Pigs

The park was a place to go and play. There were many parks in Ames, but the big park was along 13th Street as it came down the bluff from town, where the cemetery is located, into the wide valley of the river---the Skunk River. River Valley Park it was called. I learned the names of places early on, because I always wanted to know where I was, and where we were going. I prided myself that I knew the location of places around town.

We went to the park by car, usually in the summer time. Sometimes we had a picnic with a cookout in one of the grills, sometimes with other families from church I think. Cooking out on grills was something a lot of people did back then, especially if you didn't have a lot of money, which my parents never did have. I knew from a young age that money was not something we had a lot of.

On the other side of the river from the park, as one came up out of the valley of the Skunk on the plateau tat led to the Interstate, there was agricultural facility run by the university with a row of small sheds in which there were pigs. As we drove by them, coming to and from the interstate, I would seek to roll down the window so I could lean out yell to the pigs as we drove by. 

Pigs were my animal when I was boy. Everyone who knew me knew that I loved pigs. There was another farms on the edge of town where one could reliably see pigs, and I delighted whenever we drove past that one too.

For my sister it was, and still is, horses. We had a pig versus horse sibling rivalry, over which the better animal. It spilled over into the Winnie the Pooh, with Piglet versus Eeyore. 

Among other things, I refused to eat pork chops because they were made of pigs. But I wasn't fanatical about avoid pork products in general. Mostly it was just pork products. When my mother made them, sometimes I tried to hide mine rather than eat it. I remember doing when we lived on Ferndale. Our family wooden dining table had a small shelf underneath it, because of the way it was constructed, and I would try to hide my pork chops there. I was not a particularly picky eater as a kid. For example, I famously loved broccoli, which most kids hate. It was all about pigs.

Of course have long since converted to cow, but that's a different story. As a child I was captivated and loved pigs.