Song Origin

JT told the story at length in many concerts of the era – in some cases extending the story so much the audience was encouraged to get up for intermission while he finished. Mona was an actual pet pig of JT’s, but he didn’t kill her himself. Instead she found rat poison in his woodpile, ate it, and died. Mona was so huge they
needed a backhoe to bury her. JT also likes to joke that he planted a pine tree on her grave that “grew into a mighty oak.”