Page 15 - Demo

Kendallville Mental School9%u2022%u2022%u2022%u2022%u2022When I first moved to Kendallville in mid-summer, I told Dave I wanted to have a hog roast on the weekend just before the start of school, and I%u2019d like to borrow his hog-roasting apparatus. So, as the weekend neared, he brought over his Rube Goldberg cooking contraption, which consisted of a small electric motor, a bicycle wheel for a pulley, a cobbled-together sheet-metal cover, and a homemade spit.I made arrangements to buy the star of the weekend %u2014 the hog %u2014 from a friend%u2019s grandfather who lived 30 miles away. Because a dead hog wouldn%u2019t fit in the trunk of my MG (and would have looked a bit grisly tied across the hood), Lynn offered the use of her Nova, which she%u2019d purchased just after graduation. Matthew was feeding live hogs when she and I picked him up to go with us to the butchering plant where his Grandpa had delivered the beast. (Lynn still hasn%u2019t forgiven Matt for getting into her new car with ripe manure all over his boots.) After wrestling the skinned carcass %u2014 complete with head and beady little blue eyes %u2014 into the spotless trunk, then dropping Matt off to continue his chores, Lynn and I drove home to get started. I dug a shallow pit in the back yard for the charcoal, and Dave lent a hand getting his mechanism assembled and in working order. As guests arrived, we sent them to the refrigerator %u201cfor a beer%u201d %u2014 where they found the hog%u2019s grisly head staring at them. I%u2019d considered mounting it on a pole out front, a la Lord of the Flies, but that didn%u2019t seem appropriate for a new teacher in a small town. Dave had mentioned the hog roast to his grandmother, and she said she%u2019d love to have the head, that it would have quite a bit of meat on it. Because no one else expressed any interest, she got it after the weekend was over.It was a very successful end-of-summer party, with people I%u2019d known from college and high school, as well as a few new, local friends Lynn and I had met. The only dark cloud involved the developer who owned the eight brand-new duplexes on our cul-desac. He was truly shocked to see what a new teacher was up to. As he eyed the hog slowly rotating on the spit, he said, %u201cI just can%u2019t believe someone would dig a hole like that in someone else%u2019s back-