Sunday, June 25, 2006

Yes, Clarence the pig


Kudos to Patti. The pig is not ceramic, but your guess was close enough. The pig, a child's bank, is made of compressed fiber, sort of like masonite molded into a shape. It came from my grandmother's house and must have been hers as a child since the name "Lora" is pencilled onto the bottom, right above MADE IN USA. As an adult she went by Lora Pearl (her middle name) until she married, and then adopted the sobriquet "Molly." She married a man whose middle name was Clarence (although he did not go by that name, but by "A.C." or "Fibber").


So since the word Clarence is written on the pig's posterior, the question is, when did she put the name there? The only "coin" it contains is "consumer tax check" from Oklahoma (curently worth about $3-5 on eBay). My grandparents lived in Oklahoma briefly before moving back to Texas, so maybe that's when it was acquired.

The left rear leg has been damaged, evidently when someone tried to drive a nail into it (see photo below). Why was that done? Clarence is too stoic to give a reply. He simply stares off into space, perhaps contemplating those dust bowl days in Oklahoma.

7 comments:

spookyrach said...

Clarence is one cool swine. I love his face.

What the heck is a consumer tax check? Is this akin to paying your taxes with monopoly money?

Lori said...

I like Clarence too......he is very cool.

little david said...

All I know about the consumer's tax check token is that it is from Oklahoma and there is a 5 (cent?)denomination as well as the one pictured. There are other states (and countries) which have used perforated coins or tokens for tax purposes also. Maybe it has a hole in it so you can wear it on a string to produce evidence of having paid a tax. Anybody else got a suggestion?

Patti said...

Woo-hoo! I won! I won! You like me! You really like me!

annie said...

I'm sorry, I have to ask (because I am goofy that way!), and there is no delicate way to put this, but do you think she was trying to tell Clarence something by putting his name on the pig's posterior end?

Or maybe Clarence was the one who tried to drive a nail through the pig's leg, and she marked the spot with his name?

little david said...

Yes, yes, Patti, you are very clever. You get 470 blog dots (equivalent to two Oklahoma consumer's tax checks).

Annie, no need to be delicate. I suspect that Molly was conveying a message to Fibber (AKA Clarence) as he could be quite a rascal. (He mellowed in his last ten years, but as a younger man enjoyed crude jokes and chasing skirts.)

spookyrach said...

So, are the blog dots good for anything? Can you use them to get stuff - like Green Stamps? Should we be hoarding them and pasting them in little books?