Our Story
When my Pops died in 2022, I was terrified he would disappear.
He had been this constant presence in my life, and suddenly I was thinking about all the things that would happen without him. The phone calls I wouldn't get. The milestones he wouldn't be there for. The people I would meet who would never know him.
I started looking for ways to keep him around.
I made stickers from an old bobblehead drawing of him. I got it tattooed on my leg. I put his face on cups and threw them to thousands of strangers at Mardi Gras.
None of it felt big enough.
Then I found an old voicemail from my Pops talking about another idea he had for Bo-Hawg®.
The name was from a failed fishing venture my Pops started in the 1980s. The business didn't hit, but he grew attached to this half-pig, half-fish logo we call the Pig Fish. For the next four decades, he kept finding new lives for it through fishing, seafood catering, merch, or whatever idea he had next.
My Pops spent forty years trying to make this thing into something.
He died before it happened.
So I picked it up.
A year after he died, I brought Bo-Hawg® back. At first, it was simply my way of keeping him present. Every sticker slapped on a cooler, every shirt someone wore to a concert, every person who stopped and asked, “What the hell is that thing?” gave something he loved another little life in the world.
He wanted Bo-Hawg® to be seen. I wanted him to be known.
The merch still does that.
But trying to hold onto my Pops made me think differently about all the other things that can disappear if nobody keeps them around. Old friends. Family stories. Music. Dumb decisions. People who leave a mark on you. Moments you still find yourself thinking about years after they happened.
So I started writing.
Some of those stories are about my Pops. Others have almost nothing to do with him. They became Pig Fish Tales, and they gave Bo-Hawg® another way to hold onto the things that mattered.
The merch gives Bo-Hawg® the life my Pops always wanted for it. The stories make sure more than the logo survives.
That started with him, but it doesn't end with him.
I know I'm not the only person trying to hold onto someone, somewhere, or some part of life that mattered. Maybe that's the strange space Bo-Hawg® occupies now.
My Pops spent forty years refusing to let the Pig Fish disappear.
I guess now I'm doing the same thing.
Just with a little more than the Pig Fish.
Some things are too good to disappear.