mainly focused on sports, little league baseball, and the school competitive teams. Some early friends got left behind when the first sports filtering took place. Some didn't make the first cut and immediately got socially abandoned. Back in the fifties there was an immediate social shift that created stragglers. The 'chosen' didn’t recognize this; their teammates would then form the social ‘in’ class. These early friends, many of whom got left behind, say a lot about who we really are -- and this subject of our real inner identity is the primary topic for our second half of life.

This is a story about such early friends, real people and real events. This was one of my early adventures; writing this made me realize that my career as an entrepreneur was driven mainly by this strong sense of adventure. To me, the adventure, the journey, the intellectual discovery are primal instincts. My road warrior career with a new technology was a double-barreled adventure; playing out a primordial karma formed early in these tender years.

This is the kind of story a career man would never admit to; he'd bury it. But the larger soul is proud of such an adventure, and in fact rejoices in it. This is a story of a early time in life when things didn’t make sense. After a consuming career, the beauty of this post-career age is that now, at last, things don’t have to make sense.

In his poem ‘after the election’ Michael Koch captures the dreamlike experience this story tells.

‘our teeth rattle & our souls.

from the socket of the mask

mice swarm & swans.

the mother’s eye is running.

a small boy spins thru

the furnace of grass,

thru wheat spear & spire

goes running.

deep in the soil deep in the gut

death’s bird-blue calyx is humming’

Riding the pigs

I grew up in Pawtucket Rhode Island in a middle-class neighborhood. Fairlawn’s location on the bus line to downtown Providence gave it an upscale standing—but it was surrounded by some pretty tough places. Woodlawn on the north was an elongated neighborhood running parallel to the railroad tracks; and in Woodland both sides of the tracks were the wrong side. North Providence was the southern boundary and it had gangs that would scare the hell out of you.

Jimmy Smith lived in Woodlawn in a house within one hundred feet of the tracks. It was a flimsy wooden house; you could see the outside through the cracks of missing plaster. I had breakfast with Jimmy and his family and I was the only one noticing the plates rattling when trains went by. Billy Marshall lived on the south border of Fairlawn but was culturally of the North Providence cut. He was a ‘street kid,’ never went home. He’d always be out in the neighborhood with his large springer spaniel. It was ironic, the rest of us got a free mongrel from the dog pound and a street kid who could hardly afford clothes would loiter around with an expensive purebred. 

Jimmy and Billy were not the ‘chosen’ of the day – the system abandoned them to make their own way. They were the drifters, being filtered out at the first gate. Back then sports were everything and these kids didn't make the first cut. I can't imagine what kind of mantra that sets in place. But in any case I was with them, they were my friends.

Right near Jimmy’s house was the local slaughter house. It was a haunting place. At age twelve we had trouble accepting that the cows and pigs were all on death row; we preferred an image of farm animal pets. It was an evocative place, scary. Nobody wanted to get caught by the people that worked there ---the butchers, executioners. The feeling then was how you now feel about a jail house executioner.

  

The story was that we were going to the slaughter house to ride the pigs. Billy Marshall and Jimmy had more experience at this than me. The slaughter house was parallel to the railroad tracks on Smithfield Avenue at the Pawtucket-Providence line. The whole setting was eerie and threatening. The confluence of rickety trains and slaughter animals produced strange noises and smells -- the whole place was dark and surreal. I gave mock protest that the pigs stunk but was overruled –- so off we went. You just knew this was going to end badly, you just knew it. But you had to play it out; you had to find out how it ended. 

The pig pen was on the right front of the slaughter house. It was about forty feet square with a tin roof that kept it mainly in shadows. The dung and the stench assaulted the senses and would have quickly turned a proper boy away. You'd hit the wall with the reek and stink; at first it constricted your breathing. It didn't go away, but like adjusting to extreme heat you'd focus beyond it.

The dung was different, it was uneven. There were pockets of fresh wet ooze like manure the pigs avoided and there were other hard mounded dried dung areas particularly around the perimeter. Each of us without saying so was studying the lay of the land; the trick was to keep the pig on the hard manure and at all costs avoid the loose stuff. This wasn't just the usual animal droppings -- this was aged muck, mud, and mire -- packed layers of it.

These pigs were big animals, they’re more properly called hogs, but this is a pig story. They were easy to slip off. Pig riding requires one to bend way over and hold on by the ears. The ears were no handle bars; they were hairy and felt like sandpaper. They were both foul and delicate; god forbid you're lose balance and pull one off.  I can’t believe people eat these things. The mistaken instinct was to steer with the ears; it was more like a balance beam -- you'd just hold on to keep your weight centered.

There were two gyro forces to simultaneously negotiate -- you had to keep balance and keep the pig from turning his head and taking a bite. That was the real trick, to stay up on the pig without getting bitten. The pigs had a good sporting spirit about all this; they could just roll over into the dung and quickly end the contest -- but none did.  My sense is they knew this was a mystic right of passage and they nobly rose to the occasion. This was no rodeo; the pigs weren't big on running. They panicked and moved in fits and jerks.  Success was to stay mounted through the fits and starts and not let the bucking beast throw you into the dung.

I must admit I thought I was pretty good at it. I was the only one short of the baptism by dung. After all, I was the athlete, knew how to do things, riding high and looking good.

 Enjoying some success, I thought my pig and I had come to an agreement and we had a bit of a strut. I sent a confident wink to my be-shitted friends.  Just when I thought I had the knack of it, two of the pigs started to work together. There were only about six pigs in the pen, the non-riders were huddled in the corner, not amused by the undertakings. You could see two of the mounted pigs -- mine and Billy's -- make eye contact and decide to outfox the local hooligans. They decided to go after Mr. Clean Rider first -- that was me.

My pig suddenly became calmer and steadier; I should have known trouble lurked ahead. He evenly sauntered up to the second pig at just the right angle. He planted my leg right into Billy's pig's biting zone.

So I dove. These were big animals; it was like getting off a bike. You couldn't just jump feet first, you had to dive. Right into the dung, splat. And I slid, like sliding into second base head first, only a whole lot more slippery.

And that was it. We unceremoniously left hardly speaking; we had been defrocked. We approached excited with the pigs panicked; we left panicked with the pigs excited. No one thought it funny; that is, except the pigs.

Our misguided adventure had certain nobility. It served a final homage to these unappreciated magnificent beasts being led to the slaughter. In their last rite they showed spirited sportsmanship and these six outdid the three young locals. This was the pigs’ shining hour, of all the swine thoughtlessly slaughtered in that ghastly place it was these six that had the most ceremonious send off...they’re on the honor role.

It was a long walk home. My mother had repeatedly warned me not to go near the slaughter house. I was resigned that no white lie could mask the horrendous stench of pig dung. I had my mea culpa well rehearsed for when I’d have to face the music with my mother.

I had underestimated the stink; it got home before I did. I hadn't made it halfway up the stairs to our second story home when my mother came running down and told me “you’re not coming in the house smelling like that.”

She took all my clothes off and buried them in a hole she had me dig in the southeast corner of the backyard. In a stern and businesslike manner she told me to hose off with soap in the yard and get in the house.

It was never mentioned again in the house. It was as if my mother knew this was an inevitable adolescent right of passage. She knew she didn't have to tell me not to go to the slaughter house again.

And in a deep hole in the southeast corner of the backyard at 516 Grotto Ave, Pawtucket Rhode Island, is forever buried a boy’s clothing and a story of riding pigs -- until today, the story escaped.