Gentleman Farmer Part 3

As we trudged back through the woods toward the hog pen, my dad seemed less dejected than I was about the whole thing. He told me to put some feed out in the trough we had made and leave the electric fence off so that if they came back they would be able to get in the fence. This seemed rather optimistic to me but I didn't argue.

He also told me that we needed to clean out the car when we got back. I had forgotten about this during the chase but I knew he was right again. Mother was not going to be too excited about the prospect of driving us around in that car the way it smelled at the moment. As we got back to the car and dragged the cage out to store it in the barn, the full scope of the mess became more apparent. The hog scour had run down into the folded back seats as well as the carpet in the floor boards. The seats were vinyl so they weren't that hard to clean but the carpet was a different story.

The first order of business was to take a hose and spray all of it that was coated on the back of the seats and tailgate out the back of the station wagon. This was done with a mop and a bucket of dishwashing soap without too much trouble but we were adding to the mess underneath with the water. The interior doors were coated as well so a lot of scrubbing with rags and soap was needed to get back to the native green color of the interior.

As we folded the seats back up it became obvious that we were in for quite a battle getting everything underneath clean. It was literally soaked with hog scour and water. The car smelled exactly like hog manure and was only getting worse as the sun started to heat everything up. We spent most of the afternoon scrubbing, hosing out and generally working ourselves to exhaustion trying to clean everything up. We managed to get the brown color dissipated but the smell was literally impossible to remove. We finally resorted to Pine-Sol solution in a very strong mixture but succeeded only in making a combined Pine/Hog Scour smell that really wasn't any better.

Naturally, my mom was not too happy although she tried not to say much about it. My dad seemed to take it all in stride as if it was the most normal thing in the world for our car to smell like a pig sty from that moment forward. We left all the windows and the tailgate down and put a box fan blowing air through the car from the rear to try to dry everything out. We had church the next morning after all, and no one wanted to ride in that car with it smelling like it did.

The next morning I was amazed to see our three hogs contentedly eating and rooting around in the muddy lot around the farrowing house. We fixed the fence where they had come in and out and turned the electric fence back on. Even mother seemed in a good mood when she came out to see them rooting around in the mud. They were quite tame and docile for the most part and even liked to be scratched behind their ears. This caused a little bit of a problem in that mother accidently leaned into the electric fence line running on top of the posts holding the mesh wire as she petted one of them. Both her and the pig were quite vocal in their surprise as the current went through her and into the pig as well. That particular pig eyed her warily from the moment on whenever she visited the hog pen; never quite close enough for mother to touch after that moment.

The car never completely recovered. It did get better than that first Sunday when we drove to church with the windows down even though it was quite chilly. I am sure we all smelled like hog scour that morning as it seemed to creep into everything. For years afterwards we would be going down the road with the windows open and a current of air would find it settled in some crevice and it would instantly make the whole car flare up with that scent. Us kids would all smile knowingly, fully aware that we weren't allowed to say anything without stirring up a touchy subject between dad and mom. He would cut his eyes at us in the mirror when the scent wafted around, just as an extra warning to be quiet. I am sure I also saw a little bit of a smile trying to tick up the corners of his eyes whenever he did that.