> > > pig pourer
> >
> > [snip]
> >
> > It sounds as if you've had an extremely interesting life! Um, excuse my ignorance, but what s a 'pig pourer'?
>
> Hm. I happen to work at a metallurgical manufacturing company stuck between a (winterized) cornfield and a soya bean field, so I think I'll take a stab at pig-pourer. I imagine that Howard once worked as either:
>
> 1) a farmhand tending the trough, pouring slops for hogs. OR, as
>
> 2) a blast-furnace operator pouring molten iron into pigs.
>
> Wolf "I'm guessing #2. No, 1.... aaaaaahhh!" spirit

The job is sometimes known as a "printer's devil," because you work in the casting room where it is hot as, er, uh, ...July! Pigs are bars of type metal which are formed by pouring molten type metal into molds. These are loaded up and hung over the melting pot on the Linotype machines, which slowly lower them as the metal is used.
Thanks to computers, nobody does this very much anymore.