Is your hometown like mine? Strange and sweet in its profound oddities?
Perhaps you remember the piece I wrote on TMV a few weeks ago that was big news in my hometown newspaper … it was about the man in the wheelchair who was at a gas station just across the road from where I grew up.
He wheeled himself in front of an idling 18 wheeler rig whose driver did not realize he was there. The big semi started forward, and the handlebars of the wheelchair stuck in the grill of the truck. The semi headed onto the interstate and rolled at 55mph for over five miles with the man in his wheelchair stuck on the front of it, before the police pulled him over…
Miraculously, the fellow in the wheelchair was still lodged in the truck’s grill, and the road-rider was unharmed. Several other drivers on the road rolling in the opposite direction had seen the man in the wheelchair fastened to the truck’s grill like some kind of bizarre hood ornament, and they thought they were hallucinating. Well, in the midst of their self-same hallucinations, several called the state patrol. You can imagine how those conversations went.
After it was all over, honest to gosh, the young man in the wheel chair said to reporters, “It was a nice ride. I wasn’t scared.”
Ok, so, that will prepare you for this next. I grew up in a rural area in a village of 600 people. Our town was about one mile long and 5 street wide with a US highway and a railroad track running through the middle of it. About 30minutes away was a larger town which still prints a daily newspaper. Yesterday, the headline was, Rain Heading This Way. Yes. It was.
Also on the front page yesterday was a story about how the green beans are not getting enough moisture and farmers are concerned. There was also a story about a shooting at a road house, a murder over gambling debt, and the mysterious disappearance of graveyard vases.
Interpretation: Surrounding is still farm country and the farmers need the rain. Corn was NOT knee-high on Fourth of July the way it was supposed to be. Green beans will turn out bitter if they don’t have enough water. Rain is a BIG story therefore. There are gambling dens and roadhouses all up and down the backwoods, and for whatever reason, people pack heat; some people way back there still sit on their porches with shotguns across their laps.
The graveyard vases were made of metal, and there is a ten-finger discount going on amongst itinerant homeless men who troll for metal to turn in to recyclers for money . Um, well, sure, we can give you fifty dollars for them there 102 funeral vases. Just found them, did you? Ok.
But here the story I really wanted to bring to you… like I said, if you, like me, come from a small village… ‘depiction is often stranger than fiction’ as in the following story. It is 4-H fair time back home right now and… look, I am pretty sure the guy being interviewed might have been an immigrant, or English not his first language, or syntax was just weird for a moment there, or the reporter omitted a clarification… but it’s your call… If it’s dehydration that was the problem, that’s one thing, but if it’s merely being ‘that way,’ geez, maybe all of humanity is endangered… and we all need to be ‘relaxed’ more…
Here you go:
Pig At Fair Dies Because of Stress
Tribune Staff Report
— A female Grand Champion pig that died at the 4-H Fair was not neglected, but probably died because of a high level of stress.The gilt, or young female pig, was found dead in her pen Tuesday, said St. Joseph County 4-H Fair Board Director Lee Slavinskas.
“Earlier at the show, she was showing signs that she was stressed, and we relaxed her,” he said. “She was in heat, which puts a lot of stress on their bodies.”
According to fair veterinarians, Slavinskas said, the animal was not diseased nor carried an infection, so there isn’t a risk that other animals will become ill.
“All animals are checked when they’re brought in,” he said. “That animal got as much attention as it possibly could have gotten.”
To combat the heat, topping 90 degrees the past several days, the pigs are given plenty of water and have fans blowing on them constantly. 4-H leaders walk through the livestock barns hourly to make sure all the animals are safe and comfortable.
Pigs don’t perspire, Slavinskas said, and many animals are cared for better at the fair than at home.
“These are not household pets … she was a champ and sometimes, unfortunately, (death) happens the week of the fair.”