A Parable Worth Reading

The Wild and Free Pigs of Okefenokee Swamp




by Steve Washam based on a telling by George Gordon



As school districts dangle more and more corn in front of homeschoolers in the form of vouchers and charter schools, please remember this parable. After all, government schooling is just educational welfare!



Some years ago, about 1900, an old trapper from North Dakota hitched up some horses to his Studebaker wagon, packed a few possessions–especially his traps–and drove south. Several weeks later he stopped in a small town just north of the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia.



It was a Saturday morning–a lazy day–when he walked into the general store. Sitting around the pot-bellied stove were seven or eight of the town's local citizens.



The traveler spoke, "Gentlemen, could you direct me to the Okefenokee Swamp?"



Some of the old timers looked at him like he was crazy. "You must be a stranger in these parts," they said.



"I am. I'm from North Dakota," said the stranger.



"In the Okefenokee Swamp are thousands of wild hogs," one old man explained.



"A man who goes into the swamp by himself asks to die!"



He lifted up his leg. "I lost half my leg here, to the pigs of the swamp. "



Another old fellow said, "Look at the cuts on me; look at my arm bit off!"



"Those pigs have been free since the Revolution, eating snakes and rooting out roots and fending for themselves for over a hundred years. They're wild and they're dangerous. You can't trap them. No man dare go into the swamp by himself. "Every man nodded his head in agreement.



The old trapper said, "Thank you so much for the warning. Now could you direct me to the swamp?"



They said, "Well, yeah, it's due south–straight down the road. "But they begged the stranger not to go, because they knew he'd meet a terrible fate.



He said, "Sell me ten sacks of corn, and help me load them into the wagon. "And they did.



Then the old trapper bid them farewell and drove on down the road. The townsfolk thought they'd never see him again.



Two weeks later the man came back. He pulled up to the general store, got down off the wagon, walked in and bought ten more sacks of corn.After loading it up he went back down the road toward the swamp.Two weeks later he returned and, again, bought ten sacks of corn. This went on for a month. And then two months, and three.



Every week or two the old trapper would come into town on a Saturday morning, load up ten sacks of corn and drive off south into the swamp.



The stranger soon became a legend in the little village and the subject of much speculation. People wondered what kind of devil had possessed this man, that he could go into the Okefenokee by himself and not be consumed by the wild and free hogs.



One morning the man came into town as usual. Everyone thought he wanted more corn.



He got off the wagon and went into the store where the usual group of men were gathered around the stove. He took off his gloves.



"Gentlemen," he said, "I need to hire about ten or fifteen wagons. I need twenty or thirty men. I have six thousand hogs out in the swamp, penned up,and they're all hungry. I've got to get them to market right away. "



"You've WHAT in the swamp?" asked the storekeeper, incredulously.



"I have six thousand hogs penned up. They haven't eaten for two or three days, and they'll starve if I don't get back there to feed and take care of them. "



One of the old timers said, "You mean you've captured the wild hogs of the Okefenokee?"



"That's right. "



"How did you do that? What did you do?" the men urged, breathlessly.



One of them exclaimed, "But I lost my arm!"



"I lost my brother!" cried another.



"I lost my leg to those wild boars!" chimed a third.



The trapper said, "Well, the first week I went in there they were wild all right. They hid in the undergrowth and wouldn't come out. I dared not get off the wagon. So I spread corn along behind the wagon. Every day I'd spread a sack of corn.



"The old pigs would have nothing to do with it. But the younger pigs decided that it was easier to eat free corn than it was to root out roots and catch snakes. So the very young began to eat the corn first.



"I did this every day. Pretty soon, even the old pigs decided that it was easier to eat free corn, after all, they were all free; they were not penned up. They could run off in any direction they wanted at any time.



"The next thing was to get them used to eating in the same place all the time. So, I selected a clearing, and I started putting the corn in the clearing.



"At first they wouldn't come to the clearing. It was too far. It was too open. It was a nuisance to them.



"But the very young decided that it was easier to take the corn in the clearing than it was to root out roots and catch their own snakes. And not long thereafter, the older pigs also decided that it was easier to come to the clearing every day.



"And so the pigs learned to come to the clearing every day to get their free corn. They could still subsidize their diet with roots and snakes and whatever else they wanted. After all, they were all free. They could run in any direction at any time. There were no bounds upon them.



"The next step was to get them used to fence posts. So I put fence posts all the way around the clearing. I put them in the underbrush so that they wouldn't get suspicious or upset, after all, they were just sticks sticking up out of the ground, like the trees and the brush. The corn was there everyday. It was easy to walk in between the posts, get the corn, and walk back out.



"This went on for a week or two. Shortly they became very used to walking into the clearing, getting the free corn, and walking back out through the fence posts.



"The next step was to put one rail down at the bottom. I also left a few openings, so that the older, fatter pigs could walk through the openings and the younger pigs could easily jump over just one rail, after all, it was no real threat to their freedom or independence–they could always jump over the rail and flee in any direction at any time.



"Now I decided that I wouldn't feed them every day. I began to feed them every other day. On the days I didn't feed them, the pigs still gathered in the clearing. They squealed, and they grunted, and they begged and pleaded with me to feed them– but I only fed them every other day. Then I put a second rail around the posts.



"Now the pigs became more and more desperate for food. Because now they were no longer used to going out and digging their own roots and finding their own food, they now needed me. They needed my corn every other day. "



"So I trained them that I would feed them every day if they came in through a gate and I put up a third rail around the fence.



"But it was still no great threat to their freedom, because there were several gates and they could run in and out at will. "Finally I put up the fourth rail. Then I closed all the gates but one, and I fed them very, very well. "



"Yesterday I closed the last gate and today I need you to help me take these pigs to market. "



The price of free corn was freedom.



The parable of the pigs has a serious moral lesson. This story is about federal money being used to bait, trap and enslave a once free and independent people.



Federal welfare, in its myriad forms, has reduced not only individuals to a state of dependency; state and local governments are also on the fast track to elimination, due to their functions being subverted by the command and control structures of federal "revenue sharing" programs.



Please copy this parable and send it to all of your state and local elected leaders and other concerned citizens. Tell them: "Just say NO to federal corn. " The bacon you save may be your own.



© 1997, The Idaho Observer. All rights reserved. Permission granted to reproduce for non commercial purposes in entirety including this notice.

2 Good Movies and a Good Book

We recently got back from a vacation in Houston (which I might post about later).  Right before we left last week, I went and saw two good movies and read a good book.  I didn't have time to post about them then so am just now getting around to it.

Good Movie #1- Courageous
If you haven't seen this movie yet and it is still in theaters, I highly recommend it.  The message about dad's standing up and being a man for their kids was really well told.  There were a couple of spots of rough acting, but the crew from Flywheel, Facing the Giants, and Fireproof have come a long way.

Good Movie #2- Captain America
This is a good story about serving your country and self-sacrifice and looking at the heart of a person instead of the outside.  It may be rather scary for littler kids (the villain has a red skull face).  There is also quite a bit of violence because Captain America is a soldier during WWII.  The whole thing makes you want to do something big with your life.

Good Book- Wings of a Dream by Anne Mateer
This is a Christian historical romance that I was given to review by Bethany House.  It is set during the influenza epidemic of 1918.  It is a great story about following the Lord's leading even when he is taking you where you don't think you want to go.  Ms. Mateer does a great job of creating a compelling set of characters.  The story revolves around Rebecca and her thirst for adventure.  She longs to get away from her boring life in a small town in Oklahoma and her overbearing mother.  She is sure that she can see the path that God has laid out for her.  But as with much of real life, God's way leads her to an altogether different adventure than she had in mind.

Even though I really enjoyed this book, I can't give it the full 5 stars.  The ending was too abrupt.  I would have enjoyed a little more of the loose ends tied up.  The book just ends at the climax without much thought to the aftermath of her big decision.

Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell

Another intelligent idea from Walter Williams:

I believe that a person who is 65 years old and has been forced into Social Security is owed something. But the question is, Who owes it to him? Congress has spent every penny of his Social Security "contribution." Young workers have no obligation to be fleeced in order to make up for the dishonesty and dereliction of Congress. The tragedy is that most seniors just want their money and couldn't care less about whom Congress takes it from.


Here's what might be a temporary fix: The federal government owns huge quantities of wasting assets -- assets that are not producing anything -- 650 million acres of land, almost 30 percent of the land area of the United States. In exchange for those who choose to opt out of Social Security and forsake any future claim, why not pay them off with 40 or so acres of land? Doing so would give us breathing room to develop a free choice method to finance retirement.

My husband and I would gladly get out of SS for 80 acres (even if it was in the middle of nowhere).  You can read the rest of the article here.

Another very excellent economist is Thomas Sowell.  I loved this quote from a recent article.

Depending on what criteria are used, you can have as much official poverty as you want, regardless of whether it bears any relationship to reality.


Those who believe in an expansive, nanny state government need a large number of people in "poverty" to justify their programs. They also need a large number of people dependent on government to provide the votes needed to keep the big nanny state going.

Think about this the next time you here poverty stats.

Ahh, There's the Common Sense

I love the way that Walter Williams puts our economic situation in easy-to-understand no-bull terms.

If European governments and the U.S. Congress ceased the practice of giving people what they have not earned, budgets would be more than balanced. For government to guarantee a person a right to goods and services he has not earned, it must diminish someone else's right to what he has earned, simply because governments have no resources of their very own.


To read the whole article, go here.

So many people seem to think that the federal government (or other civil governments) has money (or something of value) of its own accord.  Granted, it can manufacture more at the factory right down the road from where I live (which is very interesting to tour if you ever have the chance).  But all that does is devalue the money you have in your bank and your future earnings.  All of the money given to various people by any form of government is taken by force from other people.  A possible exception might be rentier states.  In that case the money given out by the government still comes from other people, but the people are from outside the country who rent our buy something of value from the country and all the citizens get a share.

Anyway, Dr. Williams' quote reminds me of one from the Ten Commandments.   "You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor."

A River to Cross- a disappointment

A River to Cross by Yvonne Harris was a disappointment to me.  I love Christian historical romances, but this one fell flat.

The romance part was too modern.  While nothing immoral happens between Jake and Elizabeth, there is none of the old-fashioned propriety one expects in a love story set in the 1880's.  She even sleeps at his house unchaperoned.  Though this would not seem strange today, it seemed very out of place for the setting.

The romance was also to sappy.  The book made is seem as though everyone falls in love at first sight.  Elizabeth's first husband proposed in only a few days.  Jake proposed to a former fiance on the day he met her.  The two in the story seem "know" as soon as they look into each other's eyes, but at least wait some weeks to get engaged.  It seemed like the relationships were built solely on physical attraction. 

The story opens by introducing Elizabeth as a woman who has come to Texas to help care for her niece when the child's mother passed away.  Yet though the child is later orphaned she is barely mentioned throughout the rest of the story.  So why have the kid in the story at all?  Why not just say Elizabeth went to Texas to visit her brother?  It seemed like the whole niece/aunt angle was woefully underdeveloped.

The plot did not flow to me at all.  It seems like a whole section of the story (involving a beaver dam) served no purpose except to allow the couple to have another life threatening experience together.  The rest of the story seemed fairly disjointed as well.

Though I usually enjoy the books I am given to review by Bethany House, I can only give this book 2 stars.

Matthew 18 and Marriage

Many Christians are familiar with the following quote of Jesus' in Matthew 18.  But I have never heard of anyone using it in a marital situation.  My question is:  why not?

15"If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. 16 But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that 'every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.' 17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector."

My mom's friend (I'll call her Veronica) from church is going through a very terrible divorce.  Veronica's husband (I'll call him Bob) had numerous affairs over the past 30+ years.  Two of the most recent affairs have been with a woman in foreign country while on a mission trip and with a woman young enough to be his granddaughter.  Veronica has been keeping all of this a secret for years because she wanted to save her marriage and help her husband.  While this is admirable, I think she might have had more success in those regards if she had told a couple of fellow Christians years ago and had them confront Bob.  If Bob did not listen to the friends, then taking the issue to the church does not seem uncalled for.  Then this sin could not have been hidden and who knows how many woman could have been saved from Bob's clutches. 


Yet I have never heard of anyone applying Matthew 18 to marriage problems.  But surely Bob sinned against Veronica.  So why do we never discuss following this plan with adultery problems or gambling problems or abusive situations or addiction problems?

Vigilante Left Me with a Heavy Feeling

The book Vigilante written by Robin Parrish reminded me something of a Christian batman.  I received this book from Bethany House for review.  I picked it because I generally like action books, super heroes, and don't mind a little violence.  So I thought I would love this book.  Yet as I finished the book, I just felt heavy.  Not sad, mind you.  Just weighed down. 

Maybe that is the point of the book.  Maybe it is supposed to make you think about heavy topics like when is violence as a Christian appropriate.  Maybe Robin Parrish wants the reader to consider the depths to which humanity can sink and ponder what to do about it.  But I read fiction for enjoyment.  I read for fun.  I did not find this book fun to read. 

Even though I didn't really end up liking this book, it will likely appeal to many.  It was well written.  The characters are solid.  And certainly the premise is not boring.  So I ended up giving it three stars.