June 13, 2008

-BOOK EXCERPT

Pig Candy: Taking my Father South, Taking My Father Home

By Lise Funderburg

Copyright © 2008. Reprinted by permission of Free Press, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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In March of 2004, just when the urge to rake out garden beds and plant summer bulbs is too strong to resist, despite the possibility—the near certainty—that snow will come again to Philadelphia, I pick up my father and his wife and head south.

We drive from their suburban retirement community to Philadelphia International Airport, then fly to Georgia, them in business class, me in coach. In Atlanta, we rent a car and aim for Monticello, a small town surrounded by small towns: Zebulon and Sparta, Musella and Smarr. This is Monti-sello, not -chello, seat of Jasper County, home to the fighting Hurricanes, one-time buckle on the Georgia peach-growing belt, birthplace of my father, and the town he shunned for decades, until 20 years ago when he gave in to a childhood dream and bought a farm a few miles from Monticello's town square.

Across the seat of our full-sized sedan, I see my father, George Newton Funderburg, grow more energetic with each mile. He looks out the passenger-side window as big-box malls trickle away, replaced by pine forest and signs for barbecue. My father is a handsome man. I tend to look at him through a lens in which surface and shape hardly register, except as conveyers of emotion, but I can see that at 77, he has barely a crease in his skin, much less a wrinkle. He is still in the vicinity of his peak height, 5 feet 11 inches, and his close-cropped hair, never grown long enough to complete a kink, is slightly more salt than pepper. His face and body are well-proportioned, except for the large-belly/no-posterior dilemma that plagues many men after a certain age, and his gray-blue eyes and meticulously flossed, brushed and later-life-orthodonticized teeth sparkle with charm and good humor when the spirit moves him. Down here, most people look at his skin, the color of faded parchment, and call it "high yellow." Up north, most people assume he's white.

Dad interrupts his own reverie with projections: how we'll occupy ourselves on this trip, what changes we'll encounter, what will have stayed the same. He anticipates, accurately, that we will find his 126-acre farm-cum-vacation home in pristine condition, thanks to the attentions of Troy Johnson, a friend and fellow retiree who watches out for the house and three ponds, the ancient grove of pecan trees that yield seemingly on whim, and several well-manicured pastures Dad rents out to the cattle-farming Howard brothers, 48-year-old identical twins named Albert and Elbert.

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Down south, spring has advanced. Pear trees are in full bloom, naturalized daffodils stripe the just-greening pastures with yellow, and deep red camellias dot walkways and yards, sentries at every door. Sweaters need to be kept nearby but not on, windows are cranked open to ensure a cross breeze. We make good time from the airport to the farm, just over an hour, and Dad and I don't bother to unpack before we turn our attention to the two items on our agenda: roasting a pig and getting him some chemo.

First, the pig. In January, my father read a newspaper article that chronicled the author's experiment with cooking a 70-pound pig in a Cuban-American–designed roasting box called La Caja China [kä-hä che'-nä]: a simple plywood cart lined with metal and designed to suspend coals above rather than below the meat. The outcome, sweet and savory, succulent and crisp, earned the paradoxical moniker "pig candy."

My father has always displayed a fascination for crafty mechanics, for improved ways to clean and fix and open and close. Clever inventions and well-prepared food both make my father's list of favorite things. Together they are irresistible. Dad instantly ordered the largest model Caja from its Miami manufacturer and had it sent to the farm.

In Monticello, population 2,500, with its intertwined bloodlines and relationships, word gets around. Dad tells everyone we run into about La Caja China, or "pig box," as we have come to call it. He informs anyone he can corner that he's looking to find a whole pig: that he needs it dressed and delivered and preferably 100 pounds, which is the box's stated maximum capacity. He mentions this to Connie, the cashier at the Tillman House Restaurant. He inserts this into small talk when he's charging wigglers and deer feeder pellets at Monticello Farm & Garden. He broadcasts it at Eddie Ray Tyler's barbershop, where one or two men sit in the defunct shoeshine stand that serves as a waiting area whether someone's in Eddie Ray's cutting chair or not.

Dad mentions his pig quest to Marshall Tinsley, a handsome man close to 60 with a strong, open face and a brilliant smile, despite a few missing teeth on the bottom row. Marshall is a mason twice over: by trade and also as a 33rd-degree Free and Accepted Mason of the Most Worshipful Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Georgia, for which he serves in the office of Worshipful Junior Grand Steward. Marshall's first visit to Dad's farm was to fix a screen door. His skill and thoroughness caught my father's attention, and now Marshall comes to Thanksgiving. One time, he even brought the turkey, which he'd deep-fried at three minutes per pound.

Marshall is somehow related to Holsey Tinsley (the childhood sweetheart and now second husband of my father's sister, Chase, which makes Holsey, I realize a few years after their marriage, my uncle) and directly related to the owner of Dave's BBQ & Soul Food restaurant, Dave Tinsley, who is Marshall's brother. Marshall has a bad back and a bum knee that collapses under him without warning. It looks like he's doubling over with laughter, except it's weakness and pain. He went through "the cancer," as some people here put it, and when he hears that Dad's prostate cancer has come out of a 15-year remission and that he'll have to have chemotherapy, Marshall recommends strawberry-flavored Ensure, which he drank when chemo killed his appetite, which was all the time. Dad is sure to mention the pig quest to Marshall because Marshall is well-connected through the Masons and work and church activities and through taking at least one meal a day at his brother's restaurant on Frobel Street, one block east of the town square. One of Marshall's closest friends is a heavily networked bus driver/prison guard/chicken farmer who goes by the nickname of Tater and is Marshall's partner in a venture concerning a herd of goats.

Before Marshall has a chance to make headway, Dad finds a pig. His pork conduit is Ben Tillman, owner and head cook of Tillman House, a restaurant 20 steps west of the town square, a square through which 18-wheelers still pass and people recognize one another's vehicles with honks and waves. In his off-hours, Ben does catering. If clients want help serving and cleaning up, he brings his little sister, Sissy Tillman Hulsey. Sissy may well be older than Ben, but she is a quarter of his size. He is monstrously solid, heavy but not truly obese. He's just big, as is his daddy, Mack, the former sheriff who bought the restaurant in the late 1970s but has since sold it to Ben and now just helps out, pouring sweet tea into to-go cups and putting Styrofoam containers into bags.