The Would Be Drum

As told by Bev

It was so exciting - We were going to make our first drum. A friend from work was going to slaughter a pig and the skin was to be ours. We looked for some information on preparing the hide but were unable to find much. Finally the big day arrived. We went to pick up the pig skin.

It was not what we expected. There was lots of fat and bristly hair on the skin. Well, we hauled it home and began the process of preparing the hide for our special drum. We made many attempts to remove the fat and the hair, to no avail. In desperation, we called our drum maker friend who told us we should use a lye solution to soak the hide in. So, we found a large barrel and put the hide and the lye solution in it. 24 hours later we took the hide out and scraped and scraped. No luck, the fat and hair were immovable. Ah ha, we got an idea. Let's heat the solution. Maybe that will help dissolve the fat and soften the bristles, and heat it we did. It boiled and boiled as we stirred. The solution became all foamy and overflowed and we stirred the hide in the solution. After a considerable time we decided that we were done whether it was done or not, because we were anxious to build our drum. So, we let it cool and grabbed a broom stick to pull it out. We poked around and around and around. No hide, no bristles and no fat. No drum.

Several months later we went to Bellingham Washington to see our friend Ralph the drum maker. We told him our story in all it's dramatic detail and he just smiled. Some months later we did get a pig drum, but Ralph made it. If there's a moral to the story, you can provide it yourself.