[1957"?summer] It was a bad year for Mike Russet, and his father; he had gotten cancer, and died. I hadn't' known anyone to have died up to this point, it was my first encounter with death: experiencing with the face of someone I had known, met, liked, my very first look at loss; that is, it was my very first stumble upon it, it was a new feeling, kind of like he belonged, and then was gone, that is he belong to this world, he was here, and now he was not, out of it, and not for a week or month, but not to return: prior to this, his father, Mike's father would take Mike and me out on town trips, like a picnic or so; a few things"?not often, but occasionally. And so this story I tell out of sadness, for we laughed our stomach sick, and I think Mike's father would have loved us such a remembrance.

For me it was always nice that he asked me along, knowing he wanted to be with his son, but Mike wanted me along also, more so (or so it seemed), and his father wanted to please Mike; but I often felt out of place, or even misplaced at times; but I like Mike's father, my father had left before I was even born. So it was a new feeling if anything that his father accepted me and liked having me along. I was ten and a half years old; Mike was a year younger than I. But I'd remember this one afternoon the rest of my life; oh it must had been about several weeks before he was bed-ridded, when he took both, me Mike and Mike's mother to a farm outside of the city's limits, and both us boys kneeling against that farm fence were astounded at something as we looked in the pigpen"?and then looked at each other, like the wino we once encountered"?we were amazed at what we saw.

Mike's father kept looking at us boys off and on wondering what we saw: a frown came over his face and we boys were just laughing hilariously; laughing without talking, as bad as with the wino.

"Let me in on the secret, "?the joke boys?"? his father said to both of us boys, and we looked at one another, stared a moment, holding our laughs inside of us, than looked at his father, then at one another again, then back at the big pig laying sprawled out on the ground, half asleep, a male pig; Mike then checking me out again, for the umpteenth time.

"Come on boys,"? his father said, with a curious look.

"Ok, are you sure you want to know?"? hilariously laughing, asked Mike, trying to hold back his laughing back but couldn't"?lest his father think the joke was on him (and it was not), and me looking the other way so as not to make Mike laugh any harder than what he was so he could speak,

"But I don't want mom to hear,"? says Mike to his father. And he whispered in his father's ear as Mike's mother stepped back and shook her head as if we were all nuts (I think she knew the secret).

"Pop,"? Mike said, "Chick and I have never seen such huge"?you know what's before on, on, on anything before...."?

And as soon as we just couldn't get over laughing, and able to tell his father that with a straight face, we busted out laughing until our guts pained us again. His father started laughing more at us boys than at the sleeping pig, shaking his head, looking at his wife, and Mike's mother shook her head again, said with her squeaky voice,

"I'll fine out later...not sure if I want to..."?"?and then looked at the pig as not to spoil the moment for us, the gang now. And we all rested against the gray dried up wooden fence gazing and gazing"?as if into wonderland.

Said the father after several minutes later, "Can I pull you boys away from here, away from those big nuts on that pig, and have you seen enough?"?

"Oh sure,"? said Mike, with both our eyebrows up in the air, and taking our last hard look at the humongous balls of the big"?.