Nov. 21, 2020 started off a fairly normal day in the newsroom of the Kewanee Star Courier, but a story that I would write would make sure it ended as anything but.
As the city reporter, my beat was to cover anything related to the community, especially in the way of downtown and the activities of the Kewanee Chamber of Commerce, and so when Mark Mikenas, the chamber’s director, phoned me a few days before Thanksgiving to inform me that the annual city Christmas tree was going up in the middle of the intersection, I hustled down to report on it and made sure to bring the digital camera.
Of course, Mark had told me that this year there would be a surprise, and I was intrigued. This wasn’t the first time I had covered the fairly routine story of the community Christmas tree being hoisted into place, so I was looking forward to a new angle to breathe some life into it.
It’s fortunate that the entire story of what happened on that November day 24 years ago has been well-documented by the Kewanee Hog Days committee on the Hog Days website. But the opposite of that is true as well. The story can be found to this day on the internet and my name is forever attached to it.
This is how the Hog Days website starts off the cautionary tale:
“A well-intended plan that put a life-sized plastic pig on top of a 40-foot Christmas tree in the heart of downtown Kewanee to brighten the spirits of holiday shoppers went horribly wrong” that year.
For two years, Mark and Pete Cali, who at the time was the city’s civil defense director, had been searching for something special to add pizzazz to the city’s tradition when they finally happened upon a business that could make a three by four and a half foot, hollow hog- a perfect embellishment for the top of the tree belonging to the “Hog Capital of the World.”
Or so they thought, and they weren’t the only ones. I remember thinking it was imaginative and perfect, as did the workers who carefully set it atop the tree. In fact, everyone was pleased by the idea of a symbol of our city’s pride and joy sitting at the top of a giant Fir tree.
The Hog Days website continues on with the story:
“As crews from Ratliff Bros. and Illinois Power gathered at the intersection of Second and Tremont streets to raise the tall Fir on Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2000, onlookers were told there would be a ‘big surprise.’ One of the workers even commented, ‘This’ll make the Associated Press!’ He had no idea how prophetic his words actually were.”
Once the tree was in place and firmly anchored, the crane finished the job, hoisting the large, pink pig up to the very top before it “was lowered onto the point which was inserted into a special hole cut into the belly of the barrow.” It was even lighted for just the perfect holiday touch.
I remember a crowd had gathered around to watch the men work. I had written down the specifics, asked some questions, and snapped some photographs before heading back to the newsroom to write my copy. The website picks up the pig reckoning here:
“The reaction was so swift to the ‘Swine on a Pine’ that it could make a pig spin! Before a story by the Star Courier‘s Susan DeVilder with the headline ‘Happy Hogidays’ and a photo of the pig perched atop the Christmas tree even appeared the next afternoon, the day before Thanksgiving, calls had been received [to] the Chamber, radio station and newspaper which also received several letters to the editor all expressing outrage at the sacrilege of placing anything atop a Christmas tree other than an angel, star or other symbol of Christ’s birth. Quad City TV stations had heard of the ‘pig in the east’ and ‘followed it’ to Kewanee, which some thought gave the city negative publicity.”
The Chamber’s executive director recalls being floored at the backlash and said he remembers receiving a call from the Star Courier’s editor, Mike Berry.
“I think he called me up to ask me about it,” said Mark.
The criticisms came at him quickly, but nothing he couldn’t handle.
“They weren’t at the front door with pitchforks or anything,” he said, but the outcry did prompt the pig’s swift removal, although the workers who had cheered as it went up slow-walked taking it down, he remembers. “They had to finish their lunch first.”
Less than 24 hours after the pig was gloriously hoisted to the top of the tree, it was unceremoniously removed.
On Saturday, Star Courier columnist and reporter Dave Clarke waded into the fray, writing his Around Town column with the headline “One Pig Over the Line.”
Dave wrote that he couldn’t ever recall seeing people in Kewanee react so fast in such a negative way to anything. “It usually takes a couple of days for us, as a community, to see something new, kick it around a while, then either accept it, tolerate it, or do away with it.”
But not this time, Dave wrote. The consensus from the people who wrote letters and called into area media outlets was that in a season that gets more and more commercialized every year, it was totally inappropriate to place a pig, even one that is a symbol of the community, on top of a Christmas tree. Dave noted that the people who had worked long and hard and paid money to get the pig were “absolutely stunned.”
Just weeks after Dave’s column was published, he wrote a second column about the pig’s brief appearance. The story did put Kewanee on the national map for a few news cycles( just as it continues to lurk on the outer edges of the internet). Local residents received word from friends and relatives as far away as Germany and the Cayman Islands and places around the U.S. including Arizona and Florida. It even briefly grabbed headlines away from the Bush vs. Gore presidential recount.
The next summer, the pig tried to hitch a ride on one of the passing trains, perhaps in an attempt to leave the shame behind. Knapsack in hoof, the pig tragically lost an ear after the train’s currents blew it, “plastic oinker over hooves,” down the tracks. The ear has since been repaired.
After that the pig, which remains the property of the KCOC, went into storage before being loaned out to Cookie’s Gaming Parlor for a brief stint. It now has a home in the window of the Kewanee Historical Museum, where it remains a part of Kewanee lore.
Mark has mixed feelings about the entire episode. Even back then, he said the pig on the top of the tree had both its detractors and supporters.
Although the tradition of the Christmas tree in the downtown intersection has ended, Mark believes that if a pig were placed on top of the tree today, there wouldn’t be quite the reaction, pointing to new traditions of decorating trees all year round in all kinds of themes.
“I think the philosophy of it has changed,” he said.
But for a few days in November, a plastic, pink pig sure caused quite a stink.
Happy Hog Days Kewanee.
