The Pig Ponders His Future Over A Glass of Fine Old Port

Strangely enough, we pondering pigs need a certain amount of routine in order to properly ponder. You needn't pander, but to ponder we require peace and quiet, a pipe by the fireside, a snifter of fine old port, our slippers, our good old doggie, a cat on the mat, and a pile of morocco bound volumes on the little table by our easy chair. Preferably Robert Louis Stevenson. Or Charles Dickens will do quite well. We will accept, in a pinch, Uncle Wiggily on the Farm. And we require our man to pop by from time to time with a fresh snifter of Old Snuggly. In fact, we need so much routine in order to properly ponder, I wonder why we bother.

Yet there's no peace in the old Pigsty tonight. We have to move. Can't put it off. Our lease is up on May 31 and we haven't a clue in a cartload as to where we should settle. Perhaps you know. For full particulars, inquire at Wookey Hole Farm, three miles down on your left.

Should we go home to California? Find a little homestead in the foothills of the Sierras with room in the back meadow for Fred our old pony? Go back to hedgetrimming to pay for that exorbitant California real estate?

Or should we perhaps explore the Susquehanna Valley of Pennsylvania with its gigantic Indians and rafts of drunken bargemen cursing into the night and there perhaps establish an organic heritage apple, plum, and cherry orchard as did Johnny Appleseed? They say prices there are very cheap indeed, but we don't know a soul with a sou in the Susquehanna Breaks.

Of course I've heard tell Pittsburgh PA is an undiscovered rough diamond ripe for the plucking by a bold and determined young pair 'o pigs.

Mama! The pondering pig is blathering!!!

Then again -- the Western slope of Colorado! The mighty Rockies singing a song of themselves while the whistle blows for no man. There's the place for hanging gardens and adventure in the morning! Alfred, fill my glass!

You see, I'd much prefer to sit here by the fire all night and ponder and ponder and not have to actually DO anything. Yet May 31 is coming. It's enough to make me squeak!