Writing for Sanity's Sake

Of all the qualities which set human beings apart from the rest of humanity, there is our voice.  It was this means of communication which allowed us to move beyond other species and become social animals.

Our voice allowed our ancestors to pass on instructions on how to do critical things to survive.  We began to live less off of instinct and more off of experiences passed down from generation to generation.  Language came long, long before the ability to write and so most knowledge was passed down by oral tradition.  Since early man tended to live in familial situations, with tight family ties, language probably varied a lot, and then as families stretched out and became tribes the group adopted the most useable language form available to communicate within the entire group.

But, the anthropological aspect is not where I want to concentrate.  It’s the spiritual and mystical aspect of the voice to which I wish to “speak”

I’ve had so many wonderful and unique voices which have inhabited the echoes of my mind.  My Dad’s laugh…I can never get it far from my immediate memory.  He laughed a lot and at a lot of things.  He gave me a lot of advice with that voice.  I took some of it, and some I wish I had taken.  His voice was stilled in 2010.

My Grandfather Jervis’s voice.  My voice is a mixture of his voice and my Dad’s, leaning more heavily towards his.  He could sing from bass to tenor and I inherited a bit of that.  I used to sit around in his living room and listen to him sing his “scales”  “Do..do..do……do, ray, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do..do..do..”  I got up in front of the congregation where my Grandpa was song leader when I was four years old and waved my hands around like I was conducting the choir.  Nobody laughed or made fun of me.  I was really proud of myself and I remember it so well.  My Grandfather’s voice was stilled in 1991.

My Mom and my Grandmother had similar voices…and they were both worriers.  I asked my Grandmother on her 100^th birthday what she would have done different if she could go back and go it all over again.  She simply said “I’d worry about things less, because all the worrying I did never changed nothing” Her voice was stilled in late 1999.  I still dream of her quite often, most of the time in the kitchen.  She’s always telling me:  “I wouldn’t worry about that, Honey” she’ll say.  I still worry…I guess I can’t help it, I get it from her and Mom.  My dear Momma….she would always say “I love you” and too many times, “I’m sorry” for things which really were not her fault, not anybody’s fault, just fate and fate alone.  Mom’s voice was also stilled in 2010.

In late 1999, I was really scared.  The specialist had found a lump on my vocal cords and he was pretty sure it was cancer.  I went into surgery wondering if I would come out with a voice…..would I come out with a hole in my throat and no voice.  Turned out it was a big lump of scar tissue.  I came out with my vocal cords, but it took a year a rehabilitation to even get back to regular talking, much less singing.  I have had to be very careful since then.  Some days are good, some days not so good.  At least I still have that mechanism of communication to use with my family, my friends… (Although sometimes I bet they wish I would shut up!)

My voice will be stilled one day, as have been the voices of all human beings who ever lived.  I hope I have used it correctly…will use it better, and maybe there will be some memorable phrase “hanging in the air” for someone to remember me by.

I feel like summer is just around the corner. As the calendar starts to near the end of March, I always start to look for it, start to feel it in my bones. Maybe it’s because the days start getting a little longer and a little warmer. Maybe it’s because they start talking about the Baseball trades that are happening on the sports reports. Opening Day is just a few days away! I feel the butterflies start to swim around in my stomach.

I tell you, spring and summer were the best times back in the 50’s and 60s’. None of that year round school for us old timers! May 31 rolled around, and it’s see ya’ later to the teachers until the first week of September….Yahooo!!

I would go to the old wooden toy box back in my room, and starting digging down to the bottom, looking for my old worn out, smelly leather baseball glove with “Pee Wee” Reece’s name engraved in it. I don’t know how I ended up with Pee Wee, as I never played a lick of ball in the infield. I was always an outfielder.

I tried out for third base once, but after I had stopped the first four hard bouncer’s that came my way with my face instead of my glove, the coach thought it might be safer to put me in left field. I agree with his decision.

I liked left field. It was one of those positions where you could kind of day dream a little. Most everything that came out that way was either an easy pop fly, or a one bouncer. I was a cinch at catching those. None of that “hot corner” stuff for me.

I once was standing out in left field during a game and looking down at the ground trying to spot any four leaf clovers that might be growing there. I heard the loud crack of the bat, and looked up to see the baseball headed over my head. Way over my head. I didn’t want to look completely stupid, so I turned around and stuck my old glove out and ran as fast as I could towards the fence. The ball dropped right into the webbing of my glove. I never saw it until it did. I heard a cheer go up from the stands, and when we came in, I got more pats on the back, and Atta boys then I had ever gotten before. I just said “I had it all the way”

I could never bring myself to disappoint all those people by telling them it was just pure luck.  As my old golf coach once said, “I’d rather be lucky than good any day”  I totally agree.

I was walking along today with my hands in my pocket like I sometimes do, and noticed some things in there that I couldn’t tell what they were by the feel.  So, I came up to my desk and unloaded my pockets.  I had the following things in there:

A cutting glove and a carpet knife.  An ink pen, my keys, my Swiss Army knife, a small bottle of nitroglycerin, a pill  bottle with some aspirin in it, four receipts for different things, a set of nail clippers, a money clip (no money, just a clip) a Quartz crystal, $2.75 in change and one sheet metal screw.

And they say women have a lot of things in their purses!  It’s no wonder I am 10 pounds lighter when I am not wearing any clothes.  (ok…quit that…)

I remember the strangest thing I ever had in my pocket was when I was about 8 or 9 years old, I went fishing with my Dad.  I was down the bank of the river a little bit from where he was and I caught a little bream about 3 inches long.  I hollered at Daddy, and he told me to throw it back in that it was too little to keep and put on the stringer.  Well, since it was the only fish I had caught that day I was a little jealous so I put it in the pocket of my Jeans instead.  I forgot about it.

A day or so later the laundry started to stink.  My Mom was obsessed with keeping our clothes washed thank goodness or it could have been worse.  When she put her hand down in my blue jeans, I heard her yell, even though I was out in the front yard.  Thank goodness my Dad had a sense of humor about it.  He only pretended to get onto me, winking at me and grinning the whole time!

I almost ran over a dog this morning on the way to the store.  The old boy just ran right out in front of me, and if I still didn’t have some of the fast reflexes that I was blessed with in my younger years, he would have been a goner.  I’m glad I missed him.

It got me to thinking, of all things, about Dogs.  They are certainly the creature that is the closest to humans.  Now I know all you Cat people are going to holler at me.  Cats can be good pets too, but they are of an independent and for the most part aloof nature.  They seem to act like they are the ones that own the human instead of vice versa.  Dog’s on the other hand, with the exception of a few breeds, and some few individual dogs, are without doubt “Mans (and Women’s) best friend”

The first dog I can remember having was a Collie-German Shepherd mix breed that I named Bullet.  Old Bullet, as any of you know who have been reading my stuff for a while, was a faithful friend to ME, but didn’t particularly care for the thieving neighbor kids who constantly stole my toys, and threw them up under their house.  Anytime he would catch them in our yard, he would nip at them all the way back to the boundary of their yard, and then stop and let them go on to their house.  He saved me from going out into the road and getting myself in mortal danger by grabbing the seat of my pants and pulling me back into the yard.  I spend many hours on the back steps, just throwing sticks, and balls, and any other thing I could get my hands on and letting him grab them and tote them back to me.  Somebody poisoned old Bullet, and he died a painful death.  He didn’t deserve that, no animal does.

We didn’t get another dog until we moved away from that neighborhood, and those particular neighbors.  The second dog I can remember having was a mix blood Cocker Spaniel and Bird dog, with long white curly hair.  Naturally, his name was “Whitey” (see how cunning our young minds are?)  Whitey was a great dog too.  He loved us kids and my folks so much, he could hardly stand himself.  Anytime any of use was outside, he was right up next to us like….well…fleas on a dog, so to speak.  He loved ALL kids, including the neighbor kids, and would run through piles of leaves with us in the fall of the year, and wallow around in them just like he knew we were all having fun.  And, I guess he was.  He developed a bad habit though, of running after my Dad every time he would get in the car and drive off.  I guess he was sort of trying to stop him from going anywhere, because he wanted him to stay and play!  Who knows how dogs think?  Dad had already hit him a couple of times with the car, because he would just run right up under the front of it.  One day he came back almost right after he left the house, and old Whitey was piled in the floorboard of the back seat of the car.  He was all bloody and whimpering.  He had got up under one of the wheels of the car, and had gotten it bad.  We took him out next to the dog house, and I patted his head.  He whimpered a couple of more times, and licked my hand once, and then he was gone.  We buried him up in the woods just past the cemetery that was right next to our house.

Now Dad got into hunting and bought three Beagles.  Lady, King and Husky.  They were NOT very good pets.  They had to be penned up all the time because they were already adult dogs when he got them, and they had been trained to run rabbits.  There is NO power in the world that is going to stop a Beagle from running a rabbit once he learns how to do it, and these three were no exception.  Dad would take them up above the cemetery, where the woods were, and just turn them out of the car and let them smell around until they caught the trail and then it was off to the races!!  Those dogs would get after that rabbit, or more than one rabbit and would run them until the rabbit backtracked towards where we were.  That was their job, to bring them back by, so that Dad had a shot at them with the gun.  One day they got after a particularly FAST rabbit.  They ran it for a couple of hours, and Lady and Husky dropped out and just sat down next to Dad and listened to King out there still baying and howling and running that long legged buck rabbit.  Finally, he got the rabbit to run by Dad, after about three hours of chasing him.  Dad missed him.  King walked over to where we were, took one look up at Dad, and collapsed in a heap.  We thought he was dead!  It took a bucket full of water, both pouring it ON him and in him to bring him back around.  Old King never had much of an interest in chasing rabbits after that, and Dad had gotten kind of tired of standing around and listening to dog’s bark, so he sold them.  I can’t say I was totally sorry to see them go.  They were just NOT very affectionate.

After that, I don’t guess we really had many memorable dogs, until we moved again, back up to “Hot Town” We got a couple of puppies from a litter that my Uncle “Pinky” had raised.  I named one of them Lobo, after the TV dog.  This was along about the time I was a Junior in High School, and I was interested in a lot of other things besides my dog.  I did keep him fed, and remembered to pet him now and then, but didn’t really go much beyond that.  He was a faithful sort, and hung around the house for the most part.  He was part Husky or something though, and he hated other dogs as much as he loved people.  Just let another dog, of any kind or size walk across his territory, and there was going to be a fight!  Dad kept a bucket of water at the back steps to throw on tumbling mass of teeth and claws that sometimes developed in our back yard.  That dog got hurt so badly sometimes during these fights that I was certain he was going to die.  I used up bottles and bottles of Hydrogen Peroxide cleaning out his nasty wounds.  He always seemed to survive though, and would just add another scar to his bruised up old body.  He was so tough that he was still kicking around after I had gone off to College and gotten married after my Freshman year.  My new wife was amazed at the near gangrenous wounds he would develop that I liberally poured the peroxide onto.  One day when he was about ten years old, he got into it with a big old dog that was part Pit bull.  (Now I know it sounds cruel, but my folks NEVER believed in “house” dogs until much later on in their lives…so please don’t think we were mean, we just didn’t know any better at the time!) The big dog was young and strong, but Lobo had the experience on him, and after a few minutes of tumbling around, with me chasing them with a bucket of water and missing, he ran the big dog out of his yard.  He really got the worse of it this time though.  I cleaned him up and treated him the same as always, even giving him a penicillin pill.  He was too hurt to recover this time though, because of his age.  Lobo, the dog with nine lives, had finally met his match.

My wife and I moved off to Athens Ga., and took up residence there while I was going to school.  We decided we wanted a dog, and so we bought what would be the first in a LONG line of family pets.  This one was a Border Collie; we named “Lady”   We lived out in the “country” in a little brick rental house that had a well, and a little brick well house to protect the well.   The person we rented from didn’t allow dogs in the house, so we had to make the “well house” our dog’s home.  We also had an assortment of other pets, fish, and a gerbil.  The gerbil was an escape artist who got loose from his cage and chewed his way OUT of the house and IN to the well house.  He became a fixture there, as you would see him dart around the well house at times.  I didn’t like the little bugger anyway, because he had bit me, so I wasn’t about to make a major effort out of catching him.  The dog, Lady, was a sweet little dog, but as happens with nature and with kids of barely 19 years old who don’t know what they are doing she ended up with a litter of puppies, (beautiful little fur balls if I remember correctly and I think we ended up keeping a couple of them for a while.  My wife could remember, but I sure can’t, it’s been too long ago) I think we ended up giving poor Lady away when we moved (again) to another place on the other side of town.

We ended up somehow with a Black and Tan Dachshund named “Fritzie” I think we bought him from some women who was moving to Florida somewhere.  As it ended up, she may have been moving away to get away from Fritzes’ smell!!  That’s right, he was one more stinky little wienie dog.  You could give him a bath one night, and by the next afternoon he had the strongest musty “boy dog” odor you ever smelled.  My wife and I conspired, and we gave him to my folks, who were after all without a dog since Lobo had died.  He was the first dog they ever attempted to keep in the house, since the lady who had given him to us had told us he was an “inside” dog.  After about a week though, my Dad walled off the brick patio he had built just outside the Kitchen window and it became Fritzes’ new home.  My Dad would get out there every day that the weather was nice, and hose that dog down with a hose and soap.  The next day he would smell so loud that the cats even stayed out of the neighborhood.  We tried everything, but to no avail.  I think Dad finally ended up giving him away to some really old folks, who loved him to death.  I think their sense of smell had abandoned them.  Either that or they were really lonely.

My wife had a pet Weimaurauner when she was a kid, and so when her brother, who also lived in Athens got a pair, well…we ended up with the somehow.  I don’t remember the exact circumstance, but “Misty and Abend” the silver slobbering hounds, came to live with us.  It wasn’t very long until they were ushered to my folk’s house again.  (Yes, my poor folks, while I am writing this I remember why we now take them out to eat and to their Drs., etc.  they were surely long suffering, especially when it came to taking OUR cast off pets!) My Dad kind of liked these two huge, slobbering girls, and built them a chicken wire fence on one side of the house for a pen, and got them a HUGE dog house.  The only thing about this breed of dog is that THEY CAN JUMP.  These two would jump OUT of the pen and start chasing anything that moved.  I think they were bred to chase stags in Germany, and of course since there are not too many stags in Georgia, they substituted anything they could find.  Rabbits, squirrels, other dogs, kids.  My Dad tried his best to keep them in that pen.  He got taller wire, and they still jumped over it.  He beat the tar nation out of them when he caught them jumping out.  It didn’t work, they were too stupid.  (or…too smart and just tough)  Finally, he gave THEM away to some folks who lived WAY back out in the country.  They guy who ended up getting them told my Dad that those two dogs ran deer to the ground!  Guess that’s what they always were looking for, but couldn’t find around town.

Of course, the best pet that my wife and I had all this time was a CAT.   That’s right, a cat.  His name was Hector, and we had gotten him for a “Wedding present” from one of our cat obsessed friends.  He was a big black fella’ with little white “booties” (booties…guys…booties…) on his feet.  I ended up becoming very fond of him over the five or so years we owned him.  He was actually more like a dog.

He was an “ambler” he never moved fast unless he had too.  He especially never moved fast when you wanted him to come somewhere.  But, when you started to catch him to put him in the car for the 3 hour ride home to visit the folks THEN he moved fast.  One of the memories that stand out the most in my mind about old Hector was on one of our frequent trips from Athens to Trion.  Hector usually slept most of the trip, but this time he was agitated.  I knew what was wrong, and was hurrying every chance I got to get him where we were going.  I knew it was in vain, when I looked in the rear view mirror and saw old Hector doing the #2 right up in the back window.  The people who were riding along behind us at the time were laughing so hard, they probably had to go to the hospital to get their busted gut sewn up!

Another time, we had to stop and get a tire changed that was about to go flat.  My wife was holding old Hector in her arms and he was being pretty patient about things.  All at once “Goober” Pyle who was changing the tire unhooked the connector between two air hoses, and it sounded like an air grenade had gone off.  Hector put two sets of claw marks in my wife’s shoulders and headed for some pine trees out behind the station.  It took us a couple of hours to coax him down out of those trees.  I won’t tell you into what part of “Goober’s” anatomy I wanted to put that air hose..But you know!

Yeah, old Hector.  He was usually pretty wary, but you couldn’t keep him inside.  He loved the outdoors, and would just stand there for long periods of time in the spring and sniff pine trees, and then wallow in the pine needles.  I don’t think he ever even had a flea!  He was crossing South Pond street in Toccoa, Ga., and didn’t make in time past on of the speeding motorists who used to come tearing down that street like it was a NASCAR racetrack.  I found him in the road.  I didn’t want to bury him in the town where he had gotten killed, and knowing how he loved the outdoors, I took him as far out Warwomen road in Rabun County as I could go on the dirt road, and buried him in a grove of Mountain Laurel.  Every once in a while his spirit ambles by and says ‘thank ya.’

After that, we had a succession of pets too numerous too mention.  Some cats, a whole BUNCH of tropical fish.  Guinea Pigs.  Boy did we have them.

That episode started out right after Paula and I got married.  She had a Guinea Pig named Schroeder, after Charlie Brown’s friend in the comic strip.  He was a little old guy the first time I say him.  He grew though.  He was fed well, and boy did he grow.  Well, we had Hector, or course and Hector and Schroeder didn’t get along too well….so, we took Schroeder up to my Dad and Mom’s house.  (You wouldn’t have guessed would you?)  Now my Dad kind of liked old Schroeder.  He built him a wooden pen up above the ground, and put tons of cedar shavings in it for Schroeder into.  Schroeder loved it.  He got about as big as a guinea pig can get.  He also started making these strange ‘brrrrr’ing noises.  We didn’t know what they meant, and we thought he was kind of lonely, so we

got another guinea pig, so he would have a friend.  We thought, what the heck.  Well, the new resident of the “pig pen” turned out to be a girl, and we then were able to finally figure out what Schroeder was “brrr’ing” about.  It wasn’t but a few weeks until there were about 8 little guinea pigs running around in the pen!  Far from being upset, my Dad thought it was a great idea.  We could sell the little ones back to the pet stores, and make some money off of them.  And so we did for a while.  The only problem was that Schroeder was a VERY potent little rascal AND we never really could tell girls from boys when they were little.  Plus, they burrowed down into those damn cedar chips and we could never find all of them.  My Dad ended up with so many guinea pigs that the Pet stores started hanging up the “Closed” sign when they saw him coming.  After a couple of years of  attempting “rodent” birth control, he finally called it quits, and sold off the entire herd.  Another pet experiment that ended up not turning out quite like we had imagined.

Kind of got off the subject of dogs there didn’t I?

Amway, our oldest living daughter was born in 1972, and from there son #1 in 1975, and son #2 in 1980.  Again, with kid’s come pets, and we had a plethora of them.  Mostly we had CATS!  I can’t remember all their names,  help me out here anyone who does!  There was the crazy Siamese cat from hell, who ran from under one bed to another and crapped all over the place.  He didn’t last long.  There was one particularly beautiful dark furred cat, that my daughter named “Menudo” after the Latin singing group.  He was so meek and mild you never knew he was there really.  He ate like a pig though, and grew really fast.  One day he started having ‘fainting’ symptoms, and we couldn’t figure out what was going on with him.  This happened to him over a period of a couple of weeks or so.  I was on the verge of breaking down and taking him to a Vet, when by chance I tried running my hand between his collar and his neck.  He had grown SO fast that the collar was cutting off his air, and probably his circulation too!  I felt so bad about it, I couldn’t stand it.  Of course we immediately remedied that situation, but Menudo never really seemed too smart after that.  He would be walking along, and just run into the wall for no reason.  Believe me, after that I have always checked collars, especially on really furry fast growing critters!  We had another cat that just arrived back home one day after being gone for a little while and had NO tail.  He was acting just as normal as could be, but his big long beautiful tail that he had when had left that morning was GONE.   This one DID mandate a trip to the Vet, who sewed up the cat’s rear end, and told us he would probably get along ok, but might have balance problems.  I don’t think he ever really did, that I can remember though.

We missed having a dog, and I tried to get one for the kids.  We bought a little brown Doxie who was a darling little dog, and named it Frisbee.  Since we still were not able to keep our pets in the house during the day, we penned little Frisbee out in the side yard.  She was a sweet little dog, and we really enjoyed having her.  She was also an escape artist. (as most doxies are)  and kept getting out.  Also, she was a barker, and our neighbors on that side didn’t appreciate her very much.   I don’t guess I can blame them really, but they were not too sympathetic at the time.  After Frisbee had a near miss with a car, (since we lived on 9^th street, which was the main thoroughfare for people coming in to the Mill to work)  we found her a home with one of my daughter’s friend’s Grandmother.  The Grandmother loved the dog, and the dog loved her, so that one turned out like a fairy tale.

I guess the dog that we owned the longest when my kids were growing up was “Scruffy”  I used to haul off the trash sometimes to a local dump, and one day while I was there, this little white, dirty mound starting moving towards me.  It turned out to be a dog.  I couldn’t bear to leave here there, so I picked her up, and took her back home.  “What is that”  asked my wife.  “I think it’s a dog”  say I.  After washing her for what seemed like hours, it turned out that she was a miniature Poodle!  I don’t know WHAT she was doing at the dump.  Once she was clean, she pranced around the house like a proud veteran on parade.  We decided we would try to keep her inside and housebreak her.  Unfortunately, she had other ideas.  She wouldn’t go when we took her out, only when she came back in.  She also had the knack of being like Charlie Brown’s OTHER friend “Pig Pen” who could walk out of the house perfectly clean, and have dirt attack him!  Scruffy was unfortunately like that.  She was NOT however a wanderer.  She stuck right to the back porch, only leaving it to go to the bathroom or to explore the backyard a little.  She was really a perfect little dog.  I regret I never really took care of her as well as I should have.  I tried at first, giving her regular baths once a week or so, but within a day’s time, it looked like she had rolled in a mile of cow manure.  A dirt magnet, and she didn’t really seem to mind.  As we get old, we get wiser and I would never have let her get as matted as she sometimes did.  Mind you, she never got neglected and always had a warm place to sleep and plenty to eat.  We had her for about 10 years or so, and I really think she was about three years old when I found her.  She was suffering from arthritis I think, and was weak and could hardly move around, so we had to have her put to sleep.  I watched her eyes as she left, and it was really one of the saddest things I ever had to go through.  My oldest son and I buried her out in the back yard as far away from where the UPS trucks, and Post office trucks ran, as possible.

Oh…the UPS trucks…?? She HATED them and the Post Office trucks.  I think one of the Postmen must have sprayed her one day, just to be mean and from that point on, that little dog would have conniptions when one of those guys would come by.  She got so bent out of shape about them when she was older, that I thought she would have a heart attack and die.  I truly believe she would have eaten them from the ankles up if she could have gotten hold of them.  Never a mean bone in her little body for anyone else, but if you were a delivery person, WATCH OUT!  Good old Scruffy!

Our kid’s have been grown and gone now for a while, and a couple of years ago, Paula decided to go look at Doxie’s again.  We got carried away and brought three of them home!  This time, my oldest son, Ted and his daughter Autumn had gone with us.  I think they “helped” in the decision to bring home a whole crew.  We were thinking about “breeding” them.  Hah!

There was a boy and two girls, and the first time we started to feed them it became apparent that there was going to be problems.  The little boy dog fought the other two off like pit bull over the food.  We immediately began to wonder about the three dog decision.  My daughter, Kirsten bailed us out a little as I cajoled her into taking the little boy dog.  (wasn’t really much cajoling, I think she wanted him)  He was promptly named “Puck” and is about as well natured a little dog as you will find.  I think his family and he both are happy he is there.

As for the two girls, we named them “Fiona” and the little runt who is a “piebald” or Brown and white color, we named “Hoosier”  You can see her picture on my wife’s space.  Interestingly, the lady who we bought her from at first told us we couldn’t afford her, because she was so rare of a color in Daschunds.  But, as it turned out when we were making our final decision, the lady found that she had “Hoosies” papers messed up and didn’t have the right Father down.  We ended up getting her for less because the lady didn’t know who her Daddy was.  Thus the name “Who’s Your Daddy”  became “Hoosier” for short.

We learned about crate training, and at our “advanced” age now, also became more consistent about house training.  We even got a bell, and have trained Hoosi to ring the bell when she has to go out.  Honest, it works!  She is as much a part of our family now as one of the kids!  (sorry guys, but you know I love ya’!)  She gets the tummy rubs, the regular baths, the special treats, and her own chair between my computer and Paula’s.  She knows she is a pampered little lap dog!  I guess it’s an evolutionary process that we have gone through from all those years ago up til now.  And some people say wisdom doesn’t come with age!  Some of it does anyway.

In any case to all you pets that have come and gone, and still remain….thanks for the memories!!