Remember when Jim Rohrbaugh raised pigs at the old dump near the mill? After the pigs grew big enough, one was killed each week and served in the cookhouse. [After a few weeks the loggers got tired of eating pork meal after meal. Beef was far more popular.]

Anyway, when I was about 6 years old I would go out with the bull cook in the old green hornet (green pickup) with the back full of slop from the cookhouse. The bull cook would dump a few 5 or 10 gallon buckets of slop into troughs inside the pigpen and the pigs would all begin eating rapidly in order to get their share. They were always hungry. The bull cook and I would stand by the fence and look down on the feasting pigs, all side by side with their heads in the trough. The pigs were fed every day but one was killed only once a week. It was as easy as shooting fish in a barrel. As the pigs were eating the bull cook would use a 22 rifle and point the barrel between the eyes and up an inch or so. The end of the barrel was about a foot away from the head. He only fired one shot. The shot pig instantly dropped to the ground and went into convulsions. The other pigs never stopped eating. Then the bull cook would drag the pig out of the pen and into the back of the pickup with the tailgate down and we would quickly drive back to the mill. I marveled that the other pigs never seemed to catch on to this operation and then never ran when the rifle came out.

When we got to the mill we stopped by a platform with a block and tackle
about 50 yards from the green chain, boiler and burn pile (burning sawdust and scrap lumber; there was not any metal burner enclosing the pile in those days). Someone was there to help the bull cook and they attached the pig’s hind legs to the tackle and raised it up. The pig was hung head down. They slit its throat to bleed it.  They then filled a large barrel on the platform with boiling hot water from the mill’s boiler and the pig was briefly lowered into it, they used sharp knives and shaved the hot skin to remove the hair and then rinsed the skin with hot water. It was a clean pig when they were done. They slit the pig up the middle, removed everything and kept the liver and maybe the heart. I do not remember if they cut the pig in half or took it whole to the meat hanging room at the cookhouse.

I really looked forward to that one day a week and it kept me entertained for the better part of a morning.

After a few years of complaints for being served so much pork at the cookhouse, Jim was convinced to cease raising pigs.

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When I think back on my childhood and teen years at Pine Logging, I have nothing but great memories.  We were all blessed to have experienced living in the mountains and being around the logging camp.  We as kids were entrepreneurs with our lemonade stands, boxes of gooseberries to sell, digging worms to sell for fish bait, etc. I worked at the commissary for my Mom, stocking shelves and watering around the outside of the building to keep fires from starting from the sparks of the huge burn from the mill and made a  whopping 50 cents a day.  We use to spend summers building tree houses (much to my mother's dismay because we always came home with pitch all over us), looking for arrowheads, going fishing, swimming at the creek, riding our bikes from family camp to the mill which was about 2 1/2 miles, mostly downhill,  and then put the bikes in the back of my Dad's pick up to bring them home.  Entertainment was our outdoor movies twice a week and hanging out at the Buckhorn at Camp Ducey, where I worked for a year or so as a teenager.  School was really a treat because we got so much attention from Mrs. Hicks because there were so few students in our one room schoolhouse.  One year there was only 2 students, myself and one other.  Families actually spent time together.  There were no phones, no T.V., no computers, etc.  We would sit around the camp fire and talk and tell stories.  It was just a great experience and it's sad the our children and grandchildren will not have the opportunity to experience it.  I have really enjoyed sharing stories with everyone.  Thanks for everyones effort.