Granted, it had been a long day. I was walking through the Cincinnati/ Northern Kentucky Airport thinking about, well actually not thinking about much of anything, and getting ready to go through security. I stopped to fiddle with my backpack and, looking up, realized that something wasn’t just right.

Biplane wings and a propeller… ok, an airplane replica in an airport, that’s not too unusual. WAIT A MINUTE, the wings and propeller connect to a… big silver PIG???!!!  Now this is just wrong: why, in a nice conservative airport, would anyone memorialize a flying pig, not just any flying pig but one with airplane wings and a propellor instead of feathered wings?

I had stumbled upon the little known, but infamous, flying pig from Porkopolis. The ever reliable internet advises that Cincinnati was once famous for its pork slaughterhouses. The trainloads of pigs stopped and, when the doors were opened, pigs “flew” from the cars trying to avoid becoming bacon. Or it could just be a take-off on the famous adynaton, “When pigs fly.”

So what else would the city fathers put in their expensive airport but a statue of a flying pig? Put there to surprise weary travelers, making them wonder if they had maybe been working a bit too hard after all.

May 19, 2011