Sometime in the sort-of-recent past (it’s hard for me to keep years straight since moving here to Shangri-La and losing all sense of time), my editor and a fellow columnist were planning on making headcheese from an actual pig’s head, in honor of the editor’s Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry. I invited myself to join in; the other columnist and I could each write complementary, witty columns for our respective papers about making headcheese.

The editor—who, as editors must, knew about such things—would procure the head and hold it on her porch till such time as we could all get together and spend the day mutilating it.

As time passed, I remembered I am very squeamish. I hate deboning even an already sanitarily trimmed chicken breast. When I lived in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, I had to turn away from the Russian groceries’ meat displays, filled as they were with easily recognizable feet, ears, tongues and testicIes. I started having bad dreams about pigs’ heads.

The head arrived with winter. The editor emailed that it was in a “plastic bin right now because outside is kind of a fridge (a natural cooler)... So tomorrow (while it’s snowing) I’ll boil some water and see if I can get the hair off because it’s hairy and has eyes I think.”

My stomach twisted and tightened.

The editor invited us to check out the head in its container on the porch, an invitation I happily forwent.

The actual project would be very much a long day’s work, and we were having a hard time finding the time to get together. While I’m retired, she has to edit me, and so must work very very hard.

Winter that year was rough. Scheduled stuff was canceled right and left.
The head was still waiting, my dread and gorge were both rising.

After weather canceled a dinner and trivia night, I was commiserating with a friend who had also been planning to go. He wasn’t sure what he had in the house to eat. He lived right across the street from my editor. I suggested he hop over to her porch and maybe she could lend him some ears. HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR.

I was having trouble sleeping. I jumped when the phone rang, terrified it would be the call saying they were ready to begin. OK, the message would more likely come by email, but that idea isn’t nearly as frightening to my subconscious as the proverbial phone call, so that was what I dreaded. You dread your way, I’ll dread mine.

It’s possible I helped raise Wayne County to the highest per adult capita purchasers of alcoholic beverages in Pennsylvania. We’re Number

One!

The opportune time never came.

Somehow the pig’s head on the porch was ravaged by wild beasts and had to be discarded.

I was greatly relieved.

In the end, the cooler head prevailed.