The pig-pickin'
This afternoon and early evening we celebrated Dave's birthday early with his annual pig-pickin'. You can read about this Southern phenomenon on Wikipedia, or you can go for this simpler explanation:
1) Cook entire pig in cooker. The cooker is the big black thing in the picture below.
2) (Optional) Take your knife, cut off pieces (hence the "pickin'"), and eat it. In this picture, Kyle (left, black shirt), Dave (at the pig), and I are at this step.
3) Cut up pig and serve to friends. Sauce is optional, and the type of sauce varies by region, but I prefer a spicy blend. Jo Drake makes a killer sauce.
That's really all there is to it. In our case, the pig is but one of many food attractions, because the meal is a pot-luck dinner. Jo makes a bunch of great dishes, other folks contribute everything from deviled eggs to cobblers and cakes, and we all eat so much we resemble boas that have just downed calves. 
Dave and I both collect SF pulps, so a group of us get together each year and try to buy some of the relatively few magazines he doesn't already have. In this photo, he's holding a January, 1928 issue of Weird Tales, one of this year's gifts. (Sorry, Dave, for running a picture with you looking a little drugged; I couldn't resist.)
No North Carolina party would be complete without combat sports, so Sarah and I took it upon ourselves to treat the assembled crowd to displays of our awesome skills. In this shot, Sarah is falling victim to my "laughing spaz" strategy as we pursue the Fight Club strategy that has made her school so feared by, well, no one.
I totally had her.
Despite the obvious viciousness of our battle, the crowd's thirst for blood remained, so we bowed to peer pressure and engaged in a hardfought rock-paper-scissors fight. In fact, instead of our usual best-of-three best-of-three, we had two such contests.
In this first photo, we've just begun, and Sarah has hope.
In this second picture, however, I've emerged victorious (extending my current streak to three), and Sarah, now bereft of all chance of winning today, is contemplating drowning herself in either cake, brownies, or cobbler.
These are the tough decisions facing a pig-pickin' crowd.
(All pictures, by the way, are courtesy of the Web Weasel, who unlike myself is not so lame as to be unwilling to resize photos from a blogcam for use on the blog.)
Posts
8 comments:
A-ha! BBQ!!! Now thems good eatin'!
The pix are great too, always make for capturing the atmposhere.
One of the guys over at bookspotcentral collects pulp stuff like that. He's got a whole bunch of pictures of the weird tale magazines he has--I bet he'd be jealous of the 1928 (unless he has it already!)
Baen does a lot of pulp covers. In fact, I think Jay commented on your covers as being good pulp!
Y'all are gonna have to do some long walks around the neighborhood to work off all that good eatin'. Makes me hungry just looking at that stuff. You can almost smell the smoke!
That "cooker" looks to be the size of a small camper! Holy smokes!
Which issue of Weird Tales is that? The protective wrap makes it a little hard to tell.
I should mention (from reading the Wikipedia article) that we have "pig roasts" here in central NJ due to the large presence of Filipino immigrants. Several church-related events (folk group parties, etc.) have featured whole pigs, plus fried rice, spring rolls, various other dishes.
And a killer hot sauce.
I need to drop the weight of a small child. It's going to take some time. The pig, though, was delicious.
Fred, it's the January, 1928 issue. Dave has a very nearly complete run of WT, and I have a complete set.
I bet that hot sauce is good. I would like to try it.
I'm working on getting Astounding/Analog myself. I have a solid collection back to 1958 or thereabouts and scattered bits further back.
The further back you go...the more mortgages you need to take out on your house. WT? Heck, I'd need to win PowerBall!!!
Yeah, if I had to start today on pulps, I'd never make it--and I still have a long way to go. I've been at it a long time, though. I was lucky enough to be able to buy a complete set of WT from Karl Edward Wagner at a price that, though steep, was still a great bargain.
Post a Comment