Excerpt from “The Dog of My Days”—a memoir

PRINCE

And that he was.

A large regal Collie, sweet and gentle, loved and admired by all. Just like Lassie.

Prince belonged to Aunt Jean and Uncle George.

Jean and my mother were friends when both were single working girls. She introduced my mother to her brother and next thing you know, they got married. And so did Jean and George. They had no children. They had Prince instead. But they adored me and my brother. And the feeling was mutual. Uncle George would razz us all the time, calling us “squirrelly outfits.”

We returned to Southern California after one year in Oregon because my brother’s asthma had improved but mostly because my father wasn’t happy there and kept quitting his jobs.

So we moved back, and near family, always near family, only this time my father’s family. We moved next door to Aunt Jean and Uncle George on Coban Road in La Habra Heights. The four of us crowded into the dark, low-ceilinged basement apartment of an enormous multi-level house occupied by the wealthy family that owned it.  At least I thought they were wealthy with all those rooms and a big television.

A narrow, dark staircase led up to a door that opened into the utility room off their kitchen. Sometimes one of the children would unlock the door and call down to me and my brother to come up and watch cartoons with them. We had no television. We’d eagerly scramble up the stairs and join them in their spacious family room with tall ceilings, big windows, couches, rugs, and upholstered chairs and enjoy Saturday morning cartoons on their huge TV.

Aunt Jean and Uncle George had an equally big TV in an equally big house with a lodge-like, step-down family room that had a stone fireplace covering one entire wall. The house overlooked their glistening, glittering swimming pool and the canyon below.

Avocado orchards, rural properties, hills and views, space and sky, little traffic on the steep, narrow winding roads with drainage ditches on either side that caught the falling avocadoes.

My mother would pop open the trunk of the car, place a couple empty cardboard boxes inside, get me and Roger situated on the edge above the back bumper, and cruise slowly along the road, stopping for us to jump off the back of the car and retrieve avocadoes out of the ditch, load them in the boxes, get back on the edge of the open trunk, and she would slowly proceed to the next spot till we filled both boxes.

For breakfast, she fed us toasted sourdough bread with butter melted on it—lots of butter—she might have skimped on affection but she never skimped on how much food she served to us—and then came the ripe avocado spread thickly on top—so bright green—what kid wouldn’t like that? Now “avocado toast” is all the rage. A woman ahead of her time.

Roger and I played regularly in the avocado orchard that sprawled below the road across from us. We’d tromp down the slope and underneath the limbs of hundreds of trees with leaves up to our knees and sunlight barely penetrating through the dense canopy, down down down into a shadowy, magical, muffled world where the only sounds were our feet crunching through the leaves and an avocado dropping off a tree here and there. We explored, climbed the trees, fell (more like jumped) into the thick dried leaves and carried back what avocadoes we could in our arms and pockets.

We didn’t so much play with Prince, and certainly not in the orchard, as hang out with him at his house like he was a cousin, another kid. To my six-year-old self, Prince seemed huge. Stately. But not scary in the least. Not like Major, my grandfather’s German Shepherd.

MAJOR

Gramma and Grampa lived in a modest, stucco tract house one mile from Disneyland in Anaheim. We could watch the nightly fireworks for free from their front yard.

Grampa was my mother’s step-father. Her own father died when he fell 120 feet off an oil derrick he was repairing in Long Beach. That’s plunging about 15 stories down. She was 18 months old. Gramma and Grampa had no children of their own.

Their house backed up to the freeway and the only thing separating the backyard from the speeding vehicles was an eight-foot wooden privacy fence, on their side, reinforced by an eight-foot chain link fence on the freeway side. You could hear the roar of traffic zooming dangerously past but you couldn’t see it. Somehow that wasn’t very comforting.

Major never stayed out in the yard unless Grampa was with him. That’s because Major never left Grampa’s side.

We kids—my brother and I and our four cousins—knew to stay clear of Major. My grandfather firmly instructed us to never ever approach the dog. Never. That he WILL bite, or worse. If he comes up to us on his own, then we can pet him. But otherwise, leave him alone.

And NEVER approach my grandfather if Major is beside him because he WILL defend Grampa, no matter what. No matter who we are. And that even applied to my grandmother.

Needles to say, this caused me much anxiety. I loved—no, I adored—my grandfather. But Major stood in the way of climbing on Grampa’s lap or hugging him. And it got worse when our family lived with my grandparents for several weeks until the new tract house my parents bought was completed. The new house was at 625 Roanne Street in a new subdivision in Anaheim.

From then on, German Shepherds terrified me. Even though I loved to watch the TV series, “Rin Tin Tin.” I avoided them in real life whenever possible.

And as it happens in real life, time changes things. Time alters perceptions and fears and beliefs. Experiences occur. The unexpected remains constant.

In my early Twenties I met Dymion, an enormous Belgian Shepherd who relieved me of much of my German Shepherd anxiety. Obviously it’s a different breed but close enough. However, years later, in my Fifties, two German Shepherds proved I hadn’t gotten over my childhood fear.

Heidi and Charlie, both females, made me gasp every time I visited their respective homes. Their German Shepherd bark, their German Shepherd lunging towards me, and the subsequent German Shepherd intense sniffing to either approve or attack froze me at the door even though the owners kept assuring me everything was alright, “Don’t worry, she won’t hurt you, she won’t bite, come on in, it’s fine, Heidi! Quiet! Come on in, it’s okay, Charlie, Come here!” It was like being met at the door by the Gestapo. No wonder they’re called “German” Shepherds. By then, I needed a drink.

Whenever Major came near me, I froze. Regardless of what Grampa said. I never attempted to pet him, much less even touch him. I knew he’d kill me. I just knew it. But quite often Grampa would leave Major inside and go out to his garage—a true man-cave long before that term became popular. And I would tag along.

Besides his turquoise Ford Edsel with its white leather interior that he babied, Grampa had every tool imaginable inside that garage hanging on pegboards that lined the walls. There was a substantial workbench along one wall with a formidable vise attached to it that I liked to play with, and assorted equipment on the concrete floor that a mechanic keeps on hand. Pinned to the plywood cabinet on the back wall hung an old calendar of nude women. That shocked me every time I saw it.

I’d never seen a naked woman before. Not even my mother. And Gramma certainly didn’t look a thing like any of those twelve women. Not that I ever saw her naked but her short, round body always covered by a muu-muu was enough indication.

In some bewildered way, I understood my grandfather was also a man. I already knew he was a man by all the tools in his garage and by his large, weathered hands and the pipe rack and can of tobacco he kept beside his recliner and the fishing rods he made and the flies he tied and the loaded pistol he kept under his pillow. He slept in one bedroom. Gramma slept in another where she kept dolls on top of her pillows.

Suddenly the world of my grandfather expanded in my mind. He was a man. A man who liked looking at the nude female form, especially ones with big bosoms (the term my mother always used for breasts which embarrassed me every time). I wondered what Gramma thought of this. Maybe she never saw it since she never entered the garage. She had no reason to. She never learned to drive a car, and her washer and dryer were in the house, so there was no cause for her to enter Grampa’s sanctuary.

SANDY

Life is good when you’ve survived the interminable co-existence with—and you haven’t been attacked by—a German Shepherd.

And, when you get to leave that dog’s domain and go live in a new house with your very own dog, your very own bedroom, and no more ominous guard dog lurking in the hallway when you need to rush to the bathroom.

Like the cartoon character, Snoopy, our new dog, Sandy, sat on top of the doghouse my father built for her. The doghouse—and the dog—were sequestered in the far-left corner of the backyard utilizing the solid wood fence between us and the side neighbor and the concrete block fence in back where an open field awaited more tract homes. Chain link formed the interior fencing. The dog could see us and we could see her. But seldom did we go beyond that.

Sandy was a full-grown, black Collie mix, who rubbed her black nose raw trying to dig her way out of her prison. The nose, perpetually reddish-pink and scabby, stood out as a constant beacon of her struggle, isolation, and suffering which paralleled my own.

We didn’t play with her because we forgot to. Sandy wasn’t an integral part of our daily life therefor she was ignored. Out of sight, out of mind. My mother ended up being the only one who fed her. And once let her come into the house but that didn’t go well.

Sandy and I often hunkered down together in the far corner on the other side of the yard. It was freedom for her to be released from the fenced patch of dirt that kept her separated from us. And it freed me from my mother’s sudden outbursts of rage, usually aimed at my innocent brother. Just being a little boy seemed to push her over the edge on a regular basis.

Cowering in the corner also freed me from my passive, self-absorbed father who silently retreated to his garage and his woodworking tools. I don’t know which was louder—her screaming or his table saw and hammer, all going non-stop. And then I’d hear Roger crying.  

I stayed as far away as I could get in that bare backyard with no tree or bush—a typical yard of a typical new tract house in a typical 1950s tract development in Orange County, California. And so it came to pass that I found comfort, my first time, in being with a dog.

Not long after that, they gave Sandy away to someone. My brother and I cried and protested but, instead of being comforted, we were blamed for not taking care of her, not feeding her, and not playing with her. In short, ignoring her much like our father ignored us. We never got another dog.

AUNTS & UNCLES & GRANDPARENTS & THEIR DOGS

A year or so after Sandy departed, we traveled up north in the summertime—just my mother and I—on the Greyhound Bus. Roger stayed with Gramma and Grampa leaving my father to his own devices for three weeks. He had to work and couldn’t take time off from his job as a salesman with Kraft Foods. Nor did he really want to.

Our first stop was Oregon. By then, Aunt Tootsie and Uncle Earl had sold their sheep ranch and bought a sprawling house on 10 acres on the Umpqua River outside Winchester.

I’d never seen a river before. Myrtle Creek, yes. And the Pacific Ocean. But not a natural, wild river. And to see one flow along the edge of their sloping lawn mesmerized me. Across the river, trees and more trees crowded to be near the water and wild blackberries grew thick on the banks.

Skipper, the son from Uncle Earl’s first marriage, took me across the river in their small motorboat. He cut the engine to idle and we slowly drifted alongside the bank picking all the black, juicy berries we could find. Wait till we show Aunt Tootsie! Maybe she’ll make a pie! Or we can have them on top of homemade ice cream!

Skip’s dog, Casey, went everywhere with him. He was a small terrier but not too big for me to hold him, which I did every chance I got. Casey rode in the boat with us. And when Skip drove his car, Casey stood on his hindlegs on Skip’s lap and looked out the driver’s side window.

I mostly played by myself—which I was used to—and amused myself by stacking up the inner tubes that were used for floating on the river. I stepped inside the first one, then brought the second one over my head and shoulders and let it drop onto the first one. And continued until I could just barely stretch my arms over the top. This amused my mother so much she took a picture of me: The Girl in the Inner Tubes.

When Skipper was home, I followed him around just like Casey did. He was so handsome. An older man of 19. My first crush. Though I was too young to know what that was. And too young to know there would be more of them to come.

***

My mother and I got on the bus and headed back south to California. Our next stop was Yreka to see two more great-aunts—two more sisters of my grandmother—one in Yreka and one out in the country in nearby Montague.

Aunt Frankie lived in an old wood-frame cottage in the heart of town. The screen door opening onto the covered front porch squeaked every time anyone went in or out. All the double-hung windows— propped open with wood dowels—allowed the hot summer breeze to filter through the rusted screens. Portable fans in nearly every room whirred non-stop. I decided right then I wanted to own an old house just like Aunt Frankie’s when I grew up because I liked it so much more than the new, cookie-cutter tract house we lived in.

Uncle Bruce lay dying of cancer in their bed in the room just off the living room. He was my father’s uncle. My mother’s aunt married my father’s uncle. It was the first time I ever saw a dying person in person. Aunt Frankie, trying to sound cheerful, announced to him we had come to visit. We went to his bedside and he laid there, skeletal, bone-white, whiskered, wheezing, groaning in pain. My mother said a few chatty things as though everything was just fine. He couldn’t talk. He just looked at us, fearful, doomed, knowing there was nothing anyone could do. And then we left the room.

Aunt Frankie’s dog, an old brown Cockapoo she called Mr. Brown, brought relief to the somber mood that pervaded the house. His presence softened the air and clearly comforted Aunt Frankie. He didn’t pay much attention to us but preferred to sit and stare out the screen door. I never heard him bark.

My mother and I slept down the hall in the guest room. Aunt Frankie took the couch in the living room, where she had been sleeping every night to be close to Uncle Bruce. Early the next morning, a loud noise woke me—a mysterious honking sound like someone blowing a tin horn—and then I heard my mother’s muffled laugh. “Don’t worry,” she said. “It’s just Fran farting.”

***

My mother and I left Yreka and went to visit Aunt Jimmie for a few days in Montague. Actually, to her farm outside Montague. At that time, Montague was a one-horse town. One short main street. A few houses scattered in every direction. And the land all around extended unimpeded all the way to the base of Mt. Shasta, its presence impossible to ignore.

Fields of alfalfa surrounded Aunt Jimmie’s white clapboard farmhouse. Close by loomed a massive metal barn with a dry dirt floor and dry squares of alfalfa hay stacked up to the soaring ceiling on one side. A tractor and all sorts of other farming equipment and tools occupied the other side. The barn was church silent. Its dusty, warm dry air smelled secretive yet somehow comforting.

Aunt Jimmie’s husband, Uncle Vic, had died several years before. So did their only child, long, long before that. Drowned when he was just a boy. Eventually they adopted a baby girl, and named her Barbara.

Both Frankie and Jimmie painted, mostly watercolors. Both painted all their long lives, even selling some now and then, here and there, and winning awards from local and regional art shows as well as the Siskiyou County Fair.

Aunt Jimmie liked to take her easel and chair and canvas and paints and brushes out into the flat, endless field of alfalfa and, with her favorite subject ever-present and still, she captured her communion with Mt. Shasta.

Fella, her dog, accompanied her. While she worked away, the black Lab mix would run in the field, chase whatever bird or field mouse he spotted, and then run full speed back to Aunt Jimmie as if she had called him. And then take off again. And he would do that over and over until she packed up and headed back to the house.

Dawdling came naturally to me, and the farm provided several opportunities. Besides the beckoning hay barn, I explored the stretch of dirt road leading from the farm towards the county road that led to town. My mother told me not to go too far, and I didn’t. Just far enough away to feel a solitary freedom of quiet, open space all around me.

A ditch along one side of the road caught water from whenever it rained and from the nearby irrigation pipes. To my delight I discovered a long row of brown hot-dog shaped things on sticks jutting up through tall spikes of grass. I’d never seen anything like them before and immediately got close enough to one to feel how soft yet firm it was. Others had burst open spewing forth cream-colored fluff. Later I would be told these were cattails, a name evoking even more awe.

Aunt Jimmie kept a vegetable garden and grew several fruit trees. The results filled dozens of glass jars she had canned and stored in a walk-in pantry room near the back door. The walls and shelves were glossy white which set off the colorful containers of green beans and plums and beets and green peas and tomato sauce and peaches.

One night we had peas with supper—the peas Aunt Jimmie had grown and picked and shelled and put up. I tried not to stare (my mother always told me it wasn’t nice to stare at people) as she maneuvered a few peas with her fork onto her knife and then delicately ate them off the knife one at a time.