boys – DTyesthatDT

Like most other children, I desperately wanted a dog when I was kid. I begged. I made promises. I vowed to take care of it, etc. I don’t think my older brother ever asked for a dog and my parents never owned dogs that I know of. This would be Thomas dog #1.

There was a dog that lived in my Dad’s tent while he was fighting off the Soviet backed North Korean Communists with the rest of the U.S. Army in Korea in the 50’s. I saw a black and white snapshot of it once when my Dad was looking through his pictures. The dog was more of a puppy and it looked like something in a Hallmark commercial. It was happy and cute and playful looking and I’m sure it was a nice distraction from the death and horror that those guys walked with every day. The dog kind of belonged to my Dad and his buddies because they fed it and looked after it. They named it, I kid you not, Fartface. (I’m going to leave that right there for you to ponder and be as confused about it as I’ve been for the last 30+ years since I heard about it.) My Dad didn’t know what happened to Fartface when he left Korea. All that he brought home was a disability or two and some pretty wicked nightmares that allowed him to relive the war for the rest of his life.

My pleading payed off eventually and I got a dog for my birthday when I was about seven. After looking at four or five other dogs that day, I found one that my parents and I could agree on. The tag on the kennel door at the Humane Society shelter said his name was Bozo and his breed was identified as a “Doxie mix”. He was a little chunkier and a little taller than a purebred dachshund due to whatever other breed(s) he was mixed with. He had a 99% wiener dog head, ears, color, and face and I think, based on his life, he was probably mixed with an Army Ranger or Chuck Norris because he was pretty hard to kill despite numerous attempts.

My Mom decided that she should probably hold onto him on the car ride home instead of letting him run wild in the back seat with me. Without car seats or seat belts in the back, we definitely did run wild in those days. A few miles down the road he put his nose under the flap of her coat and seemed to settle down. My Mom was commenting on how he was relaxing and she kept petting him and telling him that he was going to be okay as we talked about what we should change his name to. Bozo was a famous clown from that era and he was that peculiar combination of annoying and creepy that only clowns can pull off. The dog needed a better name. Shortly, it was decided that Prince was a far better name than Bozo. Once this decision was reached, Prince promptly puked inside my Mom’s new coat. I watched him do it and watched her recoil in disgust as I hung onto the front bench seat to keep an eye on the dog. I believe he was very lucky that she loved her son more than she hated the new dog at that moment. She hadn’t really wanted a dog in the house to begin with and here was the first disgusting evidence that this whole thing was a bad idea. My Mom always kept a clean house despite the other three of us doing our best to mess it up and now this dog had joined our ranks against her.

That evening, my parents went out somewhere and left me and my brother at home with the dog. I was excited to play with him despite the fact that he had bitten my lip that afternoon when I was trying to play with him on the floor. When my folks left, the dog barked at the slamming door. Then he turned around and started barking wildly and growling at me and my brother. I was seven, my brother was 15 or 16, and we had zero experience with dogs. The poor dog was probably terrified in his new surroundings and just wanted to be left alone. When we approached him, he would charge us and bark and growl. This was new. Prince eventually herded us both into the living room and onto the couch where he held us prisoner for three or four hours until my parents got home. If we made any attempt to move, he went crazy and we got even more scared.

My Mom and Dad got home hours later and they were wondering what was going on as they climbed the steps from the entryway to the living room and saw us cowering on the couch. The dog barked at them too, but my Dad just laughed and picked the dog up while he asked my brother and I what was going on. We told them our tale of imprisonment and they thought that it was pretty funny that we were held captive by a wiener dog with an attitude.

The following year, we moved from a suburb of Minneapolis to a rural area about five miles out of North Branch. Prince had many adventures chasing squirrels and meeting other dogs, cats, and strange neighbors. Since he was of German ancestry, the neighborhood men decided that he must like beer and they gave him his own bowl now and again at one of the many bonfires that my parents hosted. It turned out that Prince couldn’t hold his liquor, shocking I know, and the men enjoyed watching him stumble around as they themselves were also stumbling around. My Dad often recounted the story of one such evening where he claimed Prince ran into both door posts as he attempted to enter the house to retire for the evening.

After nearly being killed by my Mom’s disgusted looks after he hurled into her coat, Prince had many other brushes with death while we lived in North Branch. He liked to bark at the neighbor’s goats, for example. One day the neighbor, Melvin Hanson who was a semi-retired farmer with a thick Swedish accent, got tired of Prince harassing his goats and decided to shoot him with a 12 gauge shotgun. Prince evidently sensed Melvin’s evil intentions because he ended up with a lot of lead pellets in his rear end as he tried to make his escape. We arrived home to find him laying in the yard in tough shape. My Mom rushed the dog into town to the vet while my Dad controlled himself enough to talk to the neighbor without punching or throttling him. When asked why the hell he would shoot a ten pound wiener dog with a shotgun, Melvin insisted that the dog was going to kill one of his goats and that we needed to keep our “killer dog” away from them or this would happen again. My Dad made it quite clear to Melvin that he would share the dog’s fate if he ever did anything like that again. The dog lived and so did Melvin.

Fences were eventually mended and we ended up getting along just fine with Melvin and his bride Lila. Years later, Melvin actually beat me in a foot race. I was about 12 and he was 80. He came out one hot summer day to watch me and my friends play football in the field in between our houses. This was the same field where the wiener dog failed to outrun the shotgun pellets. Melvin was giving me a hard time about not being fast enough on one of the plays and I made a wise remark back to him about being old and slow. He didn’t take that well and started unloading his pockets onto the ground. Old guys have a lot of stuff in their pockets. Watches, wallets, pens, glasses, keys, knives, loose change, notebooks, coin purses, etc. I thought he was going to come and strangle me or put his fist in my big mouth, but he challenged me to a race. I couldn’t believe it, but I agreed and we marked the distance we’d run with some hats and the football. One of my friends said “Go!” and I tore off the line and headed toward the other end of the field to an easy victory, I thought. At one point, I looked over my shoulder and saw Melvin pumping his arms in his bib overalls and work boots and then he was past me and over the finish line. I got dusted by an 80 year old retired farmer. My friends were just about dead they were laughing so hard at seeing the way Melvin ran and also the fact that he demolished me in a foot race. Melvin, in between red faced wheezes and trying to catch his breath, talked some pretty good smack as he upbraided me for making fun of an old man. I’m glad my Dad didn’t kill him. He was a good guy. And fast. But, back to the hero of our story, the bullet-proof wiener dog…

Prince liked to chase squirrels and he also liked to chase cars on the dirt road in front of our house. On two occasions while doing this, he was hit by the car and thrown into the ditch. One was a sedan and the second was a pickup truck. The first time, he yelped all the way back to the house and was not quite himself for a few days, but he survived. The second time, he was knocked out as he flew into the ditch and we were sure that he was dead. My Dad saw it and ran down the yard to grab him, but Prince regained consciousness before my Dad got there and ambled his way back to the house. Again, he survived.

One summer, Prince surprised a dumb squirrel who got himself turned around and wasn’t quite fast enough to get away from the streaking wiener. After getting his face severely clawed and losing some blood, the dog survived and the squirrel lived to pillage our bird feeder another day.

The sound of the snow plow grinding down the frozen dirt road in front of our house in the winter enraged the dog also. He hated that sound. Wherever he was, he would run at top speed to confront the growling truck. Twice that we witnessed, he charged the plow head on and was swept into the ditch with the wave of snow like a twig in a tornado. I always wondered if the driver saw him and just laughed. The dog had guts. One of those times, my friends and I were playing and sledding in the ditch because we had a snow day off from school. We yelled at Prince to stop as he ran at full speed and barking toward the plow. We watched in horror as he was flung end over end into the snow pile in the ditch. Some of the guys lifted up their hands at the plow driver like they were saying “What the heck?!” Most of us ran to the spot where we thought the dog was buried. We dug frantically trying to find and, we thought, save him. He popped up about 15 feet from where we were digging, shook himself off, and trotted back to the house as though his work here was finished. The homestead had been successfully defended. He had survived.

My Dad wandered out to the kitchen each morning in his robe and started the coffee. One winter morning, he wandered with his bare foot into a pile of warm dog poop as well. (For years, he told people the detailed story and described how it felt to have warm dog poop squish up between his toes as he stepped down into it on the cold linoleum.) We didn’t need our alarm clocks that morning as we were awakened from blissful sleep by a raging torrent of foul curses and imprecations toward the dog. I got to the kitchen entrance as my Dad was finishing wiping the waste off his foot with a paper towel and grumbling. I was afraid to speak because I didn’t want to be murdered, but I was also afraid for my dog so I had come to this vantage point to see what was going to happen. Done wiping, my Dad walked over and grabbed the dog like a purse by the skin of his back and walked toward the door as the dog howled. I started crying and begging him to not hurt Prince. I don’t think he heard me in that state of mind. He flung the door open, kicked the storm door open, and walked out onto the frozen porch as he raised the dog into punting position. As he pulled his foot back for the dropkick, he slipped with the other foot, fell, and landed flat on his back on the frigid concrete steps. His grip on the dog was released and Prince landed on my Dad’s stomach. He quickly scampered out into the yard and completed his morning duty as my Dad groaned and managed to stand and hobble back into the house. Thankfully, the wiener dog was not punted that day and he survived yet again.

I came home from high school one day with my friend Karl and my parents met me at the door and said they needed to talk to me. They told me that they had learned from the vet that day that the reason Prince hadn’t been eating or acting like himself lately was that he had stomach cancer and needed to be put “to sleep” as some people say. I didn’t react as they expected because my friend was there and it wouldn’t have been cool to get upset over a dog, right? They asked me if it was okay to put him down so that he didn’t have to suffer anymore and I said that was fine. That evening and the next morning we said our goodbyes to Prince and when I came home from school the next day he was gone.

I’ve always thought that it was pretty unfair that having survived so many things in his life, Prince was taken out by cancer. My Dad, having survived many more horrendous things than Prince, was taken out by a fall in his garage. A friend of his died after stumbling while putting on his pants one morning. Life and death are strange and they seldom make sense, but I hope that you take the time to enjoy all of the squirrel chases and snow plow encounters in your life before cancer, heart disease, war, drugs, a car accident, or old age take you away from the ones that you love. Remember to not let the squirrel scratches and temporary snow burials distract you. Keep a smile on your face, be nice to people, and try to enjoy every minute of it like you’re a drunk wiener dog hitting both door posts on your way to bed.

I get in these moods occasionally that remind me a little of Solomon’s ‘life is meaningless’ passages from Ecclesiastes crossed with a good story from NPR’s This American Life crossed with a Hallmark movie. I called it an existential funkphoria today which is stupid, but I’m going with it. The existential funk/sentimentality hangs out with love and some other good feelings and the ‘what might have beens’ tag along like a third wheel.

It makes me happy to be sad sometimes. I’m happy that I can still feel things and that my heart isn’t hard. That’s why you cry when some people die. You loved them, so the sadness at losing them balances the love. I remember thanking God that I was sad when my Grandma Myrtle died. I was pretty messed up in my head at that time and questioning myself quite a bit and I was happy to realize that I could still feel something real. That’s why I was happy about being a little upset today too, I think. There is always light with darkness.

I took my Super Mom on a road trip from somewhere near the Wisconsin border to St. Cloud for breakfast. Why is it exciting to drive 75 miles for breakfast? Several reasons. I got to spend hours in conversation with my Mom while driving through some sentimental and beautiful countryside and there was a pretty great breakfast at The Place waiting at the other end. (If you haven’t been to The Place in St. Cloud for breakfast, I recommend it. The outside is kind of creepy, the inside is refurbished with a side dish of gritty, and the food is great. If you like potato pancakes, bring several friends who also enjoy them because you won’t even come close to finishing one by yourself.)

Why is my Mom super? Many reasons. My favorite reason is that she was given a year and a half to live about thirty years ago. That didn’t work out for the doctor who is probably dead now himself, but it worked out great for the rest of us. There is also the fact that my Mom is probably the nicest person I’ve ever known. And, she’s funny and has good stories. But, I’ve told you about her before and this post is about funkphoria, dangit!

It’s always sentimental for me to drive through North Branch and think of all the people and memories from that town. I still see the town of 1,200 people from the late 1970’s that I moved to in second grade underneath the one that’s slowly digesting any remnant of it. On the way home, we drove past both of the houses that our family lived in while we resided in North Branch. Cornfields and pastures now grow houses. Those crappy little seedlings that the neighbor planted and my parents laughed at are now towering evergreens that block the view of the farm behind our old house as much as the housing development built in their field does. The Nelson’s round barn is gone, so that view would be diminished anyway. My Mom pointed to a tree in our old yard and said “Mr. Blakeslee planted that tree himself.” I think I was supposed to be impressed, but I have no memory of the man even though the development is named after him. I drove past houses where people named Andy, Rich, Brian, Danise, Steve, Butch, Kurt, Mike, Dell, Dale, and many others grew up. I know “You can never go home”, right? Right.

I was a little shocked and confused by how much the sight of one particular dead tree upset me. I attached a picture of it to this post and you can see the reflection of my Mom in the glass. That was my favorite climbing tree when people had things like that. I climbed so many that I had a favorite is another thought I had. I drove by that today too. It’s dead now and slowly crumbling like that past. Like all of our pasts. It’s now about 1/3 of its grandest size. That tree had a split trunk with a big hole in the middle of it facing straight upward where dumb squirrels sometimes hung out until they realize they were getting wet or that there was a dumb kid climbing the tree. I almost fell out of that tree a few times because I would spook a squirrel out of that hole and it would scare the poop out of me too. The hole was a perfect hand hold for climbing higher, but I never dared to reach blindly for it for fear of getting rabies or at least a nasty bite or scratch.

I hid up there one time when a bunch of young boys, including me, were having a fireworks war. When my brother walked by stealthily hunting me, I lit a pack of fire crackers and tossed them down at him. (This was quite a feat of dexterity because the older boys took the lighters and us younger boys had only matchbooks. Also, I was about fifteen feet up a large tree.) As they sailed perfectly down the back of his shirt, I realized two things: One, this was probably my last day above ground. And, two, I had a very short window of time during the ensuing chaos to get down out of this tree and run. I got down quickly, I ran very quickly, and I somehow managed to avoid being murdered. It was a day of miracles, apparently.

There was another tree in our yard that had a bird’s nest in it every year in the same place. I would climb it and check the nest for eggs. Later, I would climb it and look at the mother bird as she sat completely still on the eggs in the hope that I wouldn’t see her. In my childish way, I thought she was my friend and I talked to her for extended periods and told her about things that bothered me or that I was upset about. I guess this was the therapy tree. I also talked to the neighbor’s cow, so there’s that. Multiple therapists. The bird monologues all ended one summer when the male bird, who I must have mistimed for many years, expressed his dislike of my discussions with his lady. He chased me out of the tree and continued to chase me and my friend Nick across the yard and into the little shed that would eventually become our pig barn. It was really hot in there, but he swooped at us whenever we tried to come out, so we stayed in there sweating for a long time. Eventually, we made a run for the house and I remember yelling for my Mom to open the door. Bird therapy over. At least I still had the cow. (Side note: The cow was eventually slaughtered and the fence became a great lesson on the raw power of electricity when my friend dared me to pee on it. If you ever have the opportunity to discourage a child from doing this, please do so.)

I fell out of the big tree one summer evening around dusk while I was climbing by myself. I landed on an exposed root flat on my back and the wind was crushed out of me. There was a blinding pain that almost made me pass out and I thought that I had broken my back. I started crying out of pain and fear and I was afraid to move. If I tried to move and I couldn’t, it would be true, I guess. I laid there for a long time until it was getting dark and cold. My Mom called for me like Moms used to do. I tried to call back, but my voice was weak and full of tears and fear and she couldn’t hear me. She was too far away. So, I moved and I found that my legs worked. Maybe I had only been badly injured and not paralyzed, I thought. I slowly walked up to the house and I told her about the fall and my back and she rubbed it a few circles and said that she was sure I’d be fine. I’m still not sure about that.

The tree was a pretty good defensive position and I hid up there now and then to avoid a beating. My main tormentor didn’t like to climb trees, thankfully. He would stand under me and threaten to climb up there and get me. Then he would tell me all of the terrible things he was going to do to me when I came down. My patience generally won out and I usually made it to the house.

I also hid in the tree from the bad things that were going on in my house. I cried up there. I tried not to hear the things that were going on in the house when I was up there. I tried to hide up there while my name was being yelled and threats were being offered warning me to get back in the house. In the end, I always had to go back inside.

So, why did seeing the dead tree bother me so much? I’ve driven by that house a handful of times in the decades since graduation and noticed the tree. I remembered it and some of the stories surrounding it, but it never upset me. Was it the fact that it was dead now and decaying? It honestly confuses me.

Solomon said that everything aside from serving God is meaningless, vanity, and grasping for the wind. I guess he was in a bit of a funk at that point too. I don’t claim to completely understand the meaning of Solomon’s words, but as we get older I know we think about the meaning of our lives and in our lives, if any. I didn’t have a lot of meaning in my life in those days, but I had that tree, a bird, the neighbor’s cow, and a friend that knew what was going on. It’s weird, I know, but I have to think that’s why seeing that dead tree shook me a bit. I think I’d feel the same way if I heard that long-ago friend had died even though I haven’t really talked to him since middle school. They were all something good in the world at that time. There is always light with darkness.

Tag: boys

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Existential Funkphoria