Anna Ollie Stuart - Fireside Stories

Anna and Her Pig

When Anna was a little girl about 6 years-old her father, Harry Stuart had a few pigs. He was planning on having some good ham for Pearl Rae to cook in her boarding house.

She had a big outdoor kitchen with a concrete floor and screens all around her. And, she had a huge black stove that burned wood and coal and even sage brush. This is where she had her long table to prepare all her food and cook it and there was a nice high school girl who came and worked with Pearl to get all the food out on the tables. The tables were outside most of the year, with canvas stretched over arches of willow wood to make shade for the tables. The working crew ate breakfasts of pancakes, biscuits, eggs, bacon or ham (or both), fruit pies, fried potatoes and big bowls of fresh fruit when they could get it. So Pearl was very busy from early morning to late at night because dinner at noon was bigger than breakfast. And supper was like a whole new meal so you can see she never stopped cooking when the crews were working hard.

Now Harry’s mother-pig gave birth to thirteen little piglets. She was overwhelmed with so many babies to feed that one very little piggy couldn’t find a place to get his dinner. Harry brought him into the house and wrapped him in a sugar sack and gave him to Anna to hold while he fixed a soda bottle with some canned milk and water with a little sugar in it. Then he put a baby bottle nipple on it and they feed the piggy. When his tummy was full he fell sound asleep so Anna begged to have him stay in a box in the house all night. Harry was a very kind man and so of course he let her but he told her she had to get up and feed that pig. She did too.

When he was strong, they put him down on the floor and he went to the bathroom. Every one yelled at him and Anna cried. She took care after that to take him out by the other pigs several times everyday and he learned to stay very clean in the house. Harry said he was smarter than a puppy to learn that in one day.

Soon they named him Pinky and he followed Anna around all the time. There was no school at this time so she had all day to play with her pig after she did her chores. She was learning to do all the egg gathering and Roy, her big brother helped her learn how to be gentle with the eggs in the nests and putting them in the basket to take in the house. She then feed the chickens and put fresh water in the water trough. She was still very little so her chores were just hard enough for a six year old to do. She also had a two hour time in the afternoon when she had to sit with the ladies of the house and other girls and sew whether she liked it or not. She had started at three years old learning to thread needles and sew on buttons, as her first lesson. At six she was doing embroidery samplers and was fairly sick of it but it was the way of the world so if she wanted time outside and freedom to raise and train her pig she had to be good and do these lessons too. And she did.

When Pinky was about twenty-five pounds, Anna found him running up and down the old teeter-totter Harry made for the children. Pinky would run up the board till it began to balance then he would squeal like he was laughing and run down the other side. Sometimes he would stay right in the middle and have two feet on each side of the sawhorse the board lay over, and he would shift his weight from one side e to the other so that board was teetering and tottering . Roy and Anna got the idea of getting on with him and since Roy was so heavy Anna could not teeter him easily. Soon Pinky knew to run down the board till his weight helped Anna and they could send Roy up in the air. Even when Roy and Anna were busy doing there chores that Pinky pig played on the teeter-totter.

Harry put up a swing in the apple tree one afternoon after church. Anna had a fun time swinging and then she had to go in to Sunday dinner. When everyone was finished they went on the porch to drink their lemonade and you guessed it...Pinky is up in the swing but he was just on the seat, he couldn’t figure out how to swing, of course. He had the wrong kind of legs. Harry went over and gave the swing a push and when it slowed down and stopped the crazy pig got down took a run and bumped the swing then turned around and jumped up. It continued to swing for a few minutes and he had to jump down again. All the grownups had a good laugh that Sunday after noon to see Pinky work so hard to learn how to swing.

Once Harry saw how smart Pinky was he taught him to jump through the toy hoop Roy didn’t play with anymore. He taught that pig how to drag a rope hooked to the bucket in the well and help pull up the water. I can’t even remember all the tricks they told me Pinky learned. And he keep on learning as he became bigger and bigger and bigger. He was about as big as a pig of his kind would grow and Anna began to worry and worry. Would he have to go to the smoke house? Well, Harry said, “We should never make pets of our meat animals but since we did I will sell Pinky to the next man that offers me a good price and wants him for a papa pig on his farm.

That is what happened. He went to live a few miles away and became the papa pig to a great many piggies. Anna was back in school and she told her friends about raising Pinky. Then when I was her little girl she told me and my brothers and sisters. We loved to hear about Pinky, Anna’s pig.

WRITTEN DOWN AS REMEMBER BY FAITH PYLE ABOUT HER MOTHER- ANNA OLLIE STUART AND PINKY IN FALLON, NEVADA.