Who was trained not to spit in the fan?
Well, all this talk about Nicki leads me to dogs. Our neighborhood had only a few. There was a nice boxer named Mack one block up who I’d occasionally visit if he was tied up in the backyard. Loved how he shook his groove thang when I came into view.
After a few years, the Bryants bought Nickki a playmate, a German Shepherd named Bonnie. Bonnie was…….different. She didn’t bark–she moo’d. We didn’t believe it until we heard it. The dog didn’t howl either. Her bark was a low rambling bovine moo, rising slightly in pitch and occasionally ending in a woof. Just think about that a minute. You’re seated in the living room and you say “How are you, Bonnie?” Tail wags……”MOOOOOOO!” Or you’re playing in our backyard or the field and you hear moo’ing in the stillness of the day.
Around this time, the neighbors of my coal-region aunts got a dog, Teddy. Very sweet, happy dog–loved to play ball. He also loved eating poo. This, of course, was absolutely hysterical to me. I would sing the Davy Crockett song…..”Teddy, Teddy Abbott. King of the poo-eating dogs.” And just as surely, it drove my father insane. He wanted to get in the neighbor’s face and make them fix the problem, but my aunts told him they’d side with the neighbor against him. And it didn’t help that I would giggle about the dog. This was a serious issue and I was so immature. Four year olds usually aren’t known for maturity.
And now on to our first dog, Slats, a small black and brown mixed breed They got him a few years before I was born–my mother zeroed in on this cowering puppy in the back of the cage–he seemed to have a pretty low opinion of himself. He was on an 8-foot lead in our backyard. I know he was not initially pleased to see me, as I reportedly spewed a copious quantity of baby vomit on his tail. Given my father’s all powerful seething anger, Slats was pretty much afraid of his own shadow, but eventually he grew to love me as he saw I was good for more than regurgitating stomach contents. He was a faithful partner when I played outside.
The dog suffered mightily. One time he got nailed by a skunk from the field. When I was small, the psycho lawn-worshiping neighbor had a mean dog chained in his backyard who barked day and night. Somehow, our Slats got loose and went over to have a smell. The other dog reciprocated by tearing the flesh off his chest. My mother said it was a rare time that Slats ever yelped or barked. I will always remember watching my father wrap clean towels around the dog’s raw open midsection. The neighbor just stood there shaking his head and reminded my father multiple times that he couldn’t sue him, as our dog crossed into his yard. Livid, my father told him to leave before he got really mad. Cops called, the neighbor felt threatened. By the time they came, my father had taken the dog to the vet. Knowing the neighbor was wacky, the cops didn’t return………..that day. Within weeks, the dog got loose and bit a kid on the next block pretty seriously. This time, cops returned and the neighbor put his dog down. Slats healed, only to have me ask my mother the next summer why he had weird ‘grapes’ in his ears. Yes, 3 or 4 fully gorged ticks per ear. Others in his midsection. More vet trips.
Slats didn’t like the car. Which I get, since the first time he went to the coal regions, this ‘really great’ dog lifted his leg on my aunts’ Christmas tree, which got him screamed at and whacked by my father. In the car, Slats would start with a very soft whine above our hearing range, then gradually descend to our pitch. Seated next to him, I’d hear the start of his little Back Seat Symphony #1. The symphony would end with a long audible whine. This evoked a snarl from my father, who turned ‘go lay down’ into one syllable of menace and anger–“goaydahn!” This worked for 10 or 15 minutes, then Slats would start up again. I still say it my wife to this day when I’m going to go to bed, as a tribute to my father’s ability to turn volcanic wrath on something so trivial as a whining dog.
The poor thing assumed every time my father started screaming at me or my mother, that he was to blame. He’d lay down on the living room floor and show his belly, but, alas, the screaming would not stop. Finally, he’d retreat to the farthest reaches of the house and lay quietly. The usual pattern was I’d get screamed at for 10-15 minutes, then I’d be dismissed to my room, then he’d scream at my mother for 10-15 minutes. More than once, the dog would quietly climb up to my room, headbutt the door open, and we’d weather the storm together. And you thought only Hollywood thought up touching scenes like that!