Carefullness

Ready for a big tip in life? Okay, here goes, ready or not. Let’s say you board a foster puppy. Let’s say that it’s a rescue dog ready to go north for adoption after all the shots are in and all the, uh, medical procedures have been completed. (Ixnay on the aidspay.)

Now let’s say that it’s late autumn and the leaves cover the ground between trips to allow the rescue dog to attend the call of nature. BTW, I read where you are supposed to say, “Busy Busy” while said dog attends its business so it will learn how to know what it’s supposed to be doing. Ours told me that if I didn’t shut that silly crap up she would do it in the middle of the kitchen floor. Anyway … we’re back outside with the precious thing.

Now assume that vision is obscured and it’s not quite safe to put your feet down just anywhere. Then assume that having finished attending your puppy’s needs and you need to go back inside, but you’re not sure that you haven’t trod upon a previous expedition’s deposit.

Tip of the day: Find a nice pile of leaves. Plant each foot on it in succession.

Now look.

If leaves adhere to the sole of your shoe and extend out on either side, it’s a sure sign that you carry troubles and it is best not to walk on your best carpet ere you attend the matter.

Works every time and I keep indoors free of unwanted material that way. I have a checklist by my front door so I can record my testing before I enter. I color-code my mishaps by day of week for clarity. That prevents any mishaps.

My question: would this be appropriate to send as a “Hint to Heloise”?

My Redacted Life: Pets of all sorts

We had been married maybe six months and were enjoying the home we purchased on the GI Bill. My beautiful, long-haired redhead—no longer long-haired and no longer a redhead, but still breathtakingly beautiful—decided we needed a dog. Six months of marriage had been enough to teach me that total and complete acquiescence greatly trumped any attempt at Pauline male dominance.

So she found a dog, and thus began a, so-far, 46 year-old family protocol. Feeling Biblical that day, we named him Jeremiah. He was a mutt, black with orange circles above his eyes, perhaps evolutionarily designed to convince predators that he was awake, when actually he was sleeping, which was most of the time.

Having grown to adulthood, he discovered the joy of eating, or attempting to eat, anything left within reach. He particularly enjoyed my treasured edition of Victorian poetry, but he shunned no potential meals. This brought him into contact with Marcel the Mystery Plant.

Marcel was a gift from a neo-hippy friend named Wes. With a gnome-like appearance and a taste for all things from the 1960s, he was a favorite with young kids who hung out at the Art Center. Thus, we understood it when he brought us a small container of soil and a mystery seed, explaining that some of the kids who gathered at his place were untrustworthy, whatever that meant.

We planted the seed and cared for the resulting plant. Of course, being good Methodists, we had no idea what kind of plant it was, but we nourished the slender young thing, awaiting our friend’s return for it. Going through a Gaulian phase, we named it Marcel.

It had grown to approximately a foot in height, with nice, long, serrated leaves when Jeremiah noticed it. It sat in a quiet corner of the kitchen where watering was simple and, since we feared there was something vaguely sinister about it, out of sight from most visitors.

Well anyway, Jeremiah quietly watched Marcel grow, giving us no indication of impending “planticide.”

Then one Sabbath morning, Marcel was gone, nipped down to soil level. Jeremiah lay beside it with the spots over his eyes doing a sort of “ping-pong” dance over the most innocent-looking canine face one could imagine. Every once in awhile, he would make this dog-moan, like Lassie had just walked by wearing a bikini.

It got worse. Brenda was cooking breakfast when her mother called to inquire about any intentions we had of attending church services that day. It took some time for her to employ her best prevarication skills and get us excused. When she returned to the kitchen, the remnants of an entire package of raw bacon lay scattered about the kitchen floor.

An emergency?

She thought so, and demanded that I find a vet who answered calls on Sunday. For once in our marriage, I refused a direct order, saying, “You call one and explain what just happened."

We compromised. I sat in a chair and watched Jeremiah for any sign of seizures or fits. He had none. Rather, he just belched bacon grease for several hours, hummed tunes like “Come on Over to the Other Side,” and from time to time looked up at me and said, “Far out man.” His eye spots danced in rhythm with the music and he would shake his head from side to side, especially when he did, “Don’t Bogart That Joint, My Friend.”

We lost a pound of bacon that day. Jeremiah lost his innocence. Marcel lost his life. Our friend Wes lost his safe house, and the 1960s lost some of the allure that had drifted with us along a smoke-filled path through time.

Jeremiah stayed with us, apparently un-phased by the experience, for 16 years. I don’t like to talk about the day he passed over the Rainbow Bridge, so we’ll leave him with the memory of moaning, “My Sweet Lady Jane.”

Yeah, I know. She's never
held me like that.

Sunrise With Schubert: February 11, 2018

When I was a kid, there was this mentally disturbed man who would walk by our store on Saturdays. He was a rough customer. We would be confined to the porch until he passed. I think his name was Ross and he was one scary dude.

He carried a bullwhip and his dog always followed him. Every hundred steps or so, he would spin around, curse the dog, tell it to go home and lash at it with his whip. The dog knew, to the centimeter, how far to stay back in order to avoid being struck. He would shake his head, wait until Ross had recoiled the whip, and then continue following him.

That made me think that maybe the most loyal friend in the world might be a dog.

Another characteristic that dogs have mastered is persistence. No matter how many times you tell one you don’t feed animals from the supper table, the pleading is as sincere and pleasant the hundredth time as it was the first. Any human I know would have at least growled by then, some even giving way to a warning snap. Anyway, most humans give in after 20 or so implorings. Which is the weaker species?

Dogs are extremely bright, but use that intelligence for purposes of utility only, never for showing off or for self-aggrandizement. There is a persistent rumor (I first heard it on The Tonight Show) that, back in the early 1700s, a man taught a dog to talk. After a few long conversations, he came to the conclusion that there was no physical impediment to a dog’s talking. Their silence, the man opined, was due more to a low aspiration level. Dogs seem at peace with their current position in the evolutionary chain.

There was some thought given, I am also led to believe, that the recitation of a short essay would be introduced as a step at the Westminster Dog Show. The International Brotherhood of Show Dogs put a stop to such talk. They said it would lower the standards of the show to that of a spectacle such as the Miss America competition.

It’s hard to argue with that.

Dogs can, and do, prevaricate, but only for self-preservation, never for sport or mendaciousness. The most common fib, dogdom’s most prevalent in fact, is denial. They just aren’t into admission of guilt that much. Thus, a broken glass or the results of incontinence are equally disowned with a lowered head and sad eyes, a communication possessing the sincerity of an undertaker turned insurance agent.

Oh, and the optimism shown by our canine friends. “We’ll have better weather soon if you just won’t make me go out in this.” Add to this the eternal hope that, someday, chopped steak will constitute their fare, replacing dry dog food. “It’s just a matter of time,” they maintain with an eternal smile, “before humans come to their senses.”

That’s not to say that dogs can’t be both realistic and vocal at the proper time. Just ask one how the country is doing under the Trump administration.

“Ruff!” he’ll tell you, exhibiting a mental capacity far above that of a third of America’s homo sapiens. Though the president recently told Americans where they could put their solar panels, a dog, even one with a slight speech impediment, will suggest a much more beneficial spot.

“Woof,” he’ll suggest, and well we should follow his advice, ignoring the fact that a dog cares more for the health of the planet than some elected officials.

So, let us take heart from our canine friends, many whom are attending services this morning where they will, with joy in their heart, welcome a new day with the wonderful and happy singing of Canine’s Happy Land, or Just As I Am Without One Flea.”

Yep.

The Navy and I: August 16, 2017

Nobody believes me. Even today, nobody believes me. This guy could hitchhike—would hitchhike when the mood struck him. I’ve seen him.

Just because he was a big black dog is why people won’t believe me. His name was Charlie and he made up part of a small communications compound about three-quarters of the way up Monkey Mountain east of Da Nang in 1968. He sorta looked like a big fuzzy Lab and we were very fond of him. He could do an impersonation of Maurice Chevalier that would just crack your ass up.

 It would have offended him greatly had anyone suggested he belonged to us. He berthed with us, that’s all.

I was part of security for the compound, which meant I was paid to sit for six hours at a stretch in one of two towers just outside the perimeter, or at the entry-gate shack. On the midwatch, (midnight to daylight,) there was an impressive view across the bay of the jets dropping napalm on and strafing the mountains to the south. In the opposite direction was the South China Sea, some 3,000 feet or so below. I once watched the battleship, USS New Jersey sail by below during a day watch.

But back to Charlie, the hitchhiking dog. People who believe, without apparent struggle of any sort, that a man and his family kept two Tyrannosaurus rex dinosaurs and other species on a homemade boat and fed them for 40 days and nights scoff at my contention that our pal Charlie was a hitchhiker without parallel.

But he was. There were two more compounds above us, one Marine and, if I remember correctly, one Air Force. Since we had to motor in all supplies and meals, there was a good deal of traffic during the day. Here is where it gets interesting, and this is not “old-age hyperbole” speaking. The regular drivers all knew Charlie and knew that he had friends at the large Air Force compound at the base of the mountain.

There were dark rumors of a tragic love affair with a French Poodle, an unverified one, but believable, as the French had occupied the area before the Americans. Charlie wouldn’t talk about it. But his first name, “Victor” sounds a little French, n'est-ce pas?

Anyway, when he decided to spend a day at sea-level, he would simply go across the narrow road going by our base, and wait. Soon, a driver would see him, apply his brakes and open the passenger-side door for the mutt. Off he would go. Some sailors claimed they could hear him whistling at times, but I never did.

When he got ready to come back, he just reversed the process. Many is the time I’ve seen a truck, barreling up the mountain, stop and let Charlie out. Oh, sometimes he would stagger a bit and hum "Anchors Aweigh" or "Barnacle Bill the Sailor," but mostly he seems to have behaved himself while down below.

Once, a driver was in a major state of confusion. “What the hell’s wrong with this dog?” he yelled from the window just as Charlie jumped through it. He had first passed our gate, but immediately backed down the road to where a couple of us were standing.

“I picked him up at the bottom of the mountain,” he continued. “Thought we could use another dog up yonder.” He pointed in the direction of the Marine compound. “We got here and he went crazy. Kept barking ‘numbah ten’ or something like that.”

“He belongs here,” I said. “Thanks for bringing him home. You’re the new guy, aren’t you?”

“Three sixty-two and a wakeup,” he said. “Still shittin’ stateside chow. How did you know?”

“Just guessed,” I said as I swatted Charlie to make him stop giggling .

This is all true. I offered it to The Veteran’s Project but they just laughed.

 You believe me, don’t you?

Me, Seaman Ed Swope, and EN1 Bill Webb

at Charlie's favorite debarkation site in 1968.

Change

Early morning thoughts with Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.9 in E flat Major performed by Mitsuko Uchida. (Yes I know, I don’t stray far—see below).

As I sit at our farm before the Sun has even thought of rising, I sense a slight rough spot in the greased grooves of the Universe. Two of the Queen B’s dogs have altered their morning resting routines. Why?

Betty Lou, the 50-pound tomboy who was supposed to have been a fox-terrier mix, is asleep on the couch instead of the green recliner. Suzi, the Evangelist, has chosen another chair. She normally faces me in the morning with a supplicating look on her face as if my salvation were the only important thing in our postage-stamp galaxy. She was rescued by the Queen and her mother, the Lady Hazel, from underneath an abandoned church where she had lived for some time with her collection of toys: a tin can, one long stick, several rags, and a hand-fan from a long defunct funeral home. She seems to have turned her back on me today.

So what’s up? Is there perhaps a small hole in the Curtain of Reality? Do I care to sneak a peek? One remembers, of course, the ending of William Faulkner’s “The Sound and the Fury.” Luster, one of the Compton family’s “boys,” offers to take Benjy, the idiot man-child, on his daily carriage ride and opts to circle the town square counter-clockwise, instead of clockwise as per the daily routine. Benji goes berserk until Luster turns their horse Queenie around and then:

“I could hear Queenie's feet and the bright shapes went smooth and steady on both sides, the shadows of them flowing across Queenie's back. They went on like the bright tops of wheels. Then those on one side stopped at the tall white post where the soldier was. But on the other side they went on smooth and steady, but a little slower.”

In short, things were as they should be.

Life in our country, as in this modest living room in the midst of nowhere, certainly seems about to change, and maybe the dogs presage it. It may not seem a major event to the few remaining of the generation that lived through the three-fold catastrophe of WWI, the Great Depression, and WWII, but it unsettles a thinking person in present times. Is it comforting to realize that, far from a modern feeling, it was expressed years ago, this sense of impending change? Matthew Arnold alluded to it in the Victorian era and even hearkened back to ancient times in his epic “Dover Beach,” to wit”

“Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.”

So I guess I had best prepare for … oh wait … Betty Lou just moved to her normal chair and Suzi has turned to stare at me.

Never mind.

 

Worth reading anyway

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Morning Dogs

     Early morning thoughts while listening to Chopin’s Opus 42 in A-flat major. (Read once that it was Harry Truman’s favorite. Been thinking about him this week for some reason).

     As I write this, Suzi the Evangelist Dog is staring at me with love in her eyes. At least I think it is love. Could it be hunger?

     She was thrown out at an abandoned church in south Lonoke County, Arkansas in the middle of the summer and was discovered there by the Queen B and the Lady Hazel. She lived under the church for weeks with a collection of toys she had gathered—tin cans, sticks, sacks, and assorted rags. The ladies fed her until she became trusting enough to come with them to the farm.

     She’s been our spiritual leader since. She’s the one who once picked a fight with a Bush-Hog and lost. The leg still bothers her some after a long day of digging for moles. We encourage her to cease that practice but she likens it to rooting out the evil amongst us. She is also an inveterate shoe-chewer, says we need to remember that Christ had only one pair of shoes and that should be enough for anyone.
     Oops ... must go now. She wants to discuss the disappearance of the concept of grace among the fundamentalist congregations. Oh dear.

    

Eyes that could melt steel, steal your heart,
 or steel you against life's trials.

"I care not for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it." - Abraham Lincoln.

See also www.wattensawpress.com