'The muddier, the better'
Greased pig scramble is good, clean, messy fun
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| Ryan Prewitt photo -- Abby Lafferty, 6, won the 5- to 7-year-old girls contest. She was the only girl in her age group to get a pig. |
 
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Go online to http://videos.suburbanjournals.stltoday.com/p/video?id=1988287 to see a video of the greased pig scramble and other coverage of the Warren County Fair.
Abby Lafferty, 6, looked ready to cry. She didn't have much trouble catching her piglet in Saturday's greased pig scramble, which helped close out the Warren County Fair. But wrestling him into the trough was another matter.She dropped him and fell on top of the pig, covering her front in mud. Her face contorted in anguish; she looked toward the stands, maybe looking for her parents.
But the crowd and announcer Lynda Chandler urged her on. Finally, she got her arms around the porker's middle, stood up and wrestled him into the trough to take first place in her age group.
The crowd's roar drowned out noise from the nearby tractor pull.
"That was pretty amazing. She was having a tough time," said Brad Lafferty, Abby's dad.
"It was something you never forget," he said.
"I knew I could do it," Abby said later. "Because I did it last year."
Abby took third place in last year's greased pig contest.
For kids and adults, the greased pig contest is a misadventure in mud, a great source of stories to tell together.
"The muddier, the better," said J.R. Ricker, the contest's timekeeper.
While most of the younger kids tried grabbing the pigs' back legs and dragging them to the metal container, Jacob Abel, 10, was a little more aggressive.
"I tried to jump on him, bear hug him, and get him over there," Jacob said. "I work on a farm, so I catch them every day."
The fun wasn't limited to the kids. Adults worked in three-person teams to get some bigger hogs.
"The women teams are more aggressive than the men," Ricker said. "I mean, look at them. They come wearing matching T-shirts. They get into it."
Several women's teams came in black T-shirts decorated with florescent green, pink, yellow and blue paint proclaiming their team and individual names. Team Ham Handlers - Kalyn Boeckman, Meghan Wilson and Jamie Hengen - participated in their first pig scramble.
"We're proud to be Ham Handlers," Wilson said. "Some people live for college; we live for greased pig contests."
Of course, you didn't have to be a participant to get muddy. Just being in a crowd with mud-covered people is enough.
Another man slipped and fell in mud as the water ran outside the gates.
"It tastes bad," he said, spitting out mud.
Ricker said: "Usually, a few girls try to give me a hug when they come out. I try to avoid them, but I usually end up muddy."
After they finally hauled their 250-pound pig, members of the Fine Swine team laughed about their effort.
"We were hanging on for dear life," said Michelle Bonk of Wentzville. "It was so heavy."
Her teammate, Lisa Wilson, who is Meghan's mother, just said, "I'm too old for this. All I need to know now is where to take a bath."
