The phone on my desk rang Tuesday at 11:30 a.m. I picked it up and listened to the breathless voice of a woman tell me about the pig she had seen on N. Broadway.

“A pig?” I asked.

“Yes,”‘ she replied. “There’s a pig standing on the street just outside my house.”

I thanked her and promised to check the report out. As it turned out hers was about the third or fourth call we had received about the pig in just a few minutes.

I slipped on a sweater and walked up the street to the corner of Third N. and Broadway where my car was parked. About a half block to the north there was the pig all right. A New Ulm policeman was guarding it and it appeared to have an injured hind leg.

I jumped into my car and headed north of Broadway because one of the reports had said something about the possibility of another pig on the north end. Arriving at the 19th N. underpass I still hadn’t seen the other pig so I decided to head still north on Broadway past the Skyline plant. Might be something out that way, I thought to myself.

There was. A brown spotted pig was standing in the middle of the intersection at N. Broadway and 23rd North. It didn’t appear hurt, but scared.

I swung the car around and headed back to the nearby trailer park where my wife’s brother lived planning to use his phone to call police and see if they knew about this pig. They didn’t and the dispatcher thanked me as she hung up.

Driving back north again past the newly found pig, I spotted another similar colored and marked animal standing about two blocks beyond the first. It too, appeared in good health.

I drove past it and headed toward the Beussmann Bridge. Just at the end of the blacktop and about a quarter of a mile beyond the second pig, stood a third. This one had blood dripping from its snout but firmly stood its ground in the middle of the road.

I pulled to the side and looked the pig over for a minute. Then I glanced up the road ahead and saw a light-colored bulky form lying in the middle of the road about a another quarter of a mile north. I headed the car in that direction and found a fourth pig lying injured in the road. Just a short distance ahead lay a fifth, also injured.

Near the fifth pig lay the answer to the riddle of where they had all come from-a truck end gate.

It was plain to see the end gate had fallen out and one by one the pigs had either fallen or jumped from the moving vehicle without the driver’s knowledge.

I headed back to town. Near the trailer court a police car was parked and its driver keeping watch over the pig I had reported. And he already knew about the others as several motorists had stopped to tell him.

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A FARM TRUCK pulled up to the spot from the direction of town. Its driver, I learned was Tom Franta, owner of the pigs on the road. And I overheard him tell the officer that if he only had some kind of small vehicle here, he could run home to the St. George area and get a small trailer that would expedite the loading and hauling of the pigs.

I volunteered my car with its heavy duty hitch, and we were off toward St. George. Back in my earlier days on the farm I used to do a little livestock hauling myself and knew the helpless pressuring feeling Franta had now, with pigs all over town and no way to get them rounded up.

We returned with the trailer and stopped by the first pig still lying in the same spot. With the end gate opened, we half dragged and half rolled the poor critter into the low trailer. Moving on, we did the same with the next injured animal.

The third pig was a little on the stubborn pushing,he soon was persuaded to join his fellows on the trailer.

NUMBER 4 presented more of a problem. Police and several other volunteers had spotted the animal lying in tall grass just off the road, so with ropes and lots of determination, we set off into the weeds to capture the creature.

We surrounded and rushed the animal, pouncing on it before a getaway could be made.

Amid a lot of squealing and squirming, two ropes were secured to a front and a hind leg. And with Franta steering the animal by its ears, we headed toward the trailer and loaded the critter with no difficulty.

The fifth animal by now, we were told, had advanced to the area of Police Chief Richard Gulden’s residence on 23rd North. I headed the car and trailer over to 23rd and in front of Gulden’s house, a group of men were gathered in the middle of the street with the pig “‘hog tied” at their feet. The animal was loaded without incident and we headed to a local buying station at the south end of town with our load of pork. Gulden said he had tried unsuccessfully to trap the hog in his garage.

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THE PIG on the street at Third N. had been loaded by Franta before I got involved and was safely stowed on the truck.

There was only a hog left to catch and load, a 600-pound sow. The other six had been butcher animals weighing about 250 pounds each.

Franta explained he had been on the way to the local market with his animals but was finally stopped somewhere in the center of town by a motorist who gave him the unhappy news.

“I had no idea this was happening,” he said.”Boy, of all the things that I’ve seen in my life, this is the first time something like this has ever happened.”

Police informed us that the sow was cornered behind a residence in the 1000 block of N. Broadway. We drove Into the alley and there the brute stood next to a garage glaring at us with its beady eyes.

After several unsuccessful attempts with the sow running out into the street, and with the help of residents in the neighborhood, the brute was finally loaded.

Judging from the turnout of curious and volunteers, it was the biggest thing to happen in that neighborhood since the uprising.

With all the pigs safely unloaded in the buyer’s yard, Franta learned that two of the animals had suffered broken legs in their falls. The others had merely sustained bruises and scratches. They could be sold for slaughter, the buyer assured Franta.

The two injured animals Franta decided to have butchered. He had planned to have one of the load butchered anyway.

You could see the relief spread over Franta as the gate swung shut behind the last of the seven wayward hogs at 1:30p.m., only two hours after the adventure had begun.

New Ulm Daily Journal

Oct. 2, 1974