Second Grade - The Famous "Hog Rodeo"

I didn't smile for this picture.  Maybe it was taken while I was still serving detention for my daring attempt to ride a hog.

During my second grade year, a friend named Don Rutledge and I ventured out to the hog pen during our lunch break at school.   The high school ag boys were raising a hog as a class project, and for some reason they set up the pen in the middle of the football field.  In a day and time when high schools are spending huge tax dollars to construct field with artificial turf, it’s hard to imagine anyone actually someone raising swine on the school athletic field, and doing it with the blessing of school officials, but that’s what happened.

Don and I were standing by the side of the pen, and Don said to me, “Bet you can’t ride that hog.”  Well, he was a town boy and I was a farm boy, and I wasn’t about to let him think that I couldn’t.  

I said, “Of course I can.”

He said, “Let’s see you.”

In an instant I was over the fence and inside the hog pen, but I was faced with an immediate problem.  The hog wouldn’t stand still for me to get on.  It occurred to me that if I picked up a stick and started beating the hog, then the hog would surely get the message and stop and let me get on.  Of course, the more I hit the hog, the more the hog ran away from me.  I yelled at the animal, but to no avail.  For some reason I wasn’t scared of the hog at all.  Within minutes I had a crowd watching me.  Even high school kids were standing outside the pen watching.

It wasn’t long before the teachers caught me, and I was unceremoniously marched back to the classroom.  I wasn’t about to take the punishment alone. I yelled, “Don made me.”  So we were marched back to the classroom together.  I think we had give up recess for a couple of days and that was about it insofar as punishment was concerned.

It was about that time that my mother came to school for a parent-teacher’s conference.  The teacher told her about the incident, but then she said that she had the hardest time keeping from laughing about the whole episode.