Thursday, October 20, 2011

Pigs

Flying from Ft Lauderdale to Charlotte last night, a couple got into the two seats between me and the window.  He had on a Guns and Roses like bandana, with long hair, with his head shaved up under his ears and some patchy jeans. I started talking to them, and it turns out they were down in Florida getting married.  Alone.  Without family, on purpose.  Stayed in some luxury time share on Fisher's Island near Palm Beach.

Turns out, they needed time alone.  They had 5 kids between em, 3 from previous marriages and a couple of their own.  Both were in college, and he had two jobs.  One of them, it turns out, was in a slaughterhouse, slaughtering 1300 pigs a day.  And he gave me a fair amount of detail around the processes involved in killing them, which.... I will spare you. It made me think about vegetarianism, but when he hit the ground he was intent on finding some bbq (and rightly so, though the slaw down in that part of the state kind of sucks).  I think he wanted to fuck with me a little bit (and he did).

And between the five kids and two jobs, he had found time to master Angry Birds, to get up to levels Graham and I have never dreamed of.  A very sweet guy.  Spent a lot of time looking through his wedding pix (they were both in white) on his computer and declaring that this one or that one is the best.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

We used to live near the Hormel packing and processing plant in Minnesota. The stench was unreal. It definitely made you consider becoming a vegan. The only meat you should be packing is in your pants!