I went to visit my cousin Charlie sometime in the 80’s after he had moved back to MO for a while. He said ya gotta come down to one of our pig roasts sometime. This was not long after he lost his leg below the knee when a ladder to a barn loft broke. The leg was so bad that it wouldn’t heal so he had it amputated. I said I’d love to and time went by….. a few years later Rosie and I went to his cousin Archie Gay’s place in Battlefield where they were having a get together for the Glidewels and the Bolin’s. They had dug a hole in the ground with a backhoe about 8×8 feet and about six feet deep. Into this hole, in the back yard, they threw a lot of old oak pallets the kind you find in a ware house. They lit these on fire two nights before. The next evening they laid a lot of meat wrapped in aluminum foil with chicken wire around the outside to hold it together, on the hot coals. I think there was a least four different kinds of meat. They then laid corrugated sheet metal over this then covered the whole thing with dirt. When we got there they were removing the dirt and rock and laying the packages out to be served under a big tent with picnic tables from end to end out of the hot summer sun. Beef, pork, chicken and so on was in pans and we went down the line and picked out our favorites along with green beans, salads, baked beans, pie so on and so-forth. This was in the early 80’s and times were good. Charlie and I were at the top of our game and despite Charlies handicap he was doing ok. Later we spent more time with him and his wife Sandi and we stayed a night with them. Rosie and I had a bed room with an open transom over the door. About 7 am the next morning Charlies wooden leg came through the transom;
shoe and all and hit the floor with a thud…..there was silence for a few seconds then he said something to the effect that it was time for breakfast…. that was Charlie, start your day with a good laugh…
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