Hi. I'm Rob.

I'm just your average guy who likes telling a good story. 

 

Growing up in rural Alabama, going to college in Tennessee and getting my professional life going in south Florida has given me a lot of fodder to sort out. Not to mention the time I've spent in Atlanta since moving here in 2000.

 

I'd like to think of myself as someone who strategically stumbles through life one day at a time, trying to make sense of it all while enjoying the ride. Whenever I get the chance, I jot down some notes so I can track where I've gone and remember what I've done. From time to time, these turn into full-blown accounts. I've shared a few of those with you here.

 

One of the things you might notice about my stories are their relatively inconsistent themes from one to the next. I mean, I'm not a professional writer by any means, so stuff kinda flies all over the place. Hell, you might even find a typo or two.

 

I guess if there's anything truly consistent in this randomness, it might be the revelation that I, like anyone else, have good days and bad days. So do the people in my stories. It's life.

 

Take for instance a pet pig I once had named Wilber. I was so happy the day my dad and I went to a fellow farmer's place to pick him out of a litter along with his sister, Charlotte (yeah, I know she was the spider in the story, but I hadn't read the book yet). He was all black, and Charlotte was kind of whitish-pink with big black spots, both as cute as they could be.

 

Right before we popped them in the back of the truck, the farmer was like, "Hey, we need to castrate the hog now unless you want a bunch of inbred piglets runnin' 'round." So, my dad and the farmer flipped this little guy on his back and got to work.

 

Holy mother of God. I never heard so much squealing and saw so much blood in my life. It was awful.

​

Over the next couple years, though, Wilber and Charlotte had the time of their lives on our little family farm at the end of our dirt road. They and their goat friends and chicken friends and all sorts of other barnyard creatures lived out their days eating all the good stuff from our industrial-sized family garden we couldn't possibly consume on our own. I remember pouring buckets of over-ripe tomatoes (their FAVORITE) into the trough, and they'd get so excited that they'd both stick their snouts in the bucket at the same time as I was pouring, swallowing everything whole as it slid down without a single tomato ever even hitting the trough. 

 

Oh, this is an important side note... ever hear that phrase "Happy as a pig in shit?" Not true. Pigs ain't happy in shit. They're actually pretty sanitary when it comes to doing their business. Matter of fact, Wilber and Charlotte shared a corner of their pen where they did their thing. What's even weirder is they wouldn't even go if anyone was looking.

​

Then one day, it was that time. At least for Wilber. Dad drove the truck up to the back of the pigpen. I pulled the tailgate down and set the ramp up. Dad had me make him walk the plank. Wilber didn't want to go at first, but he knew what was up. Eons of genetically ingrained swine-fate told him resistance was simply futile. So, he climbed in and off we went to the Chilco Quickfreeze for the slice and dice affair. 

​

A few days later,  he came back in about a hundred individually-wrapped butcher bundles, all swaddled in white paper, each bundle stamped in blue ink with words like "ham hocks," "uncured bacon," "ribs," etc. These were all nestled in a big, heavy cardboard box packed with dry ice. We filled up a whole deep freeze in the basement with the stuff, and it seemed we were pretty much set for the winter. 

​

I don't know when it was -- maybe a few weeks later -- I guess I was working on a last-minute science fair project over the weekend when I needed an extension cord for something. I found one in the corner of the basement. I was certain it didn't go to anything important, even though three or four things were plugged into it. Whatever, I was in a hurry.

 

I did well at the science fair the following week (I think there's probably a blog about it here somewhere). When we got home from the science fair, though, we opened the door and were almost bowled over by this funky smell. When we went down to the basement, we noticed it got worse the closer we walked toward the freezer. 

​

Wilber was ruined.

​

----

 

See? Random. But you gotta admit, pig or person, we all got good days and bad days. And I'm no different.

 

That's what I write about, so there ya go.