1956

Since the next four years will most likely be humorless if our new leader sets the example, I thought the class would enjoy some excerpts from our own Charles Morrisey's recent piece, "Let's Not Be Beastly To Swine," reprinted by permission from the September 8 Wall StreetJournal.

"Even in sparsely settled Vermont we are getting ready to be vaccinated against the swine flu, and you hear a lot of complaints about this virus and the federal program to immunize all Americans against it. But nobody is speaking up about how pigs feel about the swine flu. Hogs have feelings, too, and deserve a few words in their behalf . . .

"In Yankee humor pigs have long been used as props and they can usually rouse a smile from the tightest-lipped native of these flinty hills. Take the tale told by Edgar T. Mead of Hanover, N.H., in his 'The Up-Country Line,' a history of the Boston, Concord & Montreal Railroad from 1842 to 1895. A farmer at a BC&M ticket office asks, 'How much to Littleton?' The agent says $2. The farmer asks, 'How much for a cow or a pig?' The cow would be $3, says the agent; the pig would ride for $1, 'All right,' says the farmer, 'book me as a pig.'

"And Allen R. Foley of Norwich, Vt., the champion collector and disseminator of Ver-mont stories, used to tell one about a pig and a farmer named Caleb Jones, who came home drunk one night. His wife, Mary, was understandably angry. 'You're not to sleep in this house tonight. Caleb Jones.' she snarled at him. 'Grab yourself a blanket and go out to the barn.'

"Caleb went. Later in the night, however, Mary felt sorry for him and went out to the barn to call him back into the house. But, carrying her lantern into the horse barn, she didn't find Caleb there. Nor could she find him in the cow barn. Finally she looked in the pigpen, and there he was, sleeping next to a friendly sow.

"Caleb stirred in his sleep and turned to the sow, running his hand along her belly. 'Mary, old gal,' he muttered, 'I didn't remember you had so many buttons in the front of your nightgown.'

"For John F. Kennedy's detractors it was the fiasco of the Bay of Pigs invasion on the coast of Cuba in 1961 that represented all the youthful recklessness of the New Frontier. For the counter-culture activists of the 1960s the cops were pigs. And in this era of women's liberation we all know that a male chauvinist is a pig.

"Pig farmers will tell you that a pig's reputation for being dirty is unfair. Pigs wallow in mud not because they like dirt but because they have no way of emitting perspiration, and wallowing is their way of cooling themselves in hot weather. Even in close confinement a pig will choose just one place to defecate and to be neat will repeatedly use this designated spot as a bathroom. . . .

"Swine flu, as the hog producers and meat packers are quick to point out, is one of the great misnomers in medical history. The American Medical Association has stopped using 'swine flu' because of complaints from live-stock associations. 'We are going along with them in a spirit of cooperation with the meat industry,' says Frank Campion, an AMA spokesman in Chicago.

"Since the swine flu was discovered at Fort Dix in New Jersey, and the virus is officially named A-New Jersey-76, some have suggested it should be called New Jersey flu. Understandably that isn't popular in New Jersey.

" 'No matter how you slice the bacon, swine flu is swine flu,' says Scott McGlasson of the New Jersey Department of Labor and Industry, which includes New Jersey's tourism and state promotion programs. 'lt's just another in a long line of gratuitous comments and insults about New Jersey that we are sick of hearing about,' he adds. 'Who needs it? It's the kind of honor we don't want.'

"Pigs don't appreciate that gratuitous comment about slicing the bacon either.

"Governor Brendan Byrne of New Jersey doesn't consider it his duty to name diseases, but he has suggested that the virus be called 'the Bicentennial flu.' That might be more appropriate than calling it the swine flu.

"It is time for consciousness-raising about pigs. Swine flu is a slur and, like sexist terms, should be discarded. Pigs deserve justice and compassion just as humans do.

"Would Jimmy Carter have made it to the Democratic nomination for President of the United States if he were a pig farmer instead of a peanut farmer? I doubt it.

"Let us heal the nation. Let us bring pigs back into the American consensus."

Secretary, 11508 Strait Lane Dallas, Texas 75229

Treasurer, Stanwood, Industries, sth & Bristol St Philadelphia, Pa. 19140