AS YOU MIGHT IMAGINE from the name, the Louisiana Swine Festival is a celebration of all things pork, and is held every Halloween in a town called Basile. Basile is hidden in the swampy backwoods outside Baton Rouge, in hurricane country. Freight trains heading to New Orleans from Galveston trundle through the centre of this tiny clutch of houses all day and all night, on a track dividing back garden from front garden and splitting the junction of the only two roads for miles around, writes John Butler
I don't remember how we ended up there as opposed to one of the neighbouring villages, all of which bore the names of people, some of whose descendants we would meet - Eunice, Bates, Judd, Fenton and Edna. It was probably because of the food. Before, we had been in Abbeville, sampling the world's largest omelette (5,000 eggs) at the Abbeville Omelette Festival. For the record, this was a ham and cheese confection, fried in a 50sq ft skillet and flipped laboriously using a forklift truck and an immense mechanical spatula, to the cheers of thousands of Louisianians and two moonstruck Dubliners.
It's not true to say we felt out of place eating the world's largest omelette out of styrofoam bowls - we could have been at the National Ploughing Championships, or the Clifden Country and Blues Festival. But Halloween at the Louisiana Swine Festival was another matter.
"Party at the pig barn!" proclaimed the poster outside the town, but inside the pig barn, only one couple was dancing. He was wearing dungarees and a straw hat. She was wearing a gingham dress and a straw hat. Both were wearing horrifyingly authentic pig masks and waltzing to an old zydeco tune in the middle of an empty dance floor. The dancing pig couple were quite a sight, but around the fringes of the barn, sullen families sat in silence on hay bales, staring at us.
We didn't stay in the barn too long, but there were other attractions. The stall selling cigarettes had all the usual brands along with a local kind I had never tried before. If the swine festival was to be a success, it seemed someone had to make an effort to blend in, so I bought a pack of Checkers. Moving on, a man with eight fingers manning a smoking pig on a spit proffered a cooked, hairy ear for me to taste. I declined, but offered him a Checker.
"Why in the hell are you smoking them?" he laughed, taking out his pack of Marlboro Lights. He was right. My first Checker crackled between my fingers, and tasted of sawdust and dung.
We ate a bowl of spicy jambalaya and tried to mingle with the crowd. Some were friendly enough, but many hadn't heard of Ireland and viewed us with justifiable suspicion. And the deep-south accent is a hard nut to crack. One old lady had to ask me the same question 15 times.
"Do you see en-eeendo-id?"
" What?"
"Do you see en-eeendo-id?"
"I beg your pardon?"
She was asking me if the Troubles in Northern Ireland would ever be resolved, but finally ran out of patience with me and strode off, a piglet on a leash at her side.
It seemed everyone was moving to the far end of the field now, towards a baseball diamond that had been fully enclosed with crash barriers coated in chicken wire. An emcee trailed a microphone on a long lead into the centre of the diamond and introduced the finalists in the annual Miss Louisiana contest. One by one, about 15 young girls wearing ice-skater make-up and vertically frosted hair tottered into the centre of the diamond, wearing swimsuits and high heels. Each of them wore a sash bearing the name of the local town in which they had triumphed in the local heat of Miss Louisiana - but it was far more fun to imagine that Eunice, Bates, Judd, Raymond, Fenton and Bunkie were their names. It seemed that this event - the centrepiece of the annual swinefest - would decide the winner of Miss Louisiana. But what was it to be?
A pick-up truck drove into the diamond, and the back door was let down. A large bathtub was lifted out, from which a squealing pig's head peered. This was a bucket of grease, and the grease was key. At the signal of the emcee, the bucket was tipped over and the squealing piglet struggled to its trotters and began to run, terrified, towards the perimeter. The crowd went wild as the regional winners of Miss Louisiana gave chase, their hair remaining oddly still as they cantered around the baseball diamond, arms outstretched.
Pigs have a yard of pace. The crowd made a squealing sound as the pig hit the fence, then sprinted along the length of it, trying to find an exit. At first, the local beauties struggled to get anywhere near their prey. Then the heels came off, the poor animal tired, and "Judd" got a hand around a rear leg. The pig slipped free and continued running, but DeQuincy was now in hot pursuit, flinging herself at the sprinting bundle of pork. DeQuincy hit the dust, but Reeves persisted, snatching a front leg and sliding along the ground towards third base. She threw her arm around his haunch and flipped him over on to his back. The crowd started counting - one, two, three . . . the greased piglet escaped again, but terror was taking its toll. Elton strolled over, flopped herself onto his body, the crowd made it to five, and Miss Louisiana was finally crowned.
Driving to New Orleans that night, we didn't really speak about what had happened. At breakfast in the diner the next morning, we just ate toast and coffee.