This Is How It All Ends. And Begins.

Arrive late Friday to a roaring party already ongoing. Help move the pig, stuff the pig, rub the pig, watch as they stitched the pig, wrap the pig and load the roaster. Down a few and watch some of the tipsier celebrants weave about the room in a motion replicated later by windblown trash cans slowly rolling back and forth back and forth back and forth on their sides in the street in the middle of the night windstorm.

Arrive late morning Saturday to grease fires windstorms and a thermometer rendered useless by a now-too-short-probe and the howling howling winds. At least it’s not raining, I thought. Even more help than normal this year, 2:45 the middle gets to within 5 degrees F of temp and we vent the top and let it coast in until 4pm when it’s at temp and we move to the table to rest. Meanwhile the special guest dog that we’re dog sitting makes friends with everyone. Help consume the half-cans of crap beer that need consumption before filling with bay leaves garlic and spice mix and shoved into the chickens. Later on help with the delicate ballet using 2 sets of tongs to lift the cooked birds off the grill and remove the really, really hot can of boiling beer and put them to rest in covered trays.

Cut the pig, hand trays to servers, make up a fake biography (“Her name was Helga, she’s from North Carolina and likes long walks on the beach and hates mean people”) and horrify one vegetarian teenager with the nicely cooked porcine corpse. Some other folks look upset as it’s a recognizable animal that we’re carving up, not flat meat on Styrofoam. “This is where your food comes from, if you can’t deal become a vegetarian” I say only once or twice before I decide to stop being a killjoy.

Pig carcass done with, take the dog home, come back and throw down a few with friends. Watch all the inebriated dancing with glee and experience a sense of peace, happiness and gratitude for friends interrupted only when one of said dear friends decides to “bless” me with a fresh dose of pebble as I relax on the couch. At least he was hot pebbling. Warm water feels nicer than cold. Leave at 3am with the party still going pretty strong, 15 hardcore revelers showing no signs of slowing down.

Show up at 5pm the next day, “bless” the ice with a pour of beer on each sheet after the games are over and watch the ice crew hammer out the hacks to measure the ice depth for removable hacks for next season. Kids tear up the ice on large sheet pans and ice skates and the adults mobilize into an all-out cleaning blitz. Empty bottles hauled out, trash taken, leftover food divvied up and as tasks are completed people slowly disappear some saying good-bye but most do not. At 7:30 the parking lot is almost totally empty, the wind still whistles through the empty tent and a few stray papers blow toward the railroad tracks.

It’s spring.