We named the first pig Alice in honor of a pig I knew as a child. Yes, The Story of Alice is a true story--with some necessary embellishment (okay, it wasn't a preacher, it was a neighbor lady, and no, she wasn't pinned on the hood of her car, but she was pinned inside the car). So anyway, the invitations had been sent, and the name of the pig chosen. I called Ray's Wholesale Meat up in White, GA and ordered a whole pig. Let's see ... the invitations ... the name of the pig ... the pig ... what next? ... hmmm. What to do. What to do.

Well, we knew we needed a hole, and, being a Virgo--what with my inherent organizational skills and need for balance and symmetry--it couldn't be just a hole. No. I dug a true pit--box shaped, with straight sides, about three feet deep. (Check out my pit on the How We Cook That Pig page.) We weren't exactly sure what to do with that pit, but necessity, as they say, is the mother of invention. So we held a dozen or so crunch sessions in the three weeks between sending out the invitations and the big day, and finally came upon a working plan.

We built up the ground level of the pit by laying two courses of cinderblock all around, and decided to use two standard chainlink fence gates wired together to hold Alice. Inside the pit, cinderblocks held up a grate on which the fire would be built. We then made a frame out of two by fours and nailed sheets of tin roofing on it for a cover. Now, we're talking good rich Georgia clay here, and after we fired the hole in preparation, what we had was one heck of a homemade baking oven.

We had invited folks to come by the night before to watch the pig go on, and just kind of hang out. But it rained all that day, and all that night, not to mention the whole of the week before, and only a few brave souls dared the cold and dampness to join us that October night--Connie and Ed Bostic, Jeanie Ledbetter, Charlie Cowan. Ed wore a sweatjacket with a front pocket from which appeared an amazingly endless supply of beer. Charlie kept us entertained with his mythical ravings about the sacredness of the fire. And if it weren't for Jeanie, who defied the naysaying of men and erected a tarp, we'd have all been a lot wetter than we were. As it was, we looked like a litter of wet puppies.

But we had done it! We had dug a pit, devised a scheme, and we were roasting a pig in our backyard. We could relax. In fact, Tracy (our aspiring Pitmaster) relaxed so much that his shoes caught on fire. Well, not exactly on fire, but they were smoking right much. And I guess it was all that cold, wet air that prompted him to keep throwing logs into the fire. At any rate, by midnight that homemade oven of ours could have passed for the firey pit of Hell, and Alice was sweating like a pig.

Needless to say, Alice got done a lot quicker than we'd reckoned on, but we didn't know it until we took her off the fire many hours after that. We thought about using a dark sauce to hide the obvious, but it would have to have been a reeeeally daaark sauce, and we weren't sure we could find any on such short notice. So, here's the thing--it's 8AM, the pig is done, guests aren't scheduled to arrive until four, and the neighborhood dogs are already gathering ... hmmm. What to do. What to do.

We really didn't have much choice. We brought Alice indoors, picked the bones clean, and kept the meat warm in the oven to keep it from spoiling. We did manage to keep the head intact though. I decorated it with whatever I could find, using green cherries for eyes, and set her up as a centerpiece. Everyone said she looked fine, but the truth was she looked like the Zombie Pig from Hell, and one of her ears fell off before the day was done.

For the most part, folks didn't seem to mind too very much that there wasn't a pig to pick at our pig pickin', and we all took advantage of the gathering to socialize and get reaquainted. We held a drawing to see who killed Alice, and the winner had to tell everyone how he/she did it. Turned out our neighbor's daughter from down the street was the guilty party. Helen Lynch, a quiet young thing with the face of an angel, had crept up in the dark of night, unbeknownst to us, and slew poor Alice, catching her unawares and stabbing her to death. Tsk-tsk. We gave her a stuffed pig as a prize, and counted her responsible for the pig pickin'.

Okay. So the first pig pickin' wasn't perfect. That's probably just as well, because if it had been perfect we might never have had another. As it was, when all was said and done, and we started noting where we had gone wrong, plans for the next year's pickin' started falling naturally into place. Next time let's not cook it as long, said David ... Next time let's not build the fire as hot, said Tracy ... Next time let's not drink as much, said I.