[net-gold] Bulldog Ugly
- From: "David P. Dillard" <jwne@xxxxxxxxxx>
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- Date: Sun, 29 Aug 2010 18:14:37 -0400 (EDT)
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Date: Sun, 29 Aug 2010 12:09:02 -0400
From: Ears <globalear@xxxxxxxxx>
Reply-To: Net-Gold@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To: net-gold@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [Net-Gold] Bulldog Ugly
Bulldog Ugly
Andover Days
Andover, Maine
August, 2010
Dwight Hines
It?s only a few days after you had
to hold your old dog down, a dog that had
been around for over 11 years, so the
vet could inject him with a lethal
shot of some simple salt because the
old dog was in near constant arthritic
pain and was having trouble with discerning
threat from no-threat, biting an
old lady who he knew, right in her face.
An old dog that you could talk to
and he would laugh when you told him you
were writing a book titled Dog
Recipes and would target market it to
those people who lived next to dogs
that barked at all the wrong times.
The book would emphasize oriental
recipes, Vietnam, Korean, Chinese,
with a few Native American dishes that
were highly apocryphal because the drunk
Indian who told you the recipes
often left out flour or corn meal when
he made bread. These swirling
memories are going back and forth, mostly
left to right, like the scenes
were being read, not painted or sculpted
when you take off to go to Andover
Days in Andover, Maine, a place made
special because it was the place good
friends went to when they had to Untook
from when We Took to the Woods, a
book that should be required re-reading
of all persons, period, especially
those applying for citizenship in the USA.
Andover was busy, good high energy
levels, not like the blueberry festival
in Wilton, the week before, flat, with
too many trinket vendors ? maybe 7
times more trinket gypsies, supporting
China, than blueberry grammas proudly
collecting pennies and nickels in the
irregular jar for her grandson?s
college costs, with Gramma enveloped
with magic, visible in four color tasty
aromas. Andover was different, deeper
because, maybe, they were closer to
the Mooses who grow antlers at a rate
almost as fast as bamboo shoots grow,
but with no spread eagle white men above
the antlers, like were put above
the fast growing bamboo, bamboo shoots
they watched grow from ground level
up into their chests until they died
their thousandth death, a large price
to pay for pissing off an old Indian
Chief.
Sitting in the geological, social,
and historical middle of Andover under
blue veined sky, at a picnic table
that had no memory of the last time it
was painted, and yearned when you sat
on it to be fed some more quick
melting ice cream, I looked up from
my hotdog with mustard, relish and
onions and about five feet from me,
at eye level because I was sitting down
and the bulldog was standing tall and
ugly, when it hit me that bulldogs are
truly ugly. Like he ran head long at
high speed into a brick wall and his
face got smushed ? pushing his nose
and mouth all level on the same plane
with his eyes and ears. Just a flat
face, an ugly flat face on a
two-dimensional plane: ugly and
blank-eyed. You check out the owner,
a frail, blonde, ageless girl, with legs
too thin to make fun of if you had
been in high school with her, a body
that whispered Dachau Debby, and showed
for sure that a dog and its owner did
not have to look alike, not at all.
I ain?t gonna get a dog that?s bulldog ugly.
It?s bad enough that I had a dog, years
ago, who was Labrador numb. What people
say about these things is that the owner
of a dog starts to look like his or her
pet the longer they are together. Oh my,
what if they don?t look like each other, but
gravitate to the same intelligence or
emotional level. It?s hard thinking
like this because there are voices,
rational voices, right in the house
where old dog lived his last few years,
who think a dog would be good to have again
if for no other reason than to catch the
damned mice who celebrated his death by
making the dark area under the kitchen stove
a nightly party stop the day after old dog
was killed.
Andover is good for other reasons, not
just the history museum, or the car
held together by license plates from
all states and D.C., or the people who
have a booth in the far back of the yard
next to the church, a yard all full
of people sitting on the grassy stain-happy
grass eating French fries off of sagging
mammoth paper plates. Andover is good
because the lines to get French fries are
so long it is best to spend the time getting
your mind off the French fries by looking at
the free maps, good color and perfect
description maps, given out by the people who
have set aside thousands of acres for you to
toodle around in by bicycle or kayak of foot
or truck or car or ATV or snowmobile or
horseshoes that take you more than 100 miles
through God?s Wife?s country. Looking at
the maps and the pictures, good clear
pictures, makes you drool more than the
French fries do, French fries that are shades
too white because the young cooks sacrifice
brown to speed to serve more people, to make
more money.
The free map and the suggestions and tips
and phone numbers you get in the booth way
in the back, against the back line of the
church yard, is eliminates the weight of a
summer of rainy days and a winter of frostbite
winds, because with the map and inside your
cottage, your cabin, your mind and body can
go down each of those trails and see birds
and deer and mooses, and maybe sight sasquatch
hollering at Paul Bunyan, who is shaking his
head sadly at the women who run around the pond
with their high breed dogs telling their
children how unhappy they are because they have
been on vacation here at the pond for a week and
she has not been able to do a single thing for
herself. And the sad sad looks on the faces
of the two children when they see that you heard
what she said so their shame is not private, and
so they now run-walk with a Catholic load of
public guilt about how they mistreated their
momma.
There are too many dog women in the world, women
who have dogs and take them for walks and runs
and let everyone know how miserable they are
while doing this chore, this beneath them act,
this responsibility of keeping their dog healthy.
The men rarely take the dogs, and when they do,
they are almost as purposeful as the women who
are doing a duty that has no pleasure for him or
her, but by God they do the duty, even if it?s
on a main road with fast cars and dangerous
blind spots. The dog women must be the most
important people I've ever seen because they walk
or run with the dog as if their next stop is the
gleaming architectural sharp corners and
reflective glass windows University Center
Institute Hospital where the important woman,
or the important man, will perform brain surgery
on a President or at least a Prime Minister of a
developing country, a country that has the only
known deposits of dutium importantium, the
miracle metal that is replacing plastic so our
landfills will shrink and then disappear,
swallowed whole by recycling innovations.
.
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- » [net-gold] Bulldog Ugly - David P. Dillard
