This column is not for the squeamish or anyone about to sit down to bacon and eggs or pork chops, but is there any part of a hog (hawg) we Southerners don’t eat?

Let’s see: bacon, ham, loin, pork chops and ribs are truly “eatin’ high on the hog.” Barbequed ribs are the all-time favorite, and now we enjoy something called Boston Butt which until a few years ago was pork shoulder. We put cracklin’s (that’s hog skin) into our corn bread which together with turnips make a true Southern meal. And liver and lights (lites) are served with rice, I believe though I’ve never had that. Hog brains with eggs is another “delicacy” of a time gone by. The head is cleaned and cooked down and made into hog-head cheese or sause. The fat is cooked down for lard. And I don’t suppose I have to explain chitterlings (chitlins’)? That only leaves, the feet, the ears and the tail. I don’t see them anymore but when I was growing up a five-gallon jug of “pickled pig’s feet” in a grocery store was a common sight.

However, one is never too old to learn and I recently learned from a friend in Autauga County that he eats pig’s ears and tail! I think the ears are boiled and then fried; not sure how the tail is prepared, boiled I think. And he has eaten blood pudding! He says.

A very cold spell that lasted two or more days signaled “hawg killin’” time not so long ago. Have you heard someone walk into a frigid room and say “you can hang meat in here?” I was never a participant, but the best I can gather is that family members all came together, usually at Grandpa’s house, to perform this ritual. For the smaller children, it was a great time to run and play with cousins. For the adults it was a full day’s hard work. Fires were built with plenty of oak and lighter wood, butcher knives sharpened, and iron pots and 55 gallon drums made ready.

One person shot the hog right between the eyes level, straight on, not at an angle; another “stuck him.” Ever wonder where the expression “bleeding like a stuck hog” came from?

Several fires had been built and scalding-hot water was inside those 55 gallon drums where the hog was dragged and placed, swirled around to get a good scald, and pulled out by the ears; then reversed to scald the other end. Everyone who cared to got to help scrap the hair off the hog. The water temperature had to be just right or it would “set the hair” on the hog and it would be next to impossible to scrap off. Yes, that’s the origin of the good Southern expression “he/she really set the hair” on so and so.

Meat packing companies have supplanted hog killing and smoke houses and rendering lard, and cooking out cracklins, and making sausages, but I am only one generation removed from this ritual which provided families earlier in the 20th century with their meat supply. I have only admiration for that daylight-to-dark generation who grew everything they consumed, perhaps except sugar and flour, unlike their descendants who might be one truck strike away from food riots.

I understand that Alabama has the highest incidence of cardiac disease. Could it be because “we eat every part of a hog except the squeal?.”

(Correspondence to Ellen Williams can be sent via e-mail at jeffersondavis@wildblue.net.)