This is from Lowrie Becham, a valued contributor to the list and web site. Lowrie says, “I have heard a longer (shaggier) version of this, but the punch line was the same. This is from a commencement address to Boston College, May 2000, by Education Secretary Richard W. Riley.”

Riley, a veteran Southern politician who served as governor of South Carolina from 1979-1987, warmed the BC crowd to his theme by offering a down-home anecdote — conveyed in a folksy drawl evocative of the late Sen. Sam Ervin’s “country lawyer” — about a Harvard student and a pig. The Harvard man, motoring through the Carolinas, stopped short at the sight of a farmer holding up a pig as the swine ate apples off a tree.

Harvard Man: “What are you doing?”

Farmer: “I’m fattening up my hog.”

Harvard Man: “Isn’t that a waste of time?”

Farmer: “Hell, man, what’s time to a hog?”