MORE ABOUT MOLLY AND DOGS

                                   

I have said several times, “I never met a dog I didn’t like.” I have spent all of my life attached at the hip, to some kind of a dog. As I write this, Molly my Lab, lies curled up on my feet under my desk. Dogs, like humans are emotional wrecks. They crave attention and they love to please you but like humans, they have their whims. No matter what they have in mind to do one minute, the appearance of a squirrel or rabbit in the yard, trumps all of it. They live in the moment and that’s something I wish I did better. We get to wound up sometimes in stuff that isn’t that important.

 Mollie loves to help no matter what the project. Last spring after the ice went out I was putting in the dock and was in the lake with my waders on. I was at the limit for depth with the water about an inch from the top of them, tightening up the dock bolts. Molly was swimming around supervising the whole project when I think she got tired. She swam up behind me intending to rest her paws on my shoulders. Instead she pulled the back of my waders down and in came about forty gallons of ice cold water. I think only dogs could hear, the scream I let out

Last winter I was asleep one night when Molly woke me up whining beside the bed. She usually sleeps out in the other room and I rarely hear from her until morning, I was irritated with her for waking me up and told her to go lie down. But she was insistent and won’t go away. So thinking she had to go outside I got up to open the door. Then I heard this noise in the lower level. Investigating I found my C.O. detector off in the furnace room, behind a closed door.  In my bedroom I was not able to hear it but Molly heard it and she knew something was wrong.

When I was on the fire department we had a house fire in the middle of the night. The fire started in an enclosed back porch, from a space heater that the owner had left to provide some heat for a dog and her newborn puppies. He wasn’t home when the fire stated. After the fire was out the distraught owner wanted us to find the bodies of the dogs so he could take care of them. There were no dogs there, so we expanded our search. Curled in a dry sump basket in the basement we found the dog and her six pups. She had somehow pushed opened two doors and carried her pups to the lowest spot she could find in the house. She was singed from the heat but otherwise they were all okay.

Not a week goes by that I don’t read of some child being abused or worse. I have never to my knowledge known a dog that abused hers or some other dog’s pups. Yet we as humans, have instances of abuse of our children, on a regular basis. Most animals would fight to the death to protect their young. A lot of the child abuse happens when children are left to be cared for by bad people. There is nothing more precious then your own helpless child. Animals know this, why can’t we figure it out? Mark Twain said, “Of all the animals, man, is the only one who inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it.” He also said, “Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, we would stay out and our dogs would go in.”

SO YOU HAD A BAD DAY

                                            

This morning I followed my usual routine and made myself a cup of coffee upon rising. Then I went out to the road to get my newspaper. On the way, I found a small sinkhole in my driveway, so I went back to the garage to get my shovel. I went back to the hole and repaired it and then took the shovel back and put it away. Back in the house, after I had taken my shoes off, I realized I forgot to get my paper. Shoes back on, I went and got my paper but on the way back my dog was sitting by a tree barking so went to see what the ruckus was about. After seeing that it was a porcupine in the tree I set my paper down and went to get the dogs leash and took her back to the house. Took my shoes off and realized my paper was still down by the tree. Shoes back on I went and got my paper and finally made it in the house. Coffee was cold so I put it in the microwave. Went to the bathroom and came back out to the kitchen to get coffee and discovered I had set microwave for ten minutes instead of one minute and coffee all boiled away. Soaked up the mess in the microwave with an old towel and put the towel out on the back porch. Dog followed me out and went back down to the tree with the porcupine. Back in the house to put shoes back on to go get the dog again. When I got back to the tree my dog wasn’t there.  I went back up to the house and the dog was sitting in the porch chewing the coffee out of the towel I set outside. Back inside I made a fresh cup of coffee and set it on the counter. Hit the cup with the back of my hand spilling it all over my newspaper. Went back to bed.

I once observed one of my old uncles sitting in a chair rocking slowly. I noticed he had one red sock and one black sock and asked him if he was aware of it. He just smiled, never looking down, and told me had had a split personality and this morning they couldn’t get together on what color socks to wear. It wasn’t worth the argument he said, “So hence the two different color socks.” Then he winked at me and said, “your day will come.” I got news for you Uncle. I think it’s here.

I once cut a candy bar in half for two of my grandsons. I didn’t quite gauge the halfway mark accurately so one piece was bigger than the other. The older grandchild who was about eight got the bigger piece. The younger one, who was about five then, started crying and asked me if I liked his brother better because he got the bigger piece. I told him it had nothing to do with it and what would he have done if he had to pass out the candy? He told me he would have given his brother the bigger piece and kept the smaller one for himself. I told him “You got the smaller piece so quit crying and eat your damn candy.” Years after that I would tease him about that and he would just smile. But he didn’t forget. A few weeks ago I was at his parents house for a barbecue. The young man is now sixteen and when I asked him to grab me a steak off the grill he came back with a platter of steaks and gave me the smallest one he could find. I looked at the steak-- and then at him standing there smiling and saying nothing—and yes I knew-- it was pay back time.

IT'S THE FIRST DAY OF FALL

Yesterday {Sept.22nd} was the equinox—you know, that day of the year when night and day share the same amount of time. Today is almost a carbon copy of yesterday. However, now there is a difference. They’re not equal anymore. One is longer than the other and it’s not the good one this time. I spent some time on the porch swing today, looking out over the lake. The trees on the shoreline across are changing into their colors of autumn.  There is a south breeze creating little ripples on the lake, and pushing already-fallen leaves across the surface, like tiny sampans in the orient. If you sniff the air, there is a musty smell from the woods, reminiscent of dying vegetation and moldy logs. The dock is out of the water, the boat and the outdoor furniture put away, and now we wait.

It doesn’t seem to have been that long ago when we enjoyed the spring equinox—and we waited for flowers to bloom and grass and leaves to put some color into our gray and white world. Back then, the increasingly longer day, was the good one. Springtime was like showing a film of fall backwards, as the dock and the boat were going into the lake, instead of out. The plants were budding instead of shedding, the flowers were blooming instead of wilting, and my whole attitude was so different because I was excited, instead of subdued. But now its fall and the leaves have become my proxy-colored flowers. Today, I feel like a little kid who’s just been told to go to bed because playtime is over, and all of my friends have gone home.

In the Pacific Ocean, west of Ecuador, lie the Galapagos Islands. One thing that is unique about them is they virtually straddle the equator. They have no change in the hours of daylight—spring or fall; the sun just shines from a different direction. I have often wondered what it would be like to live like that. I guess in the winter I would think it was pretty good, but in the summer, not so much. Because summer here—well, it doesn’t get much better than it is. Summer, as we know it traditionally at the lake, lives between two bookends, as it arrives on Memorial Day, and thumbs its nose at us on Labor Day. Fall, however, is so fickle, so open-ended, never announcing when it’s coming or going. It’s like welcome company that arrives unannounced—leaving us guessing how long it’s going to be around and dreading the ending we know is coming.

So we take the fall days as they come, wishing for more, but knowing each day is one more day that it’s not winter yet. No one seems to understand what makes a summer rain so refreshing, but in fall—well, it’s just unnecessary and sad. Then, one day we wake up and look out the back door and there it is. As soft as a mother’s whisper, it came while we slept, blanketing the earth once more; and now fall has left us just like that. No Labor Day weekend, no ‘cheerio’ or even a goodbye. The gray and white winter world is back and oh, it’s so deathly dark, cold and quiet. Maybe its Mother Nature’s way of telling us, “I’m sorry I had to put the earth to sleep for a while, so why don’t you just take it easy for a time, too.”

For a writer, autumn seems to defy ordinary description, with its tawny grass and shriveled leaves, and all its death and dying. It’s not so much a season, but a transition, that lets us down easy as we slide into winter. No pun intended.

A DAY IN A FIREFIGHTERS LIFE

                                   

           

Most of you know that I am a fiction Author. But what I am about to tell you is not fiction but true and factual. Most of you also know I was a Fire Fighter for the City of Brooklyn Park. What I am about to tell you, happened to me and a man named Bill. (Not his real name.)It probably happens much more then we realize and it really makes no difference where you might be a firefighter. This could happen anywhere.

It was a daytime fire in our city and we were short of manpower at most daytime calls as we were a paid on call department. The call came in as a fire in an apartment building in the southwest corner of the city. The police on the scene were evacuating the building when we arrived, about seven minutes into the call. There was one chief officer on the scene and he told us the fire was in a back apartment, on the ground floor. There was little to no access from the outside. We were told to lay a hose line down the hallway to the unit and attack the fire from the hallway. Bill and I took the only line being used and proceeded in.

From the time we got into the hallway the heavy smoke and heat told us either the door was open or had burned through. Visibility was zero. Unbeknownst to us the walls of the hallway we were crawling down were decorated with wooden cedar shingles. We crawled over halfway to the unit, pulling our hose line with us, when the temperature in the hallway peaked, spontaneously ignited the shingles. Bill and I were in a tunnel of fire. You have two choices here. Turn and get out-- and at this point probably get burned badly on the way out-- or press on and get that water on the root of the fire and cool it down. The fire in the hallway was being fed from the fire in the apartment. It did no good to fight it in the hallway. Long story short. We got to the door and extinguished the fire. Why am I talking about this because it was later that night, when it really sunk in, what could have happened to Bill and I. After the fire was out I got a chance to go back into that hallway. Soggy blackened sheet rock and light fixtures and alarm pull stations melted to the walls. My plastic helmet shield had melted in there and the paint had been burned off Bills air tank on his back. Unknowingly we were seconds away from becoming more fuel for that fire.

I went home that night and my wife was washing dishes when I came in the door. She turned to say something to me and I just took her in my arms and hugged her tight. “My what got into you? ” she said. “I just have a new appreciation for life,” I replied. “Where’s the kids, lets go out to supper.” I sat in that restaurant with my family and thanked God for giving them to me and letting me be there with them, safe and sound. I never told my wife about the fire. If I had, I would have been resigning the next day, because she would have made me do it.

I wrote this because a while back I woke up at two in the morning and I was back in that hallway--in the midst of a bad dream. Although we never talked about it, I’m sure Bill feels the same way as I did about that day. From the outside, it wasn’t really that bad of a fire when it was all over and barely made the news.

It’s fire prevention week this week. Do what you can to keep fires from starting in the first place and if you know a firefighter. Say thanks.