The first step to making tamales is to get the pork ready. Ramon’s family did this by holding a hog slaughter where they gathered round and one of the men shot the hog in the head with a .22 rifle. Then the butchering began (if you ever want to learn about how to butcher an animal, you can read all about it in Chapter 7 of Ramon’s memoir “Out of the Fields: My Journey from Farmworker Boy to Pediatrician“). Once butchered, the pork was thrown it into a big black kettle with boiling water, like the witches’ ones in fables.