TRAGEDY STRIKES THE TOWN
A popular song of the early days ran like this:
"Go tell Aunt Rhoda,
Go tell Aunt Rhoda,
Go tell Aunt Rhoda
The old gray goose is dead.
She's worth a saving,
She's worth a saving,
She's worth a saving
To make a featherbed." Of course the fox was the natural enemy of the goose. The goose was a natural wanderer, and sometimes the flock would stray far afield, so far that the owner could not find it convenient to look up the flock and drive it back to the fold at night; and as the goose roosts on the ground, Sir Fox would have his opportunity. The most efficient method for limiting the foxes was to dig out their burrows in the Spring, when they had their young.
Hog raising was also an important side line. To grow up a pen of fat hogs was the ambition of the average farmer. Pigs that had been kept over the previous winter were often made to weigh 400 pounds, dressed weight. Then during a cold snap in the early winter, the important day of hog-killing arrived. Not only weather conditions had to be considered, but the right phase of the moon must be selected, otherwise the pork from pigs killed in the ''old of the moon'' would shrink in the pot.
Soon after the hog-killing day came the time for making sausages. Bacon was not used so much, so those cuts which would now be put into bacon were put into sausages, with some beef added. The solid fat portions of the hog, of course, became the ''salt pork" and the pork barrel was an established institution. To salt down a barrel of pork, and properly cure and smoke the hams and shoulders so that they would keep ''sweet'' throughout the year, required skill and patience.
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