This article appeared first in Texas Parade Magazine.

But then Henrietta was no ordinary hog. She was Queen of the Razorbacks. And she will be long remembered by all the people who fished, hunted or just loafed at Milner's Camp during the time she reigned thereabouts.

Ramsey sometimes escaped the cares of being the state's second in command by communing with nature at Milner's Camp. What he did while there was never

The lieutenant governor got to know Henrietta well and became quite fond of the old girl. During one of his last years in office he distributed among his friends a picture of the razorback and also hung one on the wall of his den at home.

Well there was, and I'll swear to everything in this yarn about her on a whole stack of pighides. It would be quite a stack if made up of the skins of all the pigs farrowed by Henrietta as a result of her woodland romances.

They looked like everything from Duroc to pure razorback and in color ranged from snow white to blackout black. These many discrepancies in her offspring never seemed to bother Henrietta in the least. She fed them, fought for them, chastised them, gnawed ticks from their bodies, and

One of the after-dark meals was eaten while a group of the fellows were gathered outside the cabin for a few hands of galloping dominoes. They also fried some fish.

It was a lovely evening for everybody except certain of the boys for whom the sevens turned up on the wrong throws. Then a player bounced one of

Nobody had thought to bring an extra pair of dice so that broke up the game. And with the habitues and sons of habitues of Milner's Camp holding seven bucks of my hard-earned cash.

In three decades as a

Henrietta was unimpressed. She ate a· copy of the Sabine County Reporter in which one of the yarns about her

It all began one hot summer day when two of my sons, Stephen and Travis, were sharing the first of ten vacations we spent together at Milner's Camp.

Henrietta wasn't a whole hog

The boys and I were having lunch outside side the cabin on a table underneath a tree. The pig, then about two-thirds grown, was lured to the campsite by the odor of food.

Both the lads broke into laughter and I was so taken aback by the animal's audacity that for a few moments I couldn't holler "sooey." When T finally slapped her away from the

She went squealing off into the brush and that was the last we saw of her until the next meal. But thereafter, each time something was cooked, she made another appearance. I refused to let her eat off the table again but Stephen and Travis kept her well supplied at her favorite spot on the ground nearby.

By this time she had stopped going back into the brush when she had eaten her fill. She would lie down in the shade nearby and before long the boys discovered that die liked nothing better than to be scratched on the back with a short stick while she drifted off to sleep.When we went to Milner's Camp the following

She also had undergone a marked change in personality. This was most noticeable in the fact that she had begun traveling miles every day over a regular route, on a split-second timetable, in search of food. Always with

She made two appearances at the cabin in her daily rounds, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Her first stop on each visit was at the bottom of the bluff down which we dumped the offal of fish we caught and the kitchen debris.

After performing her chore as a mobile garbage disposal unit, the sow would climb the sheer bluff and dispose of anything else that she classified as food and which wasn't either inside the cabin or hung up out of her

To Henrietta the term "food" had a rather broad application. It included anything remotely associated with what we ate and which was not made of metal or glass.

If it wasn't behind a stout door or at least four feet off the ground it was within her reach. She could balance herself on her hind legs to reach low-hung edibles or could climb on top of an automobile. She even mastered the knack

Now and then other vacationers would camp out in tents around Milner's Camp.

Henrietta dearly loved these people. They invariably provided her and the current crop of pigs with at least one larrupin' meal before discovering that the fabled camel had a counterpart in deep East Texas.

These interlopers also made

Henrietta still loved to have the boys scratch her back while she lay at ease following a hearty meal. But after the first year this had to wait until the insistent pigs had been given a turn at the cafeteria. That invariably occurred after she had reached the camp and had

She never left it up to the pigs to decide when they had been long enough at the feed bag.

She made the decision for them and announced it by rolling from a position on her side to one flat on her belly which placed the dining area out of reach.

In the beginning, Henrietta was owned and carried the

Later on, Darrel Milner of Hemphill, owner of the cabin, bought the sow and by virtue of the acquisition eventually became the owner of a whole herd of hogs. Both Darrel and I used the razorback and her numerous progeny as a source of amusement for our boys. Also, on one occasion, for teaching them lessons

Each of her owners swore that Henrietta, with her lightning speed, razor-sharp tusks and outsize hoofs could lick her weight in anything that walked. They insisted that several bobcats which tried to make a meal of her pigs found this out.

I know for sure that she could

To keep that from happening again we tied the dog to the cabin with a rope. I went inside to prepare a meal and in a sow, she had almost killed the dog.

Stephen learned one summer that Henrietta didn't cotton to

The warning was a mistake. The boy just had to find out what would happen if he roped a pig. So he did, and had it tied to a tree before the

Fortunately, the lad saw the sow coming in time to get a long lead in the hot footrace to the cabin. Even then, he was barely inside the door when Henrietta slammed against the screen and almost tore it apart. Discovering that she couldn't get to the pig's tormentor, she went hack to where the little animal was tied.

I had to secure a stout pole

Henrietta's outburst of temper was shortlived after soothing the pig's wounded dignity by favoring it with a generous

Finally, there was a sad summer when the four of us were one. The boys had gone into military service and each was half a world away, one to the west and one to the east.

I spent three days alone at the camp and then packed up and went home. It was bad enough to realize that the two little shavers who had spent so many, many hours with me in the great outdoors while learning to be men had

With the Queen of the Razorbacks also gone I couldn't stand the place. I've never been back there for a vacation again.