Trying To Save Piggy Sneed

Junior Studies.



Arguably one of the most frustrating classes here at Exeter. It's not so much academcially challenging as sometimes fun sometimes not. Example?



Well, the fiction excerpts are great, but the little blips about New Hampshire back in yesteryear? Yeah, not so fun. The discussions are wonderful...until Evan opens his mouth. But then again I may be biased. You don't know who Evan is, and I'm not going to tell you. At least not today. That's another post for another time.



No, today we talk about Trying to Save Piggy Sneed by John Irving. This itty bitty short story is easily one of the most depressing I have ever read. It made me cry.



Piggy Sneed is the beginning of a memoir by John Irving, who not-so-coincidently grew up in Exeter, NH and attened Phillips Exeter Academy. When he was a small boy, living with his grandmother on Front Street John tormented the mentally challenged garbage collector, Piggy Sneed. Piggy resembled a pig in many ways. One, he smelled. Bad. Apparently he lived in the barn with his pigs. There was no barnhouse, just the barn. Two, he couldn't talk. Instead he snorted and grunted and squealed. Not on pupose, of course. The mental retardation and lack of human companionship had something to do with it I imagine.

Anyway, so little John and his neighborhood buddies (the Front Street Kids) tormented Piggy every chance they got, frightening the living bejeezers out of him. However, John's ever polite grandmother was never anything but kind to Piggy, going so far as to compliment the pigs he brought with him on his trash run. That the was enough to make my heart bleed for Piggy.

But it didn't stop there. Oh no, it got worse.

John ends up at PEA (Phillips Exeter Academy) and volunteers for the Stratham volunteer fire department. Now, understand that Exeter itself is a pretty small town. But if Exeter is small, then Stratham is rustic beyond all hopes of redemption. This is also where Piggy Sneed lives.

One night, the Sneed barn goes up in flames. The smell of burning pig feces, roasting pig, and charred wood infiltrate the night. In that time, there wasn't much to do about the fire but let it burn out. Eventually the snow below it would put it out.

John spun a bit of fiction about how Piggy and his pigs must've hauled out of town and left the barn and the people of NH for good. That was all good and well...until they found Piggy and his only real friends charred to crips amid the wreckage of the barn. By this time I was bawling.

How on Earth can anyone be so cruel to the mentally retarded? Why did Piggy have to die? Why?

I don't know why it hurt so deep, maybe it has something to do with the fact that my grandmother had mental problems of her own. I'm used to these kinds of people and I can't understand when people put them down.

Even now, I must push down tears of both pain and anger. Piggy Sneed made my heart bleed and I don't know why. But God, I wish I could do something about it.