A section of wooden fence placed at an angle allowed people to be one step inside the pen to feed and check on the animals but not get their feet dirty in the muck that would quickly develop after a few days. I stared at the two lumpy looking, rather furless animals. My brother Billy asked, “What names should we give them?”

The animals made snuffling noises with their rubbery snouts. Unlike large-eyed Disney princesses, they had ridiculously small eyes fringed with blond lashes. I didn’t see them as endearing and felt no remorse at all knowing that when fall arrived, we would butcher them so we could have pork and sauerkraut meals, bacon for breakfast and breaded pork chops. I suggested, “They look like they’re up to no good. We should call them Bonnie and Clyde.”

The small building beside the machine shed where Bonnie and Clyde lived that summer frequently changed its purpose. Before reaching my teen years, I knew it as a chicken pen, goat hut, heifer lounge, and a pigsty. A row of windows on the south wall let in light. A door on the west wall allowed a person to enter to feed the animals. A door on the east wall allowed the animals to go outside to enjoy fresh air in a sheltered, fenced-in area behind the machine shed.

The pigs loved to eat, and it seemed like they ate everything, not only the pig feed that Daddy provided, but all the kitchen scraps that Mom put in a bowl for me to carry across the yard to them each evening. It took Bonnie and Clyde only a few minutes to chow down half-eaten hotdogs, broccoli stems, apple cores, potato peels, and fat cut off a beef roast.

Outside, beneath the south-facing windows, grew huge clumps of rhubarb, no doubt liberally fertilized through the years by a large variety of animal dung. In the spring, before returning the empty bowl to the kitchen, I’d yank out a stalk. Some of the stalks were as large as my wrists, and I loved dipping them into sugar and eating them!

As the days passed and the summer slowly blossomed, the nearby strawberry patch yielded huge, red, sweet berries. A row of cherry trees along the strawberries provided cherries for pies and the garden kept Mom busy canning. Meanwhile, Bonnie and Clyde grew fat. I sometimes watched them rooting in the soil behind their shed. Some days they were covered with dust, on rainy days they wallowed in muddy puddles. They seemed so happy, snuffling, grunting, oinking and making horrible squealing sounds when they fought over a tasty find in the mud.