As Hillary Rod-ham Clinton, Lindsay Lo-ham and other four-legged, curly-tailed competitors rounded the turn Saturday, Laraine Capelli-Jones and her seven-year-old daughter Elena Jones screamed encouragement.

When it was over, the mother looked up and said to no one in particular, “Well, that’s a first. I just saw my first pig race.”

What she’d witnessed was the centerpiece event in The 11th Annual Pigtown Festival, a beloved more-trotter-than-pacer annual event dubbed this year “The Squeakness,” since you could “bet” on the pigs via raffle tickets and win prizes.

But seeing pigs compete on an oval track for fame and an Oreo cookie was not the only “first” for the Catonsville accountant. It was Capelli-Jones’ first time in the Southwest Baltimore neighborhood known as Pigtown and she declared it “nice – I didn’t know what to expect.”

That would be welcome news to the locals, who made up most of the pulled-pork-eating, pale-ale-sipping crowd on a sunny October afternoon and often feel a bit forgotten in this Southwest corner of town near the B&O Railroad Museum.

For years now they’ve been been holding this community party to celebrate a historic neighborhood whose name apparently dates back to the 1800s, when train cars released their cargo of pigs to run through Ostend and Cross streets enroute to slaughterhouses in South Baltimore.

On the Hoof and on a Plate

The racing porkers may have been the stars of the show, but other events and individuals shared the bill.

There were the people holding pie-eating contests and selling pulled pork, others staffing numerous Heavy Seas beer stations and a line-up of musical acts on two stages at either end of the festival on Washington Blvd.

We came in at the end of  a set by The Scotch Bonnets, a reggae band known to fans as The Steady Rockin’ Sistas. Performing with them was the legendary, apparently really legendary, “HR” of the hardcore punk band Bad Brains. He was wearing a sort of bridal veil, which appeared to be made out of a filmy white curtain.

Also in the line-up were Wammie-award-winning singer-songwriter Margot MacDonald and “The Funky Base and Beat Group Known as ‘F.’”