The Town of Smithfield and their Majestic, Magical Hams

In the heart of rural Virginia lays Smithfield, a small town that boasts little more than a Taco Bell/KFC combo, a sparsely crowded Belk and a local newspaper with headlines that read “'Civil War' Shooter Charged” and “YMCA Teen Party Goes Sour.” The townspeople exude a welcoming Southern charm, and will graciously offer you large portions of scrapple if you’re hungry, blood lettings if you’re sick and disdainful looks if you are a vegetarian or a homosexual. In short, Smithfield is a bit of a shithole.

Despite everything, Smithfield has its perks. The town’s highest structure is its water tower, which reaches skyward from the town’s center, a forked road that divides two highways. The slogan on the tower lists Smithfield’s three greatest contributions: “Ham, History & Hospitality.” It also features a picture of a hog. If it seems odd that a town would brag about their ham on a water tower, take into mind that the town’s previous water tower simply boasted a crude drawing of a ham, so at least now they explain themselves to some extent.

If you were to create a map that details the most important pork spots in the country, Smithfield, Virginia would be its capital. Home to Smithfield Foods and Gwaltney of Smithfield, this small Virginia town has fed families their bacon for generations. The people of Smithfield have made butchering hogs and turning their flesh salty and delicious a local past-time. Rather than little league, Isle of Wight county public school children participate in pig wrangling, a sport with a stiff difficulty level that only gets worse as officials apply more pork grease to the hogs.

The people of Smithfield love their hogs (despite thriving on their systematic murder), and take particular pride in being home to the gold standard to all ham: Smithfield Country Ham. A specific type of smoked Virginia ham, Smithfield ham, by law, can only come from hogs raised within the borders of Smithfield. With its velveteen, salty flesh, Smithfield Ham acts as Zeus in the pantheon of the ham world, which means, unlike most hams, Smithfield Ham can turn into an eagle and have sex with young boys. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

Growing up in the area outside of Smithfield, where people drive cars and use can openers, I have always enjoyed the porktious bounty that pours from the slaughterhouses of Smithfield. On Christmas, my family feasts on a freshly prepared (two years is fresh in ham years) Smithfield ham. Best eaten cut from the bone, the act of feasting on the salty flesh of long dead Smithfield pig affects you like a drug. As you start to carve at the surprisingly supple and juicy meat, you’ll begin to lose track of time, and next thing you know it’s three hours later, you can’t feel your tongue and half of the ham is gone. My family is so dedicated to this ham that once, my grandfather almost cut off his finger while on a a ham binge and he continued eating as if nothing ever happened. Unfazed, we washed his blood off the ham before taking him to get stitches. On a related note, some say that if you rub Smithfield ham on wounds, it can cure jaundice—it can do nothing for the open wound.

To say that Smithfield benefits from its delicious hams is an understatement. The township practically worships the carefully crafted meat. If you Google “World’s Largest Ham Biscuit,” the wikianswer that comes up simply reads:

“Smithfield, Va has the world record for the largest HAM biscuit....I live in smithfield, and we are the ham capitol of the world.”

When the people of Cadiz, Kentucky built the world’s largest ham biscuit, Smithfield quickly shot back with its own, bigger biscuit—the city of Cadiz burned to the ground shortly thereafter. The people of Smithfield insist on holding every ham-related record. One of Smithfield’s local museums also boasts the world’s oldest cured ham, and world’s oldest edible cured ham. It's probably best not ask how one judges a 100 year old ham edibility.

Traditionally the people of Smithfield elect a Hog Czar to sit on the city council. Dressed in a top hat and monocle, the Hog Czar roams Smithfield’s sparse the town sparse streets freely. Although the position of Hog Czar is popular among the town’s social establishment, his role in government is largely ceremonial, with his only real power occurring when the council grants the tie-breaking vote to a pig in a top hat. After his term reaches completion, the hog retires to the slaughter house where he lives out the rest of his life as ham.

The Ham Czar

Smithfield’s obsession with delicious, life-changing hams does have its downside. For one, the town’s only industry is pork packing. Secondly, the Pagan river has about four feet of pig remnants lining the bottom. In 1999, the Virginia Environmental Agency (obviously not ham eaters) sued Smithfield Foods for a $12.6 million violation of the Clean Water Act. While the cleanliness of the Pagan River is still in question, the locals insist that Smithfield Foods stopped dumping an atrocious amount of pig blood into the river and spend their summers splashing in the river’s majestic, greenish brown waters.