“Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you
would stay out and your dog would go in.”
- Mark Twain
The yellow 1967 yellow Ford Econoline pickup truck, sat in
the parking lot at the YMCA.
It shone brightly in the morning sun as if to say, “Hey,
you…do I look familiar?”
As the guy got out of the truck, I said, “I used to drive
one of those, but it was an OD (Olive Drab) green military van.”
He smiled and said, “I’d sell her if I could! Are you
interested?”
I returned an “I don’t think so" grin, but nonetheless had
fond memories of a bygone era when bumping and shaking along country roads of
rural Alabama to the smell of fresh growing peanuts, corn, an anticipation of
watermelon season, and the more than faint odor of motor oil burning from an
engine that sat between the front seats.
If you had a military license in those days, it was almost a rite of
passage!
You want to wake up your taste buds and satisfy your soul?
Put a watermelon or two in the refrigerator, give them a day to chill and then
eat your and their hearts out! There is little on a hot and humid Southern
Alabama day that calms the angry beast, more than ice-cold watermelon!
Memory is a funny thing.
As the sharp edges soften with the river of time, the feelings they
generated don’t. In fact, in some ways
they seem to intensify, and I can say with authoritative assurance that the
memory of cold watermelon on a hot summer’s day is richer than the sweet lips
of the first girl ever I kissed!
Fort Rucker, Alabama…
It was 1970, and even though this vehicle
had more than six-figures worth of ‘military abusive driving mileage’ under its
belt, there was still a little life in it.
The shocks were so bad, and the seats so well worn, that every bump and
rough spot in the road could be felt as it made its daily runs to our radar
site in Headland, Alabama.
This van had a standard transmission and required a practiced
touch to make it shift smoothly. “Shift
smoothly…” might be an over exaggeration, but anyone who has military van
driving experience, knows exactly what I mean!
The engine was in the center of the vehicle between the
driver and front seat passenger and was covered with an insulated metal shell
that was supposed to dampen the sound and keep the heat from filling the
van. The center console engine might not
have had the greatest admiration from mechanics, but you could put almost
anything on that thing from notebooks to take out lunch for the driver and
passengers – front and back.
Yes indeed, driving or riding in that thing was an
experience not to be lost to the foggy back roads of memory.
The memory two-edged…
The puppy lay softly whimpering, on the center console this
cool spring morning, as I headed to the veterinarian’s office in town…the engine
warming his little body…my heart in my throat.
“I am so sorry,” I said as this little creature looked up at
me.
It had been a valiant effort. Jim had wanted to kill the pup
as soon as he realized there was a problem.
“No,” I said. I had
been going over every morning to play with it in the two months since
it's birth.
“I’ll take him to the Vet in town and get him taken care
of.” I said. “I’ll take care of the
bills.”
“Suit yo self,” Jim said.
“Ain’t nothin' no vet gonna do for the mange. That pup done already been
dead!”
Radar neighbor across
the road…
Jim was a day laborer on the outskirts of Headland, Alabama,
working just for wages with stock in the land or its crops. He was in his late 70s and lived in a single
room house with his wife Anna across the road from the radar site where I
worked.
Sometimes in the late afternoons when we waited for the night
flight helicopters to come and practice radar approaches to our ‘cow pasture
runway,’ I would head over to Jim’s and sit on his tiny porch, where he would
tell me stories about what it was like live in the segregated South.
“Anna would be walkin’ back from town, and sometimes those
white boys would throw bottles at her…call her names.”
"One night, back in ‘42, the Klan come in the middle of the
night and took one of my boys,” he said.
“They didn’t kill him, but they hurt him bad.”
The puppy…
Jim and Anna had a female mongrel dog, who had a litter that
year. It took too much to care for them,
and he said he gave some away to his boys.
I think he drowned them…. but he let me have one with the promise I
would feed it and take care of it.
“This puppy does have the mange,” said the Veterinarian,
confirming Jim’s diagnosis.
“We can try to treat the skin lesions, but this kind is a
problem and the treatment may not help.”
“Is there a chance?” I said.
“Slim,” he replied
“Let’s try,” I said, and we did.
After a month when I took the pup in, the Vet said, “Treatment’s
not working. It’s time.”
“Give one more day?” I asked
“Yeah,” he replied
I spent the rest of the day with that little thing and the next
morning, before taking him in. I played with him, rubbed his belly, talked as
sweet as I knew how and fed him good.
Only one of us knew this would be our last time, and this
would be his last meal. I tried to slow
the time down – tried to make it stop…but couldn’t do it, and here we were on
the “…last ride.”
The vet asked me if I wanted to stay, or wanted the
body. I told him I couldn’t bear to stay and could he take care of the body.
I nuzzled that puppy, said good bye, walked out to
that OD green van and cried all the way back to the radar site.
Here and now...
My mind jumped back in that instant from that OD green…to
the bright yellow Econoline in the parking lot.
The fella said, “I’d sell
her if I could! Are you interested?
I returned an “I don’t think so grin,” and headed into the
YMCA for my morning workout, and the lightening memory of a little pup that had
touched my heart so many years ago…
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