If anybody were counting (besides me), they would know that today is the eighth anniversary of the first and only Pig Day at Franklin College.

In fact, I had forgotten the exact date. But when it came up in conversation recently, I was able to go back into my files (I never throw anything away) and reconstruct this historic event from the fall of 2001.

Pig Day happened, basically, because another professor and I wanted to invite a poet, David Lee, to campus. Lee, the poet laureate of Utah, was known for his excellent poems about pigs. Indiana is also famous for pigs. What could be more appropriate (and more fun) than to surround Lee’s visit with other pig-related events. For some reason, perhaps a moment of academic absent-mindedness, the college let us go ahead with this plan, and Pig Day was born.

I have our publicity flyer in front of me: “What do you get when you mix a scientist, a poet, and the Three Little Pigs: Pig Day 2001!”

The program eventually included, beside a reading by Lee, a lecture by a professor from Eastern Michigan on “Integrity and the Food We East: Pig Farms in America.” Elementary-school art with the theme of the Three Little Pigs was displayed on campus. Students were invited to guess the number of pennies in a glass pig. And there was a showing of the movie “Babe.”

“Don’t miss out on the people, the poetry . . . and the pigs?” another publicity flyer said.

As I recall, Pig Day was a big success and Lee read some really splendid poetry (not all of it about pigs). In my file are a number of the poems and this bit of prose, one glorious sentence called “Loading a Boar”:

“We were loading a boar, a goddam mean big sonofabitch and he jumped out of the pickup four times and tore out my stockracks and rooted me in the stomach and I fell down and he bit John on the knee and he thought it was broken and so did I and the boar stood over in the far corner of the pen and watched us and John and I just sat there tired and Jan laughed and brought us a beer and I said, ‘John it ain’t worth it, nothing’s going right and I’m feeling half dead and haven’t written a poem in ages and I’m ready to quit it all,’ and John said ‘shit young feller, you ain’t got started yet and the reason’s cause you trying to do it outside yourself and ain’t looking in and if you wanna by god write pomes you gotta write pomes about what you know and not about the rest and you can write about pigs and that boar and Jan and you and me and the rest and there ain’t no way you’re gonna quit,’ and we drank beer and smoked, all three of us, and finally loaded that mean bastard and drove home and unloaded him and he bit me again and I went in the house and got out my paper and pencils and started writing and found out John he was right.”