Monday, January 7, 2008

Uncle Harold on ‘How we found a Solid Shaft of Sh** through the Straw Stack’, as Told to Jim Kinsella



In 1943-44 farm labor was very short because of the War so I was sent after school got out to my Uncle Adin’s to help with the haying. Haying was hard work and there was not much entertainment so if it rained and we couldn’t make hay or go into the woods (to cut wood) we might go to an auction.

Well, Uncle Adin went and bought a litter of pigs for $1 at an auction. As he had no pig pen he just turned them loose and let them live off the countryside. They ate grass, garbage, cow feed, apples, blackberries, and cowslips from the swamp.

Later in the season after the wheat was thrashed and a nice hay stack was built for use as winter bedding for the cows, Uncle Adin was mowing the oats that served as a cover crop for the timothy seeding (hay). As he was mowing the deepest part of the field one of the pigs was in there eating oats. Well, Uncle Adin cut all four legs off the pig. Not wanting to stop mowing, we dragged the pig off and threw it beside the straw stack.

Come spring we found out what happened. The pig didn’t die. It just ate a little straw and pooped a little…and ate more and pooped more. At the bottom of the straw stack we found the pig and a solid shaft of shit!

The truth!!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ahhh Uncle Harold - I don't believe one second of this - but it's a great story!

Anonymous said...

Oh, I don't know. If you could hear Uncle Harold telling this in good form (I have been blessed to hear it probably a dozen times), you would be mesmerized by his storytelling and perhaps carried away by the ring of truth. When he delivers that last line, all you can think is, "Yes, that's exactly what this story is (about)."

Anonymous said...

I can't believe that this epistle got on this classy blog!!! And in the original story the phrase " its the truth" Was spelled thusly, " its the trooth" and the whole was lubricated with a dram or two!!
BTW, That picture of Jim. Harold and CB was taken in front of the penny candy case in Harold's gas station! That should have been labeled IN MEMORY OF AUNT LIL because that is who Harold was emulating when he started it!! Adults whom I meet in Waterloo that were kids in that neighborhood always say, " remember his penny candy? " they all came there for it!!!

Anonymous said...

jim , i have to admit that is the
cleanest and shortest version on
dad's story i have ever heard.
i think i like dad's rather complicated version better,but you would have to be with him to decide.