Sawdust and Filings: Shootout/Pig Roast

Well, its been a busy summer. While the economy executed the innocent, those of us still on the chain gang found ourselves redefining "do more with less". Consequently, I have not taken the time to enter any updates. In brief, I have been working on finishing the basement, finishing Yoda (more about those projects later), and most recently, preparing for last weekend's annual Shootout, which was expanded to include a pig roast for the first time this year.

"My uncle has a country place that no one knows about. He says it used to be a farm, before the Motor Law..." --Red Barchetta, Rush

There is a little scrap of land in Indiana that my grandfather owned, which his youngest son now owns, that has always been used as a sort of retreat into the country. My uncle has transformed it, for the better, from my earliest memories, but it retains its purpose. Annually, the uncles and male cousins get together for a target shooting competition, which also has evolved over the years, most recently to include trap shooting. This event always takes place the weekend after Labor Day weekend, which coincidentally collides with the anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy, my mother's birthday, my brother's wife's birthday, their anniversary, and my uncle and his wife's anniversary. Not that any of that matters. The annual date was based on a weightier matter: the end of the boating season.

This year, I was planning to have Yoda finished so I could return it to my cousin at the shootout, as a matter of convenience and also so we could take turns playing it around the campfire (this has seldom, if ever, happened over the nearly 20 years we have been doing this). Still, it was a goal and I did not achieve it. I got distracted on another project: building a pig roasting grille and a cooler large enough to keep a whole pig on ice overnight. Neither of these tasks was overly complicated nor challenging, but nonetheless required a requisite amount of time in the undertaking and consequently robbed poor Yoda of the attention he needed.

We bought the pig prepared from our local Amish meat shoppe. They supplied a fresh 80 pounder, the smallest available. They butchered her on Tuesday after Labor Day, I guess they take holidays off, too.

Piggy's heart sank as she entered the chamber, her hopes for a fair trial dashed


Redneck Pig cooler and Roaster. I welded the grilles from scrap and knocked some of the rust off with a belt sander. The cooler is leftover building materials from a church roof.