Ernest Potts was in good spirits as he walked into the house after spending the afternoon in his work shed sharpening his tools. He then smelled his wife Lucinda's freshly baked biscuits. He smiled as he realized that one of the good things about being retired was that he could now stop and start a task whenever he wanted-especially when it was time for a good meal.

After he began to wash before he ate, Mr. Potts noticed the sound of footsteps coming up his front porch. Sure enough, it was Lucas Moore, fresh from a day at school. Since his mother was away at work, he stopped by the Potts' home as usual.

"Mrs. Potts," asked Lucas, "Did you just make some biscuits?"

"Sure did," replied Lucinda, "help youself."

"Just my luck," grumbled the old man to himself as his hopes for enjoying the biscuits by himself were dashed. "Little fella's got good timing."

After Lucas finished washing his hands, he eagerly ran to the dining room just as the old man and his wife began to eat. The smell of the freshly baked dough caused Lucas to eagerly gobble the biscuits while Mr. and Mrs. Potts looked aghast.

"Hold up there, boy!" shouted the old man. "I KNOW your mama raised you better than that!"

Lucas looked up in mid-gulp and embarrassment and said, "Oops! Sorry about that, sir."

"Boy, let me tell you somethiing about acting greedy like that. See, I used to have this Uncle by the name of Tillman Brown."

"Oh LORD!" groaned Mrs. Potts to herself as she rolled her eyes in disgust, "Not THIS mess again."

"You see," continued the old man, "the whole Potts and Brown families had come down from all over South Carolina for thanksgiving. Boy, did we do some eating that day. We kilt up most of our hogs and we ate so much til we had a ton of food left over for the hog trough."

"What's a hog trough?" asked Lucas.

"That's where you put the food that's left over for the hogs to eat." answered the old man. "Anyway, old Uncle Till came around with his wheelbarrow and put the food in the hog trough. There was this one little runt hog that was too little to be kilt yet. Don't you know that little fella looked at all of that food in the trough and KNEW that he was in hog heaven now."

"So the next morning," continued Mr. Potts after he paused to light his pipe, "Uncle Till got up and went to the hog pen and don't you know that little hog was so greedy that he ate up ALL that food. That runt hog was DEAD, little belly had bust WIDE open." The old man gestured, "hog guts all OVER the place, and..."

Mr. Potts suddenly noticed his wife looking at him with an angry scowl.

"Well, ah..." concluded the old man, "anyway Luke, the moral of the story is to eat like somebody that got good sense. Cause just like with that little greedy hog, it ain't good for you when you eat like a fool."

The threesome then resumed eating the biscuits. Mr Potts slowly and sheepishly looked over to his wife as the old woman shook her head and said, "LORD have mercy."