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Opinion

July 24, 1997

Monahans' Well


By Jerry Curry
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As some of you may know, I was reared in Arkansas and I don't mind
saying so although a few friends have told me it is not too good an idea
to go around bragging about it. In fact, I was reared in Mountain Home
which is up in the top of the Ozarks on a big plateau right between a
couple of lakes that could turn the Permian Basin into an oasis if you
could find enough PVC pipe to move a little of that water down here to
the desert. But that's another story.
This story is about hogs, razorback hogs which are not too big (none of
them weigh more than a couple of tons) but, who for their size, probably
are the most cantankerous things on Earth, up to and including a Marine
Corps drill sergeant after a bad Saturday night in Laredo.
If you don't know, you should be aware the only thing worse than a
razorback boar with an attitude is a razorback sow anytime of the day or
night. If some idiot environmentalist let a breeding pair of razorbacks
loose out there in the desert around Wickett, both of them would root
their way right through those dams upriver and there absolutely would be
no water problem in the Permian Basin anymore.
Razorback hogs are tough.
And the toughest may well be a razorback sow.
But the toughest razorback I ever saw was a boar, not a sow, and he
belonged to Mr. Jim Bryant who lived out north of Mountain Home a mile
or so beyond our place in the shadow of Wallace Knob, a little North on
the Pigeon Creek Road, which if you rode it long enough would take you
to Missouri, but that's another story.
Mr. Bryant was proud of that hog.
Let's face it. Outside of pure meanness, there really is no reason to be
proud of a razorback. They do not take kindly to being fed out for
slaughter and they generally won't stay in a pen even if you want to
try. A razorback shoat would have busted out of the Old Grandfalls City
jail in about five seconds.
Mr. Bryant's razorback boar was named Sid.
Sid lived in the barn when he wanted too, which was most of the time,
and Sid ate anything Sid wanted too, which was most of the time. Sid
really wasn't worth much but Mr. Jim Bryant loved him and that's a fact
that can't be denied.
Sid was about the size of an Old Ford Pickup and was mostly red. He had
a few scars from an encounter or two with a panther, which despite what
the game wardens say, still roam the Ozarks. You can hear them scream at
night and they'll blister paint with that scream. But that's another
story.
Anyway Sid never worried about panthers because, as I have noted before,
he was the meanest, toughest, most attitudal razorback, including sows,
although he was a boar, that ever lived. His only real weakness was that
he liked to eat. And he loved Jim Bryant, about as much as Jim loved
him. It happened that on a Saturday Jim Bryant went down to town and
bought some dynamite to blow out some stumps on Monday morning. Not
thinking, he left the dynamite in the barn where Sid chose to sleep and
eat. Eat is the operative word here. Sid didn't find the dynamite until
Sunday morning when the Bryants started getting ready for church. The
resulting explosion from the first couple of bites Sid took of the
dynamite made Wallace Knob quiver and destroyed the barn.
When we came running, we found Mr. Bryant sitting in the middle of where
his barn used to be crying. He looked up and wailed he had lost his
barn, the back of his house and two tractors and, he sobbed: "It's
worse! It's worse! Son, I got me a mighty sick hog. Sid's bad sick."

Copyright 1997 by Ward Newspapers, Inc.
Steve Patterson, Publisher
107 W. Second St., Monahans TX 79756
Phone 915-943-4313, FAX 915-943-4314
e-mail news@bitstreet.com

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