Chapter 32

Daddy was born and raised in Missouri (or Missoura, as his kinfolk called it). His mom and dad — Jim (also known as James Taylor) and Mary Pigg — were part of the widespread Pigg clan that called Missouri and other adjacent states home. There’s even a Pigg family graveyard outside of Green City, where he grew up.  It’s an amazing place, with its own little chapel and row after row of Pigg headstones. The Pigg family built that chapel in the early 1800’s.

Daddy was smart, graduating at the top of his class in high school. He worked the family farm after graduation and often told stories about the winter he spent in the Oregon mountains with a buddy, trapping for furs to make money. It was a good memory, but probably not a fun winter in an isolated cabin with only a wood stove for warmth and lots of tramping through deep snow. He only did it once.

Pearl Harbor was attacked while the family was having dinner, celebrating Grandmother Pigg’s birthday. Daddy had two older siblings — his sister Olive and his brother Frank. He had also had two younger siblings — his sister Josephine and a brother Russel.  All three boys signed up for the military right after the Pearl Harbor attack. Frank and Russel went into the Army, and Daddy went into the Navy. They all made it out alive, which was a minor miracle.

How he met and married Mother is a story for another day. Suffice it to say, they did. One February, she eloped, taking a train from Minneapolis to meet Daddy in San Diego when he was on leave, and they got married in a little chapel there. Then she wrote home and told her family what she had done.  They were a bit surprised because they didn’t even know she was gone!

Daddy must have been something of a rascal when he was young. He often told the story about how his mom had broken a hairbrush on him during one spanking. She must have been pretty mad because hairbrushes in those days were made of wood!

After he left the Navy at the end of the war, he took Mother and Andrea, then just a wee baby, to Missouri to live with his folks. It wasn’t a good time for Mother (another story). 

Times were tough for farmers, so Daddy took Uncle Frank up on his offer to come to Oklahoma City and sell real estate.  I was born there, followed by Cindy. Then, when real estate turned out not to be his forte, he again took Frank’s advice to move to Wichita and go to work for Boeing, which paid well enough that we could buy a little (very little) house. While there, he attended night school to become a plumber. Again, he didn’t like working for anyone else (he never did) and his folks talked him into coming back to Missouri to help them on the farm. So we moved again.

Farming the second time was no more lucrative than the first, so he finally relented and took us to Minnesota, where Mother’s dad assured him that plumbers were sorely needed. We’re not sure he ever finished his plumbing course, but the town only had one other part-time plumber, a local farmer who also turned out to be our nearest neighbor. Daddy worked for him for a while, but they didn’t get along for some reason, so he partnered with Arnold Hillman to start Hillman & Pigg Plumbing and Heating. It was a success.

Now, Daddy was fun sometimes, when we were little. But he got more standoffish as we grew older. Not sure why, but maybe three teenage girls were just too much for one very down-to-earth guy.

Our parents’ relationship was always something of a puzzle. Mother played silly pranks on him when they were first married. We found some sweet Valentine’s Day cards he gave her in a box of things after she passed. And sometimes he clearly wanted to please her. Once, after we moved to The Place, Mother asked him to build a screen house where we could eat outside in the summer (she loved to eat outside) sans mosquitoes and flies. He remodeled the old garage, turning it into a sweet “summer house” with lots of windows and screens. She loved it.

Daddy didn’t always think things through, but he was able to laugh at his own mistakes. (See: We Didn’t Think It Through.) One time, he had to catch a calf that needed shots or something. (We rented out pasture to local neighbors for grazing.)  The calf wouldn’t let him get close, so he decided that he would lasso it. Now, he’d probably never lassoed anything in his life (although he did read a lot of Westerns), so imagine his surprise when he actually got the loop around the calf’s neck.

Now, this wasn’t a newborn calf. It was half gown, so when the terrified calf hit the end of that rope, Daddy flew up in the air, head over heels, and took a hard landing.  It was so funny and unexpected, like a cartoon!  We all got a good laugh, once we determined he wasn’t badly hurt. 

(Linda: I wrote a funny poem about it, and Daddy thought it was so good he gave it to the editor of the Maple Lake Messenger, who published it along with Daddy’s misadventure. MY first published work!)

One of Daddy’s more notorious mistakes happened on the day he was burning a pile of brush and debris not too far from the horse stable. The horses were long gone by that time, but the ancient stable was still there. He left the pile burning and went to town for some plumbing reason. Next thing you know, Dale is running to the house yelling, “Call the fire department!” They came. Too late. That old stable burned to ashes. No big loss, and insurance did pay enough to build a new pole barn in its place.

Now here’s the rest of that story.

Dale, who was probably ten, and a friend were playing out near the stable and, when Daddy left, they got some long sticks and poked them into the embers of the fire. When the sticks were red-hot, they started waving them around to watch the embers glow. One ember flew off, landed in the dry straw next to the stable, and the whole thing exploded into flames. They ran to the house, and Mother called the fire department.

For years, Dady got razzed by the locals for intentionally burning down his stable so he could build a new pole barn. For years, he thought it was his fault. Finally, Dale confessed. Daddy looked at him, mouth agape, then said, “Why, you little sonofabitch!” Then he laughed.

Ironically enough, many years later and after he retired, he became the town fire marshal and had to sign burning permits for others.

In the summer, if Daddy had a plumbing job after dinner, we’d often ride along with him. Cindy loved the big, fat pencils that Daddy would use to draw up plans for a new job. Daddy would sharpen them with his pocket knife, which we thought was pretty cool. We tried it once but got into a little trouble because of the whole “knife and kid” thing. 

Daddy had mastered the art of embarrassing us. When the phone rang, he’d answer, “Wright County Mule Barn” or “It’s your nickel. Start the arguement”  or “Don Pigg. The extra G keeps us out of the hog family.” Oh, please.

But what are dads for but to embarrass three teenage girls? He did his job well.