American Engineering

I had no proprietary interest in the hogleg Stefan was twisting up. For all reefer’s fame as a groovy way to kick back and take it easy, the stuff tends to launch me into meta-spheres of self-consciousness, over-analysis, and general anxiety, all of which I can experience simply by sitting down to write an essay on language. What interested me was the concentration Stefan devoted to the work, the precision with which he approached it. I’d known stoners who took their pastime seriously, who made a discipline of all things reefer, but I’d never seen anything like this.  The man might have been crafting an engine part.

It should be noted that Stefan was not especially precise in other ways. His hair was ratty, he wore board-shorts and a ragged Zildjan Cymbals T-shirt, no shoes. Insomuch as he was wearing a shirt at all, he might be considered overdressed for the Bahian lunch shack I met him in. It was the Zildjan T-shirt that had got us talking. A sometime drummer, I’d taken a neighboring barstool and soon enough learned that he was, too. His name was Stefan, he came from Germany, and he played a four-piece Gretsch.

Just as his Zildjan shirt had marked Stefan as possibly a drummer, my being a sometime drummer must have marked me as possibly a stoner: no sooner had we established the fact that we were both drummers than Stefan casually pulled out a small bag of reefer and a pack of papers, and got down to business. He confined his work to the space between his knees and the bar-top, though really there was not much need for him to hide the business here. It’s hard to walk down a street in Bahia without catching sight and/or smell of reefer smoking: one of the many aspects of life in Brazil that makes America’s vaunted “Land of the Free” tagline seem ludicrous — almost as ludicrous as Brazil’s own “Order and Progress.”

Still, it never hurts to be subtle in such affairs, and Stefan kept the work to his lap. While we talked drumming, he would occasionally look up to emphasize a point — Stewart Copeland’s ingenuity with syncopation, John Bonham’s skill with the single bass-kick — but mostly he kept his eyes on the procedure at hand. Said procedure involved a great deal of examining, calibrating, and shaping. It seemed to require deep focus, shrewd deliberation, a critical eye. Of an observer, it asked patience: Stefan’s work carried through discussions of Ginger Baker and Buddy Rich, on whose respective brilliance we agreed, and then through Neil Pert and Keith Moon, on whose respective brilliance we did not agree. I was thinking to move us on to the late, indisputably great Max Roach when Stefan — at last, a quarter of an hour on—lowered his head to lick the rolling paper and conclude his task.

“You like to smoke?” he said.

“Not so much,” I said. “But can I — see it? Can I just hold it?”

He passed me the thing. It was a marvel. Tight, cylindrical, precise, it could have been a machined cartridge. It had actual weight to it. “I have to say, this is impressive,” I said.

“What it is called in English?” Stefan said. “A joint?”

“In some places. Where I’m from it’s called a hogleg.”

“A hogleg,” Stefan said. “What does this mean?”

“It means this.” I nodded at his handiwork, passed it back to him. “It means reefer cigarette.”

“Yes. But why?”

I didn’t know what to tell Stefan. I’d always just called it that because — because where I came from people called it that. All I could offer him was an inane, “Because that’s what it’s called.”

That didn’t satisfy Stefan any more than it satisfied me. “Leg?” he said. He patted his thigh. “Like this?”

“Exactly. Why’s anything called anything?”

“Yes okay. Then what does ‘hog’ mean?”

That was easy enough to explain with male pig.

“Ah,” Stefan said. “Schweinbein.”

Had Stefan just sneezed? “Sorry?” I said.

“Schweinbein. Leg of the pig. Hogleg.”

“Hogleg. You got it.”

But did Stefan get it? He didn’t look convinced. “Where do you live in America?” he said.

“The South. Why?”

“What kind of marijuana do you have there?”

“Last I checked, the green kind.” I didn’t mean to be short, but I wasn’t some pot-hound who could rattle off the names of a dozen different strains.

“Maybe your marijuana tastes like pig leg maybe?”

“Like ham?”

“And so ‘hogleg’? Maybe?”

“That would definitely give new meaning to ‘Saturday afternoon pig roast.’ But no — that I remember it doesn’t taste like ham.”

“Okay,” said Stefan. “So then what kind of pig you have where you live?”

“Just regular pigs,” I said. “Fat and slovenly. Often mean-spirited. What difference does it make?”

“I only wonder why this is called a schweinbein where you live.”

“It’s not,” I said. “It’s called a hogleg.”

“I want to know why.”

“I know you do.” At this point, I did too. If we could determine why it was called a hogleg, we could quit talking about why it was called a hogleg, and I could get back to defending Keith Moon. I’m saying, in my limited experience you have to actually smoke the reefer to get all fixated and obsessed like this.

“It makes no sense. In Germany pigs do not have legs like this. I do not know about where you live.”

“Where I live people smoke the damn things. They don’t talk about them. They just twist them up and smoke them. You know?”

I thought that would settle things, however lamely, but it only led to further etymological inquiry on Stefan’s part. “Twist them up?” he said.

At least we were off of “hogleg.” “You know –” here I made the universal twisting-up gesture “ — we just twist them up. It takes like a minute at most. They end up fatter at one end, maybe a little crooked, but they work. At least from what I can remember, which isn’t much, which I guess means they work.”

“Ah,” Stefan said. “So then they look like a schweinbein.”

“Do what?”

“They are fat at one end and crooked, like a schweinbein.”

“What exactly is a schnine-flime?”

“Schweinbein. A leg of a pig. Like you say.”

This again. “Okay. Sure. ”

“And so where you live a joint is a ‘hogleg’ because it looks like one.”

“And so where I live a joint is a hogleg.” I had to say it out loud, hear myself say it, before things at last came together. “And so where I live a joint is a hogleg!”

“Yes.” Stefan seemed not half as amped as I was to have finally figured this out.  You would have thought I was the one who’d questioned the term in the first place. In any case, his point was taken: Unless swine back home had fabricated piping for legs, or the reefer tasted like barbecue, his creation could hardly be considered a “hogleg.” The thing was so tidy and exact, it might have taken offense to being linked to a hog in any way.

“Design,” I said. “That’s it. The difference isn’t in the pigs, or in the reefer. The difference is in the design. Yours looks like a short dowel. Ours tend to look like hog’s legs. American engineering, we might say.”

“Ah, yes,” Stefan said. “American engineering.”

“We might say. Or just Southern. Southern engineering.”

“Yes okay. But you do not smoke?”

In light of recent affairs, a body might be excused for thinking that I did toke up, and often. Stefan’s creation, this Benz of blunts, appealed less than ever. I’d had enough trouble making sense of things, not least of which my own language, without it. “Best not,” I said. “But if I need a plug for a john boat, I’ll call you.”

“John boat?” Stefan said. “What does this mean, ‘john boat’?”

Well, hell.

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Charlie Geer is the author of the novel “Outbound: The Curious Secession of Latter-Day Charleston.” His work has appeared in Tin House, The Sun, Bloomsbury Magazine, and The Southern Review.