would be picking and singing, maybe even a little dancing, marathon card sessions, lots of food and drink, people shoehorned into every cranny of the house with babies and teenagers sleeping on pallets spread across the floor. And all that was before local friends and relatives arrived for the real party on Saturday.
Daddy always grumbled about having to wait on line to use the bathroom, or being eaten out of house and home, but Mother would just smile and keep moving, knowing that he’d be standing right there on the porch beside her come Monday morning, telling their guests, “I don’t see why y’all got to run off so quick. Seems like you just got here.”
The Fourth dawned hot and hazy and by the time Maidie and I drove out to the pond, we could smell the smoky succulence of roast pork as soon as we stepped out of the car. Robert and Haywood were seated out by the cookers where they could keep their eyes on the thermometers. They’d rigged a makeshift table from a couple of ice chests and were playing gin.
Robert knocked with two points and I took advantage of the next shuffle to lift the lid and fish out a Pepsi. “What time did y’all put the pigs on?”
“Around six,” said Haywood, looking suspiciously at the ace of spades that Robert had just discarded.
There are still purists who insist that the only way to cook pig is on a homemade grill over hardwood coals, but I’m here to tell you, people, it don’t taste too shabby over gas either. All up and down North Carolina roads, from early spring to late fall, you’ll see what look like big black oil drums on wheels being towed behind cars and pickups.
Pig cookers.
What you do is start with a basic two-wheel steel trailer and a 250-gallon oval oil drum. Then you take an acetylene torch and cut the drum in half lengthwise through the short wall. Weld the bottom half to your trailer, add hinges and a handle to the top half and a heavy rack to the bottom half. Scrounge some burners from your local gas distributor. Punch a hole in the top for your heat gauge and another hole in the bottom so the fat can drip out into a metal bucket. Add a small tank of propane gas and you’ve got what it takes to start cooking.
Of course, you do need a little experience to know when to flip the pig—too soon and it won’t cook all the way through, too late and it’ll fall apart when you lift it—and you really ought to have a secret sauce recipe you can brag about even though most of the braggarts just add the same basic five ingredients to cider vinegar. It all eats good to me, but Haywood and Robert still argue over just how much red pepper’s needed.
“Gin!” said Haywood. “Did I catch you with a fist full of picture cards?”
I waited till Robert finished adding up the score, then asked, “How much longer till you turn them?”
“Getting hungry, shug?” Robert set down his cards. “That little ninety-pounder’s been going right fast. Let’s take a look.”
He got up and walked over to the nearest cooker, Haywood and I right behind him. When he lifted the lid, a cloud of smoke escaped, carrying wonderful smells. The pig had been split from head to tail and lay on the grill skin side up, split side down.
Robert laid his hand on one of the hams and looked at his brother. “What do you think?”
Haywood flattened the palm of his own huge hand against the shoulder ham, held it there a moment and said, “I’n sure feel the heat.”
“Let’s do ’er then.”
By now Seth and Minnie were there as well as Maidie and four or five of my nieces and nephews. A raised cooker lid draws more kibitzers than a game of solitaire.
Using old dishtowels as potholders, four of the men each grabbed a foot and at Robert’s signal, they gave a heave and gently flipped the pig over so that it was now skin side down over the gas burners. Eager fingers reached in to pick off hot crispy slivers of the tenderloin, mine right along with them.
“Hey, now,” Robert scolded.
He swished a clean dishmop through the sauce and used it to slather the meat with a generous hand before closing the lid, ignoring all the pleas for just one more little taste.
“Y’all can just wait till everybody’s here,” he said firmly, even though Maidie pointed out that he’d had his fingers in, too. He just grinned, licked his lips, then he and Haywood wiped their hands and resumed their card game, so Maidie and I went on up to the tents to spread red-white-and-blue tablecloths and unfold chairs.
Since we expected people to drift in and out most of the afternoon, we had only rented enough tables and chairs to seat a hundred at a time. The rest would find perching places on the grass or along the pier.
Under the food tent, Amy and Doris had iced down the soft drinks in big garbage pails that had been bought for this purpose last party, and now they were slicing lemons into the wooden tubs. Sugar and water would be added and then the mixture could be left to steep itself into refreshing lemonade.
Will arrived with two iron stakes and a sledgehammer. “Where you think we ought to do horseshoes?”
I looked around for a level spot away from traffic lanes between the tents and the house. Jess and Ruth had erected a volleyball net down near the pond. “How ’bout around on the other side of the pier?” I suggested.
Robert’s grandson Bert and Haywood’s granddaughter Kim scampered past carrying bocce balls.
“Play with us, Aunt Deborah?” asked four year-old Kim.
There were probably a zillion things that still needed doing, but hey, how long do great-nieces and -nephews stay four? Besides, the way we play bocce, whoever’s closest wins a point even if the ball in question is thirty feet away, so our games aren’t very long.
By the time they lost interest and went to help tie red, white and blue balloons to my porch railing, the younger guests were arriving. I watched Andrew’s Ruth go shyly out to meet her first real boyfriend. Soon a volleyball game was organized and several kids were already in the water.
Now cars began to stream in, filling the old pasture.
The Reverend Freeman arrived with his teenage son and seven-year-old daughter.
“Stan and Lashanda, right?” I asked.
