Americana

This afternoon that Spouse o' Mine and I, covered dish in tow, walked the 1/2 mile down the road to our neighbors' home for their 28th annual Labor Day Hog Roast. The Muellers invite neighbors from all around for a potluck in their yard. Last year there were 160+ neighbors who came. That's a lot of neighbors. And lots of covered dishes to enjoy.

Their day starts early enough. They acquire a hog, an organically-raised hog, from other neighbors even further down the road, some 10 miles. The hog is still living and breathing when he arrives at their place. (I considered doing this post with photographs, but opted out, and very wisely, I think, because even I was not whole-hog {Ha! sorry} about the whole live-hog/dead hog thing. But then my 50-year old memory hearkened back to those favorite books of my childhood, and favorite re-reads when my kids read them: Little House on the Prairie books. And Laura described in pretty good detail about hog slaughter time.)

The Muellers have a huge pit that they roast the hog in. This is good, because when I asked the dimensions of the hog, they were huge as well. The pit is lined with fire bricks (taken from some old pizza-brick oven somewhere), and the bottom is covered with charcoal and heated up.

So the hog was slaughtered and cleaned (read: skinned and the guts taken out), and then put on a spit. (i.e., a large pole was put through him so he would rotate over the coals.) The spit was belt-driven by a small motor, for 9 hours. Then Mr. Mueller and his son trimmed the hog, and at 6:00 this evening, said hog was now delicious pork ready to feed the masses. We all filled our plates and mingled and ate and laughed and mingled some more, meeting neighbors from the 160+ neighbors we didn't know we had.

This is a glimpse of Americana in rural Kansas, on a most delightful night, with only double-digit temperatures, and not much wind to speak of, either.