27. January 2010 by admin.

Hershey and Taffy were their names. The only two canines to come into this house who could stand under a chair without lifting it up. Both of them were dropped off at the pet store where Pat worked; the animal equivalent of a baby left with a note “Please take care of my child.” In this case they were both of a broken home. Hershey was a male blue (blue is one of those misnomers famous in the dog world, because there wasn’t a blue hair on him – more like a grayish chocolate color), and Taffy, daddy’s little girl, was fawn.

Both the little ones went into the dog yard with Sam and Chevy. Now, it’s important to remember that Sam was about 70 pounds, with Chevy weighing in at about 60. But despite the heavy-weights, the dogs that ran their yard were the chihuahuas. Especially Taffy. She wasn’t about to take any crap from any of her other 4-legged yard-dwellers. There were 3 dog-houses in their pen, a world big enough for anyone to get exercise in. A small one for the chihuahuas, a medium house for Chevy and the largest one available for Sam. However, the one where the chihuahuas spent most of their time was . . . You guessed it, Sam’s domain. He would beg, cajole and make the most pitiful-sounding whimper, but the smaller dogs didn’t give up the large house unless they wanted to. This was especially painful to watch when it was raining. Then it seemed like Hershey and Taffy were being just plain mean. You might call Sam a wus, but when Taffy snarled, which she did whenever Sam or Chevy did anything to displease her, it was as ferocious as feeding-time in the lions den. I would have been intimidated, though neither she or her male counterpart, ever gave their mommy and daddy any lip.

We couldn’t let the small dogs into the house. Whenever they did come in, admittedly sometimes by accident, with their boundless energy and lightning-fast reflexes, the cats would scatter, barely having time to spit or sputter. Either one of the chihuahuas would pick up a ball 3-times bigger than themselves and fiercely shake it till it cried uncle. Godzilla, whom you’ll meet later, was fascinated by these rug-rats, and Cutiepie, Godzilla’s life-long companion, didn’t like these wind-up toys. Once Hershey got into the main body of the house without our realizing it, and before we were able to intervene Cutiepie grabbed the little boy by the scruff of his neck and shook him as though he were a rope toy. Hershey yelped and very convincingly played dead. It was a Sunday, so were were not able to get hold of our vet. We just put him in a dark, dry place with a blanket over him. Within hours he was back to his playful self, though he avoided the big black dog (actually black and tan, but again, more in a later posting)with all due caution.

I mentioned earlier that Taffy was daddy’s girl. Now, remember I am the guy that wasn’t especially fond of animals? Well, I didn’t like cats at all, nor did I want anything to do with small canines. Yeah, right. Those go under the heading of “Famous last words.” When we called the dogs in for the night, which we did almost every night in the beginning, then only on nights of really inclement weather, or on nights when birds of prey might likely swoop in and grab one of the chihuahuas, Sam and Chevy went right into their kennels, as did Hershey. But Taffy begged daddy to pick her up, which he usually did. Taffy buried her face into my neck, where I held her for a few minutes. Needless to say it didn’t take me long to warm up to small breeds.

After Taffy suddenly died (we never did figure out the cause of her young demise (she was only seven) called her in one night, and by next morning she was gone), Hershey mellowed to the bigger dogs, but still wouldn’t yield any ground if he really wanted something. He was one tough hombre. Tougher than almost anything. Except muscovy ducks. Those of you whom have raised ducks know that no matter what you do, muscovys are going to fly, unless you pinion them when they’re very young. Even at that I have my doubts that they will be grounded for life. More than a time or two a couple of our muscovy ducks would land in the dog yard. Now Chevy was famous for picking off anything dumb enough to fly sufficiently close to her snapping jaws. Chevy was incredibly sweet, but she was a hound dog, and a treeing walker fox hound at that. We lost a couple of guinea-fowl to her and at least a couple of quail. Now, if you know guineas you know they are not the shiniest nickels in the piggy-bank. And quail…well, quail are quail, and very difficult to control just because they are so small. However, when one of the muscovys found themselves in the chihuahuas yard, they just sat there hissing and complaining when one of the dogs got anywhere near him (or her). Nobody messed with these bundles of intimidation. I didn’t dare get too close unless I had on a pair of thick gloves. And even at that I wondered if I was going to survive with all my body-parts intact. All I can say is when they were around I was very glad I had not chosen to walk around naked (this is aside of the social ramifications, like scaring the neighbors).

In the words of Forrest Gump, that’s all I have to say about that. When next we meet I will tell you about . . . No, I won’t tell you. Mainly cause I don’t know. But I do know I love to see you smile.

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2. January 2010 by admin.

The Texas triumvirate started to unravel when Herbie started spending more time at his owner’s house, mostly because as much as I was really beginning to warm up to dogs, Herbie just couldn’t behave inside our house. I have no idea what he did in his person’s house. Maybe the guy had a doggie commode (my guess is one wouldn’t have been enough. And how did Bob ever train that dog to use a commode?).  But there was no way that canine was coming back inside our new house.

Blue Eyes and White Boy spent most of their nights staying warm inside our place. They were both well behaved. Okay, White Boy wasn’t so much well-behaved because he was just a nice little doggie (the vet referred to his lineage as “lab mixed with something with short legs”), but he was scared of his own, or anyone else’s, shadow. And he was such a whiner. He would make such a racket when one of us drove up after working all day. No, not barking, exactly. More like a bark combined with a horrific howl that would normally attribute to a wolf in dire pain. Our guess was that Herbie’s person, who claimed White Boy was his dog, didn’t really give a damn about the white dog living in his house and just ignored him except when it was convenient. That poor dog’s spirit wasn’t so much broken as it was eaten away by neglect. As an example of this, his dry food was left outside, where White Boy was mostly relegated to. This would be okay, except here in Texas we get fire ants in abundance, and fire ants especially like meat. Of course White Boy had to eat his dinner with the uninvited dinner guests in attendance. Blue eyes suffered much the same fate, but was never affected in the same way. We think that the latter simply took care of herself more than White Boy did.

Blue Eyes had a ton of character, and was incredibly smart, as I alluded to in a previous posting. Her e is the best illustration of this: our newly acquired land was formerly farmland, and as such still had the irrigation terraces. Every afternoon Herbie would trot over to our place from his person’s house. At least the dog, obnoxious though he was, knew who his friends were and enjoyed their company; no, not us, but White Boy and Blue Eyes. And every day Blue Eyes would see him coming before Herbie saw her, and every day Blue Eyes would crawl on her Belly to just behind the top of one of the terraces. At just the right time Blue Eyes would jump out and terrify Herbie so dramatically I could swear I saw his ghost leap out from Herbie for just a few seconds. It was like watching a Merry Melodies cartoon. Herbie either never figured it out or enjoyed being scared out of whatever wits he had left. I’m pretty sure it was the former. Herbie was not the shiniest penny in the piggie bank..

Well, Blue Eyes met a very untimely fate. One Thursday evening, while dusk was fading to black, we called Blue Eyes in for the night. No response. Several calls later we finally figured since it was such a soft night out Blue Eyes had simply decided to enjoy the temperate weather. After all, despite her getting food and shelter within our humble home, she was accustomed to fending for herself.

The next day was rainy. I came home from work to see Pat and Barry coming from somewhere in the back of the house. I’d found out that Blue Eyes had not decided to spend the night outside, but had in fact gone for a swim. She’d gotten bitten by a snake and had tried to make it home. Our poor Blue Eyes had made it to within a couple hundred yards from the house. My wife and best friend buried her where she succumbed.

That was a few months after we had moved to Texas. We have never forgotten her, and she will always be remembered.

Herbie moved away with his person a year later. And White Boy was officially turned over to us after his previous person was nearly cited for letting the dog run wild. White Boy lived to the ripe old age of about 20, living with us to the end. He was happy, if a bit cantakerous.

I will tell you more as this year unfolds. Until my next posting, take care of yourself and those you care about. They may be the only people to keep you sane.

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1. January 2010 by admin.

Pat ran into a very dear friend of ours here in Texas today. Barry, AKA the water terminator, encouraged me to write more. So, with a tip of the hat, Mr Edwards, the irrigation expert (he runs his own irrigation company, Barry Edwards Irrigation), I dedicate this entry to you. Now, before you go accusing me of shameless plugs, let me tell you, that is exactly what it is. But I offer that only because he is a friend. Actually, without getting all maudlin and sentimental, I will tell you never was there a person kinder to two Texas imports than Barry. But besides all that, Barry knows more about back-flow than anyone I know. Before I met Barry, I just assumed back-flow was something that happened when it was time to drain the septic. And believe me, Barry is very clear when it comes to explaining that a zone is not just a football defense. So, Barry, this, bud, is for you.

In my last entry I mentioned the beginning of my love affair with animals, or what might be casually called “my life of crime.” Well, this will be a recurring theme throughout this blog. Animals define, indeed, embody, the love God put on this earth. They love unconditionally (okay, okay, maybe love isn’t unconditional with cats, but if you’re a cat person, as I am, you’ll understand that, while cats are more demanding, they simply deserve as perfect an existence as they can be given. The purr, they will remind us, is nature’s perfect sound. It is neither trill nor bone-shattering. A purr is simply a cat’s way of saying thank you for loving me. Now, scratch me there just a tad harder. Oh yes! Down a little bit. And so it goes). Though a cat defines “unconditionally” a little differently than Webster does. But more about the felines in our lives later.

June first, 1994, a day which will live in infamy. Our arrival in Texas. It had been a wet spring. So wet, in fact, that the mobile home transport company had to be threatened with a lawsuit to finally get my house placed on the five acres we’d bought. How did I know the wet muck jokingly referred as soil around here would cause tire tracks that would make the moon proud? A Mobile home?, you ask, your right eyebrow raising questioningly. Yes, the finest in disposable housing, made by people who swear up and down they are doing you a favor by selling you $100,000 worth of house for less than half that. The truth is you get $5,000 worth of barely standard shingles slapped together with spit and roofing nails for $40,000. That is just my opinion, but it came from experience. Don’t believe it? Try getting the floor of a mobile just a tad wet.

The first obstacle: the incumbent energy utility had not hooked up our electrical as of yet. The aforementioned Barry, who along with his wife at that time, were our new neighbors just the other side of our road, offered us a very long extension cord so we could at least enjoy a bare bulb at night. I mean, we were newlyweds, for heaven’s sake. Who needed more than a bare bulb? We accepted the offer, but as fortune would have it, the utility crew happened to be in our area that day (a Saturday, no less), and hooked us up before the sun set. I was terribly grateful, though in retrospect it was more a move of expediency on the utility company’s part. Nobody likes to come out to our town unless absolutely necessary. It’s not a bad place; just very out of the way and, therefore, inconvenient. Even today unless you’re handy with everything from plumbing and electricity to carpentry, you’re dead in the water. And remember, I am a city boy who never had to learn any of that stuff; and I have no patience for directions. Hence, very little gets done until it’s absolutely necessary. Hence my credit card bills. But, gotta keep the economy going somehow. Washington doesn’t seem to know how.

Okay, okay, I have gotten way off track. Let me cast out the reel, hook myself by my pants, and ease back to the topic at hand. Which is . . . Give me an A somebody . . . Animals!

Earlier in this blog I mentioned the three neighborhood dogs that were the first ones to greet us on our initial visit to Texas to choose the piece of land we would call our own. Herbie, Blue Eyes and White Boy. Herbie was supposedly a spitz. If ever there was an obnoxious dog, it was Herbie. Maybe it was his way of thanking us for the hospitality of letting him get cool inside our new home, but the first thing that animal did when we let him inside was to hike up his right leg on a corner. Needless to say Herbie was no longer welcome in our house. Then there was Blue Eyes. Blue Eyes was the first dog to show me how smart animals can be. During the month of mobile home life without skirting, Blue Eyes and her friends would rest in the cooling shade of the home. Blue Eyes was the tallest of the Texas triumvirate having shepherd blood in her lineage. And without fail was our watchdog. For no matter where we were in the house, if someone just as much as drove past the front of the house we would hear the inevitable bark bark, bark, clunk; the sound of the trio rising to greet the new menace. If we missed the barks, we would definitely hear the clunk. The clunk was Blue Eyes cracking her head against the metal frame of the house. This went on the better part of the summer (yes, my dear observant reader, this means it took a lot longer than 30 days to get the skirting around the base of the house).

There is more to tell you about the interesting band of brothers. More in my next installment. As always, stay safe, and have a great 2010.

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17. December 2009 by admin.

What was I thinking?

For the next few months (and beyond when I think of new stuff), I’m going to tell you about me, a displaced New Yorker who lived in the greater NY Metro area all of my life, my wife, who has lived in a number of places, including Guam, Maine and Colorado, not to mention the state of her birth, Florida, and a lot of assorted residents who have lived in and outside of this house over the last 15 years or so.  I will try to be linear in my presentation, but since I tend to have an abstract mind, you’ll forgive me if I jump from here and flit to there, then  at some point remind myself that someone else may be reading this, and reel myself back in.

On June 1^st, 1994 my new wife, Pat, and I arrived in our new home. We moved from the largest city in NJ,  population well over 200,000, to a “city” in Texas. I put that word in quotes because, while, technically, the new town was incorporated as a city, that is as much a misnomer as the expectation that they keys to the city would actually unlock the door to a vault in Fort Knox. The city of Josephine had a 1990 population of 301, although I truly believe they fudged on that number by adding to the numbers a few of the town’s cows and barn cats.

But I am getting ahead of myself. Up until May of 1993 I was working in Manhattan, where I’d worked, in various capacities for better than 11 years. When I was let go from a company on East 61^st St , I began re-evaluating my life on the east coast. Sure, home is home, but I felt like I wanted something more. Maybe some land. My girlfriend of the time, the aforementioned Pat, and I looked at various options and settled on Josephine, a town that time forgot, and so, it seems, had the rest of Texas. Well, unless you fail to pay your property taxes on time. But that is a discussion for another time.

During much of the time that I worked in New York City I lived in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, which is just a couple of subway stops east of downtown Manhattan. Now, Greenpoint was largely a quiet neighborhood sandwiched in between Williamsburg, in Brooklyn, and Long Island City, Queens. I haven’t been back there in many years, but as I understand it, it’s become a very gentrified area, more like a suburb of Manhattan, instead of the bastion of the working class that it was when I was there in the 80s. I should go back there. Maybe I’ll take a virtual tour of the old neighborhood and hope the photographs are at least fairly recent. Who knows, I may even see my ex-wife, who as far as I know still lives in the same apartment building. Ah, the charm of rent stabilized and rent controlled housing. I never did know the difference between control and stabilization. But then learning the vagaries of the housing situation in New York is most decidedly not on my to-do list. It’s almost as unimportant to me as figuring out why dogs sniff each other’s butts. No, no, I understand it’s a way for dogs to identify each other. But I figure after you get to know Fred that intimately when you first meet him, why do you have to continue to sniff his butt? Talk about obsessive behavior! But again, I digress. Remember, I did tell you that might happen.

New York, to me, was and still is the greatest place in which to spend a lot of time. Sure the city is overloaded with cliches. Broadway, AKA The Great White Way, the museums, the street and subway entertainment, the restaurants (and if you’ve spent any time listening to the street entertainment, be it on or below ground, you know it’s free (unless you toss some cash into the hat or open guitar case), and some of it as every bit worthy of being on American Idol as anyone can be). But as with all cliches, there is truth to them all. Well, maybe not the part about the crocodiles in the sewers…but every metropolis has it’s share of urban legends.

Almost every Friday after work, my buddy John and I would go from our workplace on West 34^th St to get pizza on Bleecker Street. I remember John’s pizzeria, on Bleecker a block east of 7^th Avenue, had pizza to die for. Fresh veggies and chopped whole cloves of garlic…OMG. It was so wonderful that the line to get in there on a weekend night stretched south down 7^th Avenue for a good block. It was so crowded in there they’d opened another pizzeria right next door called John’s II. Okay, maybe not the height of cleverness. But then who cares when the food is the thing. Then after we’d devoured the manna from heaven, John and I would walk over to a small hole-in-wall drinking establishment called the “Peculiar Pub.” Last time I checked both John’s and the Peculiar Pub were still there. The pub had something like 200 beers from around the world. It was there I learned I loved stout (it had to be on tap. Stout any other way, even from a bottle, was barely palatable) and I despised weiss beer. weiss beer – one word…yuck. I think if my first taste of beer was weiss, or wheat beer, I would have sworn off the brew for the rest of my life, and perhaps a few lifetimes after this one. Now I drink wine almost exclusively. But more about that in the future. For now, fellow denizens of the world, I will close and bid you good life. Until next time – Thanks for reading.

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