Some can’t take a rib, others take whole slab
This headline of August 8 captured my mind: ‘Event features high-flying swine,? with the even more capturing subhead: ‘Pig Gig in Bay City offers diving, racing, even barbecued pork.?
Anything doing with pigs brings backs remembrances of youth and our father’s fascination with hogs, particularly extra large sows.
Dad raised pigs on the various farms we lived on in the early Depression days. I don’t remember how many, but I do remember the scalding, hide scraping and butchering.
I only have my older siblings? recollections of the castrations. We’d go to the Shiawassee County Fair in Corunna just before wheat harvest and the Ionia County Free Fair just before oat harvest.
Each trip was the same pattern. Dad would lead us to the swine barn, seek out the hugest sow, which always seemed to be laying against the aisle wall, reach over and scratch its belly with his huge fingers.
Dad at times would also seek out the booth where he could pay money to try to reach around a fat lady. Dad was a big man with long arms. Again, I don’t know if he was successful, but I can still see his smile at trying.
One other Dad-note. He insisted pigs couldn’t swim because they would cut their own throats with their sharp front hoofs.
But here, at the Pig Gig in Bay City the second weekend of August, there was a demonstration of pigs diving into the water. Hamu and Sweet Georgia Brown were a couple of the divers in the Labadie Pig Gig charity fundraiser.
When son Jim saw this Pig Gig attraction a few years ago, all he saw in the headline was the barbecued pork. Jim eats more ribs in a year than a normal entire family will eat in a lifetime.
He used to parboil the ribs and throw them on a grill, and always started eating them before the charcoal flavor soaked in. He was in Hog Heaven at the Pig Gig this year when he saw six rib-becuers cooking.
He is not partial to pork ribs. Sometimes he chooses the larger beef ribs. That’s when his thoughts of love for his dog, Ruger, are strongest. Ruger gets Jim’s raw beef bones after he’s stripped them clean.
I, too, am a rib man, but almost always pork. I have two friends, Nick and Charlie, who are aficionados of ribs. They’ve been in rib shacks across the country, only to come back home to compare remembered tastes to their own recipes.
Being the kind of guys they are, they, of course, declare their own home-cooked slabs the best.
Both have shared their preparation styles with me, but the threatening of my life prohibits me from sharing with you. I will say vinegar is involved.
Three times I’ve taken the time to barbecue ribs the way they told me. They wouldn’t let me write it down. I take death threats seriously.
The first time I did it they were so good I put all the rest of my meal’s dishes in the refrigerator and made dinner of the slab.
The next two times my results were less than mouth-watering. Maybe I’ll risk death and write the recipe down next time I hear it.
Virgil and Velma Randall have had their pigs diving and swimming at county fairs and festivals nationwide for 15 years. They claim pigs like water cause it’s cooling and they have no sweat glands to regulate their body temperature.
The Randalls also say pigs come from the same family as elephants and hippopami.
Son Jim is going to go crazy when he sees elephant or hippotamus ribs at his favorite butcher shop.