While these are rarer than hen’s teeth these days, back in ’59 they were actually a fairly common sight in small Texas towns like Lefors. Fort Stockton had one that saw a fair amount of duty back in the day.

Probably the most infamous story of its service in town was the day Cooter, Leroy, and Jim Bob were working on the sign up on top of the Piggly Wiggly. It seems that the neon light that lit up the left eye of the pig’s face had a short in it and kept randomly blinking as customers would park and make their way to the front door. Mayor Goodman’s wife, Gladys, was particularly put off by the pulsating pupil of the ponderous pig and said that it seemed to be looking directly at her.

Anyhow, Cooter and Leroy made their way to the roof and Jim Bob slid the ladder up to them so they could start to diagnose the situation. Cooter crawled up the ladder and had one foot on the top rung and the other on the snout of the giant pig, reaching over to examine the eye in question when he slipped and slid down the ladder, bounced once on the roof and then fell to the ground below.

Reaching him as quickly as they could get down off the roof, Jim Bob stayed with Cooter while Leroy ran in and called for the ambulance.

In no time the bright red Courier wagon pulled up, siren blaring and red lights flashing like it was Christmas. Cooter was a pretty big ol’ boy and it took all they had to slide the sagging stretcher into the back of the station wagon. He had, in fact, passed on to the great beyond before they could even crank up the 292 cubic inch V8 for the trip to the hospital.

Leroy looked at Jim Bob and said, “Someone needs to go tell Cooter’s wife what’s happened. I’ll do it. I’m pretty good with the sensitive stuff.”

Jim Bob stayed at the store to load up the tools. About a half hour later Leroy came walking back up to the truck with a case of beer on his shoulder while Jim Bob was loading up the ladder. “Where did you get the beer?” he asked.

“Got it from Cooter’s wife!” Jim Bob replied.

“You kidding? You went over to tell the woman her husband was dead and she gave you a case of beer?”

“Well, that’s not exactly how it happened.” Jim Bob said. “When she answered the door I looked her in the eye and said, ‘You must be Cooter’s widow.’”

“Then what?” Leroy wondered.

“Then,” Jim Bob went on to explain, “She said I must be mistaken, she wasn’t a widow, so I told her I’d bet her a case of Budweiser that she was.”

Nobody ever had the heart to disclose that Cooter died in vain. There was never anything even wrong with the big neon pig atop the store. Boolie, the butcher, just had a thing for Gladys Goodman and had rigged up a switch next to the rump roasts to greet her when he saw her pull in to the parking lot. Folks around town took to using the expression, “In a pig’s eye” a lot less often than they had, just out of respect for Cooter.

Simpler times back then, on so many levels.