This is my dog, Butch. The cat was Boots. The chickens were eventually Sunday dinner; and I got something besides the back when that dratted ‘ole preacher didn’t come for Sunday dinner. I never did like him. This was at Hollis Robertson’s rental house across the creek at the foot of the mountain, just across the ridge from Con Davis’s. I was Jack (alias: The Lone Ranger, or Lash Larue, or Johnny Mack Brown, or the Cisco Kid, Hopalong Cassidy maybe—but never Roy Rogers or Gene Autry, they sang too much for me). Old Butch would play those games until I wore him out, then he would crawl under the smokehouse and pretend he didn’t know me. He was my pal. He followed me to the road one morning to catch the school bus and tragedy struck a little boy’s heart.
Laura knows what happened from her river of memories, but seems like I tried to carry him home, and there was blood and dirt all over. He was too big. I couldn’t get him home. I have this memory of Mom showing up (could have been Laura) and hugging me, and I was bawling. You all know what bawling is, don’t you? It’s when your insides are shaking and you can’t get a hold of it. Then the snubbing begins. You do know about snubbing, don’t you? Anyway, Dad buried my friend, and the playtimes were difficult for a spell. He’s still around – in fact, he just took a ride in my old canoe on the rivers of my good memories.
Some say if you have one good dog and one good friend you are and have been truly blessed. I’ve been blessed for sure. Con Davis had a son named Connie Gene. He was one year younger than me, so I bossed him around. We played together a lot. He had two cocker spaniels that I despised, so I aggravated them. And the red one bit me. But honey child, I carried two bean shooters most days and I was deadly with them things. I shot more rocks at them dogs, but they still chased me. I think looking back that they enjoyed the game; same with his white-faced bull. The fence ran right beside the road and I would take a red rag and run up and down the fence yelling in my cowboy outfit and homemade wooden pistol (see it in the photo). That bull would paw the ground and come to the fence and walk up and down the fence – usually, by that point, I was moving on, sonny.
I don’t think I was ‘mean’ through and through, just a little mean streak. It was a quarter-mile to the road and a few times I come across there at dusk, and walking beside that fence made the hair stand up on my neck, especially when the old bull was close and I could hear him paw the ground. Hundred-yard dash? I set many records. I went back there awhile back and laid down in the hayfield and looked up at the wide blue sky and wished the old bull or Butch was still around. The old wooden bridge made out of oak logs, where I spent many, many days with a pin hook and sapling and string and a can of worms in a Prince Albert can, was gone.
Replaced with a concrete bridge. I couldn’t hardly look at that cold thing and I’ve been in the concrete business 50 years, seems like. The outhouse was almost gone and the smokehouse where we cured the hog or hogs was gone and the well not used. But the house looked about the same outside and memories flooded in and I just sat down in the woods there and laughed and cried some. Connie Gene got a toy rifle that puffed smoke when you shot it, so I took it away from him. I laughed at that memory because I had to make three trips to the woods before I came back with a switch worthy enough for the crime.
I guess I cried because I miss those long hazy days of summer, a good dog, a good friend to play with and fight with, sisters to aggravate, and I guess just family, when things seemed simple and folk were kind. Life is fast, isn’t it? And we have accumulated all this stuff to take care of, and it has gotten even faster. Yes sir, winter is on the way in more ways than one. But, I reckon, I’ll keep riding my old canoe on the rivers of my memories, until it freezes over. After all, I’m still dreaming…hope you are too. Now, you be blessed this day, you hear me?