The Red Flannel Rag

cleaning job because he’s fat and looks like a hog?” She smiled and said, “Don’t you dare

let your daddy hear you say such a t hing about his brother.” Later when I was alone

with Mom, we had a good discussion and a good laugh about how much Uncle Jake

favored a hog.

Uncle Jake finished his “head” work fairly early in the day then began playing

tricks with the pigs’ tails. He wo uld sneak up behind people and pin a tail to their shirt.

To have the pig tail hanging from you was the least flattering thing that could happen to

you on butchering day; but it was all done for fun and to lighten the workload.

After Uncle Jake took the heads away, the head butcher split the hog down the

middle and began to remove the intestines. Grandma Molly stood by with a tub to

catch them as they fell out of the hogs. Year after year I heard her warn the butcher,

“Don’t you dare cut a gut. I won’t stuff sausage in guts that have hog shit on them ‘cause

you can’t get that smell off.”

Grandma took the intestines so she could trim the fat from the large intestines

and remove the small intestines. The fat went into the lard kettle for rendering and the

small intestine was scraped clean and cut into long sections. When the sections were

cleaned, she would put one end in her mouth and hold the other end shut. She blew into

the intestine like a balloon. If it inflated, it was suitable for stuffing sausage. This part

made me gag, because I had just watched her scrape out the shit.

Once the intestines were removed, the woman of the house, my mother, was

called to wash the hog until it was pure white. She used a brush and warm soapy water

and removed every speck of dirt from the hog. After my brother married Hilda, this

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