By The Way
Coping with COVID, my wife, and Cunningham By Emory Jones
S
everal of you have sent cards and letters expressing concern as to how my pet pig, Cunningham, is holding up during the recent stay at the house event of 2020. He’s fine, but this whole self-isolation thing has been hard on my wife, Judy. In her defense, I’ll admit that self-isolating with a pig is harder than you’d think. While you do tend to wash your hands more, not touching your face is difficult, although I’ve noticed Judy has learned a trick that seems to help with that face touching thing--she keeps a glass of wine in each hand. The other night she asked me why the television people keep calling it the “novel” coronavirus. I told her it’s a long story. Cunningham laughed, but she just rolled her eyes and went to bed. Anyway, I’ve been keeping her spirits up by cooking outside on the grill as often as possible. That gives Judy a break. After she gets the salad made, prepares the vegetables, makes dessert, and has the ribs ready to cook, I put the meat on the grill. Then, once she’s set the table and has the sweet-tea made, we eat. After dinner, all she has to do is the dishes.
Because of my love of good barbeque, Cunningham and I have both put on a few extra pounds during this crisis. The truth is, he’s become quite a porker! As a result, his pigiatrician at the hog hospital in Homer has put him on a strict diet of sweet potatoes and parsnips until he drops a hundred or so pounds. So, no more peppermint pig pellets for a while. My wife says I should go on a diet, too. She wants me to get down to what it says on my driver’s license, even though I keep reminding her that I have a condition that p r e v e n t s me from dieting. It’s called hunger. Besides, it took a ton of willpower to give up starving in the first place, and I don’t want to backslide. But I digress. I’ve enjoyed staying at home with Cunningham myself. If fact, it got me thinking about how the two of us met in the first place. Sometime back, I was driving my pickup around I-285, trying to avoid Atlanta, when I saw a pig hitchhiking. Right after I picked him up, a Cobb County cop pulled us over. “What are you doing with that pig?” he asked. “Just giving him a ride,” I said. “He was hitchhiking.” The deputy said, “We have laws in Atlanta. If you don’t take that pig to the zoo or someplace right now, I’m gonna’ give you a ticket!” Cunningham and I had such a good time at the zoo that I took him to a Braves game later that evening. We were coming out of the Chop House when Cunningham inadvertently caught a fly ball in his mouth. But he got so excited when they flashed his picture up; he swallowed the darn thing. Cunningham panicked and ran onto the field and around the bases squealing like a pig. That event still holds the record of being the Brave’s first “inside the pork” home run. He even got his picture taken with Bobby Cox, although Bobby wasn’t smiling in it. Anyway, we’re all fine. Especially Judy. She hasn’t touched her face in nearly a month now.
Emory Jones grew up in Northeast Georgia’s White County. After a stint in the Air Force, he joined Gold Kist as publications manager. He was the Southeastern editor for Farm Journal Magazine and executive vice president at Freebarin & Company, an Atlanta-based advertising agency. He has written five books, including The Valley Where They Danced; Distant Voices: The Story of the Nacoochee Valley Indian Mound; a humorous history book called Zipping Through Georgia on a Goat Powered Time Machine; White County 101 and Heart of a Co-op--The Habersham EMC Story. Emory is known for his humor, love of history and all things Southern. He and his wife, Judy, live on Yonah Mountain near Cleveland, Georgia.
64 - June 2020
