Farm Life of the Past : Jake (Part 6 & 7)

...continuing...

(Part 6)


Jake


As it turned out and could now be revealed, Jake’s fate was a sad one - and ironic!

His mother and grandmother had wanted to wait for the return of the other family members with the bike, to make the news about Jake a little easier for Ed.

No! Jake was not among the slaughtered hogs that day, as one might have suspected.

Jake was hanging out with Ma around the chitterlings (chittlin’) pot, as she worked, preparing the parts for the pot! Unknown to her, as she tossed the unwanted sections of intestines aside, Jake was eating them. Jake choked on the discarded intestines!

The pig, after his untimely death, had been sold to a neighbor for a small sum of money, (Jake was not yet of the usual slaughtering size) though, not nearly enough for the bike! Family members added the extra money needed to buy the bicycle for young Ed!

Charles Edward would remember Jake through all the years - and that green and white Schwinn, too!

And he would remember the kindness and generosity of his family on that day.


~~~~~~~

(Part 7)



Ed would have the bike for the next several years, until he went in the USAF, just out of high school. He handed it over to his young nephews when he left home!


Years later, when he had his own wife and children, all of this was brought back fresh in his memory! On a visit back home with his family, there, hanging in his brother’s shed was the frame of the Schwinn bike! All of the bittersweet memories of that time…of the bike and of Jake…came back in full focus for a little bit.


June Kellum
May, ‘06



Note:

I, personally, have wondered if the young Ed would have gone through with the selling of Jake in order to get the bike.
However, considering the time and place in the past of this story, he probably would have. The cost of keeping a pig for a pet would have been too extravagant in those hard times!
…Besides, the young boy, Ed, had that burning desire for that new Schwinn bike! :)


Junie