Nahunta Pork Center, Hannah's BBQ

Let us take a moment to consider the plight of suicidal food royalty. What born-to-die animal wouldn't want a chance to see how the other half lives? A pig with ambition, for instance, is doomed to have his every inclination thwarted, but if he can become king! Well, then. In that case, he can rule an empire! He can look down on someone else for a change! Or so he might believe.

This king, presiding over this blessed realm, this England Nahunta Pork Center, is the Nahunta Pork King, a benevolent—if befuddled—monarch. Is he just happy to have something to call his own, even if it’s fleeting, and even if he ends up leading his subjects on a grim march to the grills? Is it possible he doesn’t understand what he’s signed on for?

Behold his kingdom!

How it sparkles! How it gleams! Peace and tranquility reign beneath the guiding hand of the King.

Says one pilgrim to the Pork Center:

Nahunta Pork Center is a huge operation. They do it all there. Hogs are unloaded, processed, packaged and priced. The first thing you smell when you get out of the car is hog manure. Welcome to eastern North Carolina!

She continues her gushing:

Every imaginable part of a pig filled the coolers in a counter as long as a football field. Pig's feet, chitterlings and tenderloins in the cooler—racks of hams and cured sides stacked like bread loaves on rolling racks—bags of cracklings, tubs of BBQ, and piles of pork chops carefully sorted by type. The meat was cheap.

Yes, well, life is cheap in the Land of Nahunta.

Meet another equally goofy potentate, Bobby Q (get it?) of Hannah's BBQ, also in North Carolina.

It is only the “kings” of shabby kingdoms that require these blandishments. Who else would be fooled by such tawdry trappings? Who but a son of poverty could be enticed by a crummy crown and moth-eaten cape?

We smell a scam. These poor pigs—bumpkins, if we must be blunt—have been preyed upon, promised the moon and stars, installed on folding-chair thrones. But they rule nothing, are kings of nothing, are mired in the same slop and bedeviled by the same fate as their kinsmen.

Be honest now: Does this look like a meal befitting a king?








Addendum: Here, merely to bolster our thesis, is another example of a trusting pig-bumpkin lured by the promise of power and wealth.






Addendum (12/12/07): And—why not?—another (this one ably representing the Kewanee Hog Days).