The Valleydale Pigs are being honored
Talks about a blast from the past- The Roanoke Times has a video of the Salem History Museum's latest addition Through their Eyes which showcases local history in the Roanoke and Salem area and on display are the famous Valleydale pigs. Baby Boomers, it's time to take a trip down memory lane to our childhoods. Pull out your long-term memories and sing along with the Valleydale Pig jingle.
The music goes zoom zoom!
The drummer goes boom boom!
And everybody shouts, "Hurray for Valleydale!"
Hurray for Valleydale!
Hurray for Valleydale!
Hurray for Valleydale!
All hail, it's Valleydale!
Valleydale sausage!
Valleydale wieners!
Valleydale bacon!
Zing zing zing zing Valleydale!
This is the version heard most on television screens but in the video, the full song is played. Valleydale Packers was established in Salem in 1936 and was a major employer in the area. The slaughtering of cattle was stopped in the 1970s and the plant shut down permanently in 2015. My first memory of the Valleydale Pigs is from the early 1960s when I was in grade school. My grandparents lived in a house with a tiny living room with only a couch and a table with a telephone and a lamp on top. The black and white television was on a stand in the corner behind the front door.
Zing zing zing all hail for Valleydale!
The Valleydale Pig commercial came on every weekday evening during the WDBJ7 local news. If I were out of the room my great grandma would call me by saying It's the pigs" and I would come running and sing and dance to the song. I'm not the only person nostalgic for the pigs because there are many sites on the Internet where people from across Virginia are sharing their fond memories including the I Grerw up in Norfolk Facebook group.
The Valleydale Pig song is one of my fondest childhood memories and in my innocence, I would cringe when they sang "All hail for Valleydale" because I thought they were saying hell and I thought this was a cuss word. I also did not grasp the magnitude of what the commercial implied until decades later when my daughter asked why the pigs were having a parade when they were going to be slaughtered and eaten. The Valleydale Pigs seem to be as beloved today as they were six decades ago. The Salem museum will be hosting a free Live History Day on Saturday, March 25 from 10 Am to 4PMso be sure to go by and check out all the exhibits, especially the pigs.
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