Greased Pig Contests

 Greased pig contests were a thing that might happen at a public event. Even when I was kid, there was something old-time about them.

Greased pig contests were usually held in conjunction with a larger event, such as a fair, carnival, or other family-oriented "field day." 

A greased pig contest was exactly what it sounded like. A small hog was greased up so as to be as slippery as possible. There was a pen in which the pig would be placed. The kids got into the pen and then pig was released. The kids scrambled for the pig, attempting to isolate it and immobilize it by capture. Whoever could do that won the greased pig contest. Obviously the grease was meant to be a way to make this as difficult as possible.  The scramble for the pig was furious and the kids would get dirty. By "kids" here, I mean boys. The roughhouse nature of the scramble for the pig was not something girls would have wanted to participate in. The winner might typically be offered a small cash prize, or--and this is the part that always interested me---possession of the actually pig. 

 In my research, I went looking for evidence of greased pig contests in the Ames Daily Tribune (unfortunately they are missing the years 1968 and 1969 which is very frustrating in my research in general). I found plenty of references to greased pig contests going back to the 1930s. They were popular at county fairs. I don't ever remember going to a county fair in Ames. We lived in town, after all. The farm was something that my family had left behind several generations back.

Here are some from the early 1970s. The search results tell me that there were references to greased pig contests in the paper as late as 1974, and then they disappeared entirely. That makes sense to me, that 1974, when I was ten years old, is the last year they were held. After that it is like Iowa just turned a page, and the center of gravity of Iowa culture shifted from agricultural to modern commercial and industrial. Everyone thought of that as progress. The worst years for farm culture were yet to come. There are many, many fewer family farms today than there were when I was a young boy.

Ames Daily Tribune, May 18, 1971

The Izaak Walton League Park was, and still is, a private facility located on the bluff above the Skunk River across from River Valley Park. There were, and still are, pistol ranges and archery facilities. It was a very mysterious place to me as a kid. We rarely went there.

I don't think we went to this particular event, although we could have and I don't remember it. I just noticed in the ad that Duane Ellet and Floppy were there! Definitely I will write about them. 

News copy for the same event as the ad above.

Ames Daily Tribune, June 28, 1972 for the upcoming Fourth of July events in Rivervalley (sic) park. In this case, we see a greased pig race, which is a variation of the contest I described above, I suppose, perhaps with the kids chasing multiple pigs. I'm almost certain we attended this event and swas the fireworks that year, as we always did.  One would sit on a blanket on the flank of "cemetery hill" overlooking the Skunk Valley. But this is not the greased pig event I tried to compete in, as it was not a "race", and I'm pretty sure I was younger than seven years old.