My Winning Ways

This morning I received a phone call from someone at Radio Station KPIG to inform me that I had won a t-shirt, which I could pick up at the hardware store in my neighborhood.

I vaguely remembered putting my name in a ballot box for something while buying nails, but couldn't have told you what it was.

I promised Flip that he could have the shirt since it would probably be a size Large, and I picked it up. This is what it looks like, dorsal and ventral:

I found that KPIG actually sells this "Classic Pigshirt" for $30.

"Our classic light gray Pigshirt features the " Pure Pork" logo on the back and has the 7-color Pigsticker design on the front. There's no better way to tell the world "I'm a pig- and proud of it"."

Flip suggested we give it to a homeless woman who sits on the sidewalk outside the drug store, but I thought it might hurt her feelings because well, it's a PIG.

I would have preferred to win the Lottery.

The last time I won something was in North Carolina, a long time ago.

My 13-year old daughter and I had left our Vermont home in a chartreuse Plymouth Duster that hated me, pulling a horse trailer with two ponies. Our large dog had just died but we had a gray wolf and a black cat in the car with us. My older daughter and son were in college.

I had never pulled a trailer before, but quickly figured out that backing up required turning the wheel the opposite way from what you would expect. We spent the summer driving down the East coast, "camping" in the car or under the stars after exercising the ponies. I would be surprised if my daughter has ever voluntarily gone camping to this day.

We arranged to be in Chincoteague, Virginia, for the annual pony penning made famous to three generations of children by Marguerite Henry's "Misty" books. We watched the ponies being herded across the channel, swimming from Assateague where in 1620, a Spanish galleon carrying a herd of horses was wrecked on some rocks. The horses swam ashore and have been there ever since.

Assateague also has laughing gulls, whose cry, 'Ah ha ha HAAAAA" sounds like an inebriated man laughing. I think it would be impossible to feel depressed, ever, in a place with such merry birds.

The Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel in Virginia, 23 miles of alternating tunnel and bridge, is considered one of the Seven Engineering Wonders of the Modern World. I have always heard that it is among the loveliest scenery in America but I barely saw it because I was catatonic nervous about taking my eyes off the road for even a second as passing semi's constantly moved our car and horse trailer over several feet.

We camped in the Ocala National Forest in Florida for two weeks through three hurricanes, taking shelter during the worst of them in the caretaker's cottage on the Bernadette Castro estate. They kindly allowed us to stable our ponies in their barn.

Eventually, we backtracked to the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina, where we lived until my daughter graduated from high school and left for college.

My car had died a few days after arriving, and I noticed that the local Toyota dealership was sponsoring a "Hand-a-Thon." Twenty people including me were selected to compete for a new car. We were arranged around the stripped down tan Tercel with stick shift and required to have one hand on it at all times. If we wanted to face the other way, we had to ask a judge to watch us so we would never have both hands on or off the car. There was a 5-minute Port-a-Potty break every four hours around the clock.

One by one the other people dropped out, several of them hallucinating. A factory worker raised both hands to perform his assembly line job because he was disoriented and thought he was at work. His family led him away into the night.

Five and a half days later, I was the last one standing. I had to ask someone to drive the car home for me as I was in no condition to get behind the wheel. I was cautioned not to sleep more than a few hours at a time for a week because I could go into a coma from sleep deprivation, but I was too exhausted to care.

The president of the Toyota agency told a reporter that the contests usually take only a weekend at most, but "these people down here are tough as nails." I didn't tell him that I was a New Yorker, newly relocated to his state from Vermont, because they don't cotton to Yankees. I was afraid he would take away my car.

I always knew that I would win. I surely needed a car more than anybody else in the contest, and I never considered that there could be any other outcome. Also, a psychic had told me that I would win "a house, money, or a car." He had cautioned me that I shouldn't feel as if I got something for nothing, though, because I would work for it.

He was right.

The same psychic also told me that I would die at the age I will be on my next birthday, which is this month. It's considerably younger than I've always planned on, and I have tried for many years to put it out of my mind because I know about self-fulfilling prophesies. Some of his predictions were wrong but because he was right about winning the car, I worry.

On a happier note, I would be delighted to send the pig t-shirt to anyone who would like it. Since there is only one, I propose a contest: If you are interested, write to my email address and tell me why you'd rather be a pig. The deadline is June 24th, which is also my birthday.

"Would you like to swing on a star
Carry moonbeams home in a jar
And be better off than you are
Or would you rather be a pig?

A pig is an animal with dirt on his face
His shoes are a terrible disgrace
He ain't got no manners when he eats his food
He's fat and lazy and extremely rude
But if you don't care a feather or a fig
You may grow up to be a pig."

"Swingin' on a Star" lyrics by Bing Crosby