Mr. Write's Page

When I started this blog back in 2009, one my first stories was a thing I had written a few years earlier about my daily commute to work in the exurbs north of Atlanta.

From 1979 until 1996, my usual route to and from work was along Rosebud Road, a quiet, picturesque route through southern Gwinnett County. In those days, the road was lined with pastures, farms, and rural homes. Today, it is lined, end to end, with residential subdivisions.

I was thinking about my commuting years recently, and two memories surfaced.

One is about an impressively large bull who ruled a pasture along the way.

The other concerns a sprawling pig farm that — well, I don’t want to give away the ending.

—————

The Bull

He was an imposing sight, that bull. I don’t know much about bovines and bovine behavior, but this fellow was the boss of his world, and he knew it.

You could tell by his bearing. By the way the herd deferred to him. By the way he stoically watched the passing cars. He always seemed to be standing near the fence, with the rest of the herd safely behind him in the pasture.

For years, I drove past the bull and his charges twice a day, five days a week. The big fella was a formidable, strapping specimen, always on duty, vigorous to the end.

And the end did come.

One evening, instead of being at his usual post, looming regally over his domain, the bull was sitting in the grass, rump on the ground, forelegs straight.

I had seen him many times lying down, Sphinx-like, but never seated, like a dog. It was weird and unsettling.

The herd, usually scattered haphazardly around the pasture, had assembled to graze close to him.

When I drove by the next morning, the bull was dead. He lay stretched out in the grass on his side, unmoving. The cows and calves remained nearby.

That evening when I passed again, his massive body was gone. In its place was a mound of fresh red clay two feet high and 10 feet in diameter.

Around it were the tracks of the bulldozer or Bobcat or backhoe that had dug his grave.

For a few days, the herd continued to congregate near the mound. But only for a few days.

Soon, the mound settled, and the grass spread and covered the red clay, and no evidence remained of any of this.

The Pig Farm

Half a mile away down Rosebud Road, next to a large farmhouse, was a pig farm.

My uneducated eye was inclined to see it as a large operation, but it really wasn’t. It was just a modest family farm. The Rosebud pigs surely led better lives than the poor creatures in some wretched factory farm.

Not that I object to pork chops or bacon, mind you. That’s just the way it is.

Never having seen a real pig farm, I was fascinated. It consisted of the main house, assorted outbuildings, and four or five fenced compounds that stretched about 100 yards along Rosebud Road. Each compound housed a mass of squirming, squealing swine.

I have vivid memories of the place. There were the pigs, of course — their antic movements, their verbalizing, the aromas that sometimes wafted through my car.

I also remember the handful of men who worked the farm. They were always busy, tending to the animals, performing mysterious tasks. From my observations, pig farming is an arduous profession.

And I remember the amazing soil inside the compounds. Every inch of ground had been pounded to oblivion by generations of cloven hooves.

The soil was a deep, dark brown, almost black. It was, I assume, a blend of dirt, pig droppings, straw, feed pellets, and other exotic elements. Even on sunny days, it was a soupy mush. I doubt if it ever dried out.

For years, the pig farm was a familiar sight on my commute. If I had the skills, which I don’t, I could render from memory a highly accurate drawing of the place.

And, sadly, the pig farm exists today only in my memory.

One day, probably because the land was so valuable and so sought after by developers, the pig farm ceased operation. The farmhouse was shuttered, the livestock trucked away, and the compounds torn down.

Before long, on the site of the once-bustling enterprise, construction began on a high-priced residential subdivision. Within months, dozens of fine new homes were being built on the land where the compounds had stood.

After the subdivision was completed, the new residents settled in, no doubt focused on the future, ready to make their own history.

As the years passed, I often wondered if those residents knew about the existence of the pig farm.

Were they aware that the builders, in preparing the homesites, had plowed into the ground all that rich, fertile soil inside the compounds, a veritable primordial soup created by untold generations of porkers?

Did their lawns seem surprisingly vigorous and greener and more robust than lawns elsewhere?

I often wondered if, late at night, unbeknownst to the residents, methane belched softly from the ground and into the atmosphere.

I wonder if it belches still.