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"I had a vision. raw denim jeans
I wanted to do something to bring some joy to the people here." The statue
has become a Falls Church landmark. For a while, it achieved a modicum of fame
as the setting for a peculiar sort of photo shoot. Members of the Hogettes —
the cross-dressing, snout-wearing Redskins fans who worshiped the Hogs, the team's
offensive line in the 1980s — would come out regularly to have their pictures
taken near the shiny metal porkers. "But I haven't seen much of them lately,"
Don Beyer lamented in 1988. No, we haven't seen much of the Redskins lately,
either. Tom Rogers, co-chief executive of Wilkins Rogers Mills — owner of
Washington Flour — and the third generation of his family to work for the
company, said he doesn't personally remember the smell but has heard his father
talk about it. "I am told the smell was very strong when the wind blew it
our way," he wrote. Tom said it was the mill's office manager, Alec Carr,
who insisted on putting up the sign and was the one who wrote the memorable
copy. Bethesda's Catherine Fitz said she laughed out loud when she read the column.
It reminded her of a family tradition. Wrote Catherine: "In the early '50s
when I was young and Washington seemed so much smaller, denim jeans many an evening my mother
would drive downtown from our home on 48th Street NW to pick up my father at
his office at 17th and K NW. Without fail, when we passed the flour sign on the
Whitehurst Freeway, he would turn to my mother, smile, and ask her what was for
dinner?" The District's Ellie Becker said her late brother-in-law, Bob
Lout, worked for Otis Elevator and used to service the Hopfenmaier plant
regularly. Wrote El- lie: "He told us that he had special shoes for the
job which he wore inside the plant and then left there — for obvious
reasons!" Mrs. Answer Man pointed out that the problem for Washington
Flour was that while you could see the flour mill from the Whitehurst Freeway,
you couldn't see the rendering plant.