Going Whole Hog…And Goose

Making sorghum syrup

In researching this novel, it didn’t come as such a surprise that most women in the early 20th century were saddled with an inordinate amount of often dirty, strenuous, and downright dangerous labor. Women worked with chemicals like lye and boric acid, handled open laundry fires and sizzling stoves (while wearing dresses too easily caught in the flames), hauled water and lifted huge sacks of flour and meal, handled raw meat, and were constantly threatened by snakes, scorpions, and other critters as the worked in their fields and gardens. Women from the middle and “lower classes” also worked outside the home as seamstresses, servants, and factory attendants. As Leola puts it during a time of particular strain between her parents:

Even before his accident, Papa often came home from work to whittle or read his books or go fishing, while Mama merely traded one job for a thousand others: Cooking, cleaning, wiping mouths and bottoms, on guard at all times for snakes and uncapped wells, caring for her cantankerous father—and when Papa got hurt, him, too. P’rhaps she’d finally found the end of her rope, and couldn’t keep ahold of it anymore.

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While much of this labor was solitary, much of it required help, and large family groups or neighbors shared the toil. Not that such cooperation made it less difficult–or dangerous. Even as more affordable, store-bought linens became available to consumers into the 1940’s, rural and poor women relied on duck and geese feathers to stuff mattresses and pillows.

Of all her chores, Leola detested this one most. Geese were ill-tempered creatures, less predictable even than bull cows, and far more likely to wreak havoc on those who trespassed against them. While a lumbering bull had to make a real effort to get his horns into you, geese could wield their long, knife-sharp teeth with brutal speed and precision. Hard enough, catching one without suffering injury. Harder still, tying up its feet so it could be hung upside-down for plucking. First time Leola tried it by herself, she’d been rewarded with a searing nip to the palm, and still had the curved, pink scar to remember it by.

And then there was hog-killing–bloody, brutal, but absolutely essential: A 500-lb hog could feed a family from winter to spring, with the side benefit of treats like chitterlings and cracklings, which were supposedly as addictive as potato chips (and the leftover skin used as a long-lasting chewing gum!).

Here’s an excerpt of a hog-killing scene in my novel, where Leola is distraught over the disappearance of her father and, suddenly views the blood and guts not as natural side-products of a necessary process, but as ominous symbols.

Leola had attended hog-killings nearly every year of her life, yet never before felt squeamish of any of it: Not when the pig was clubbed over the head and strung by its feet, then split open, throat to bung. Not when the blood poured out, steaming on the cool ground, nor when the tender ears and dainty cloven feet were severed from the body. In fact, Leola had always been fascinated by the wondrous arrangement of blue-tinged organs inside their caverns of bone and muscle, eerily similar to human anatomy.

But today, when the first dead pig was dragged to the kettle, Leola’s hands shook as she ladled scalding water over it, scraping the stiff hair from its skin. Later, as the hog’s innards were ripped from its body, she did not gape in wonder, but turned away, darkness flitting across her vision. agged to the kettle, Leola’s hands shook as she ladled scalding water over it, scraping the stiff hair from its skin.

Butchering hogs, c. 1919

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