Three Little Big Pigs
by Bill Smith
Now this all happened way back when, before Scarlett got her comeuppance. Back then there was these three sorry little pigs, runts really, but ambitious as all get out, which is more or less the usual way with runts. Anyways, these three pigs contrived to drive off the feller whose farm it was they lived on, after which they and the other animals run things on their own for a while, but that’s all in a book and you can look it up. This story takes up where that one leaves off, after them three little pigs declared themselves more equal than all the other animals combined and sold them all. They lived right fine off the profits for a while, but then the money started to run out and they went looking for something else to sell.
That didn’t take long. There were big pine woods all over the farm, tall longneedle pines that were just right for being made into masts for ships. And if there’s one thing a pig ain’t got a whole lot of use for, it’s a tree that don’t put out but skimpy shade, and that a long ways off. So they lit on the idea to sell all them trees, and they made enough off that to buy more land with more trees, and even more after that, until pretty soon they had title to just about every square inch hereabouts, and there wasn’t a longneedle pine left standing nowhere ‘cept on the ocean. So they sold all the other trees too, till a body could stand on a bump on a log and see clear to the ocean from just about anywhere in the flatlands, if you could find a log.
When the trees were all gone, there was another problem. Without tree roots to hold the soil together and break up the rush of the water, even little rains can make a heck of a mess, washing away the soil and making red clay mudslides out of the hills. When a big rain come along, half the country got dragged into the Gulf, and some folks got mighty upset. Mexicans, mostly, seeing as how their beaches got all smeared.
You gotta hand it to them, those three pigs had a brain between them. One of them got a hold of some kudzu, and they figured out right soon that not only did it make good eating, for pigs, it also did a dandy job of holding soil. It wasn’t too terrible long before there was kudzu everywhere you looked, just as green and flowing like a river, and you’d best not stand in it too long neither. Fact is, there was so darn much of the stuff folks got downright sick of it, and even the pigs got to where they couldn’t stomach no more of it.
So, what to do now? You can’t get rid of kudzu; heck, there’s a kudzu nebula out in space that eats planets whole. The only way you can control kudzu is to box it in by building roads around it, so that’s what them pigs hit on this time. They already had plenty of experience building roads out to where the trees used to be, so it wasn’t no big deal to start connecting them together. Soon they had all kinds of roads going every which a way, roads that started nowhere, roads that went nowhere, roads that started nowhere and went nowhere, and nowhere that didn’t have a road.
At first this worked just great. The roads broke all that kudzu up into nice little islands that folks could deal with, and after a bit there were even a few clearings without kudzu where a spot of vittles and suchlike coud be growed provided a feller had enough family to keep the kudzu at bay. But as there got to be more and more roads, there got to be less and less people driving on them. That was another problem. See, kudzu can clog up a four-lane road overnight if ain’t nobody driving on it.
So then it was up to them pigs to put their heads together one more time and come up with some reason why folks would want to get on the roads and drive. That didn’t take long either. They formed them a corporation, went public, and started in to building huge monster buildings and filling them with cheap junk to sell.
Folks are crazy to buy junk, and they’ll drive clear across the country if they think somebody somewhere is getting their junk cheaper. Soon there was PigMarts everywhere you looked, at this end of every road and that end and scattered higgledy piggledy up and down the road. And that sure enough took care of the kudzu, allright. Anytime it starts to be a problem again somewhere, all the PigMarts for miles around start advertising sales, and that green stuff gets chopped back before you can say Elvis has left the building, you bet.
So now them three little pigs ain’t quite so little no more. They all of them got jobs teaching at bidness schools, and got all kinds of awards and ribbons and medals, never mind that they was all given by people who work for them which is just about everybody, and the whole country’s starting to look like a root hog’s junkyard dream. In that other book I told you about, the story ended when the pigs turned into people, but it didn’t really work quite like that. It was more the other way around, until a body can’t tell pigs from people and people from pigs anymore, and that’s the truth.
Say what? A wolf? Child, this story don’t need no wolf.
DBALehane
They sure are some clever (not so little) piggies! Thanks for adding this to Twisted Tales and welcome to the group!