There was an old chicken farmer named Calvin McGee, who lived several miles from our place. Every so often, Grandpa and I would venture over there to see what ole Calvin was up to. There were several enormous oak trees in his front yard where Grandpa and Calvin would sit in lawn chairs. They would talk about the good old days, and soon their talk would turn to prophesying the end of the world and how this great country of ours was quickly going to hell in a hand basket. Late one evening, while the two shared stories that even at my young age I'd already heard it seemed to me like a thousand times. I ventured out past Calvin's fields into the woods on the backside of his property where he kept his hogs. One old sow had recently given birth to a whole litter of baby piglets. It didn't take long for me to notice a cute little female piglet with brown and grey-black spots all over her. She came over to the fence while her brothers and sisters were steadily having their evening meal of mother's milk, and she looked up at me. I knew there and then that I had to have her as a pet. I got what I wanted, for on the way back home she rode in the floorboard of Grandpa's pick-up truck. 

I named my new pig Freckles, because of all of the spots that covered her body. They say that pigs are extremely intelligent and have a functioning I.Q. of that of a three-year-old child. I believe every word of it. I played with that little piglet as though she was a pet dog. As she grew bigger, she would see me coming towards the hog pen, and she would eagerly run over to the fence and rub her side against the fence. This was her cue for me to rub her back. Even when she got old she would slowly walk across to the fence and look up at me through her now thick eye lashes and rub herself on that fence. 

More to come on Freckles . . .