The year was 1960, and I looked upon Miss McKee’s ninth grade English class as a big waste of time. Even though I sat near the front of the classroom, I just couldn’t write the spelling down letter for letter that she was writing on the blackboard. Who was going to use all those characters for mythology anyway? My spelling was so bad; she told me my parents should take me to an eye doctor (I’d try the more technical name, but I’d probably misspell it still today) to have my eyes checked. Although not betting the ranch on it, she was sure I needed glasses. By the way, I was the last to get glasses of our family of six, holding out longer than all others by decades. My brother had glasses as a child, and he is still a horrible speller.
I was joyful when we finished mythology and thought I had it made when we had to write one page themes. Heck, write big enough and you could complete the assignment by just writing several sentences! I selected my topic: Freedom for the dogs. At the time, we lived in a relatively small town and had a good-sized black lab named Pepper. We walked Pepper on a leash and put him on a chain in the backyard, but on many occasions Pepper got the freedom to tour our neighborhood by himself.
In my naivete, I presented what I thought was a sound argument for the abolishment of dog slavery. Dogs should rule the roost. I was so disappointed when I got my paper back with all sorts of red circles and comments on it about how I should be more considerate of others.
Really, Pepper was a wonderful dog except on one or two handfuls of occasions. One silly neighbor let their white pet rabbit roam their backyard. Pepper thought he was participating in a fox hunt, only this time the animal was not freed (I’m not proud of that). Pepper became quite well known at school because we lived only four blocks from school, and Pepper had a built-in alarm system in his stomach, so many times he showed up in the school cafeteria right on time for lunch. I told my friends he was just trying to be sociable, but I don’t think they believed me.
Pepper tried so earnestly to make friends with people. Our house was two blocks from the train station, and each night many people would walk by. One particular night around dusk, Pepper wanted to greet a lady walking by and congratulate her on making it through a hard day at work. He advanced on her from the front and put his paws up on her shoulders to greet her. She did not see him coming and did not particularly care for his effervescence. This was proven a short while later when the lady’s husband showed up at our front door, hatchet in hand! And then there were fights with Ginger, the dog next door, when Georgie, the maid, had to run out the back door with a pail of cold water to break up a disagreement the two dogs were having.
I guess my worst time with Pepper is when I was walking him on a leash and decided to see how fast the two of us could run. He obviously could run faster than I could, and I was losing control. I had the perfect solution. I saw a tree ahead of us and figured I’d let him run on one side of the tree, and I would go on the other side. Luckily, my timing was off because Pepper probably would have been hung. The bad news is Pepper pulled me headfirst into the trunk of the tree.
The above experience was always offset when on a Saturday morning, or a morning during the summer, I decided to take Pepper on a leash to the nearby Swarthmore College woods where Crum Creek ran through it. Once we arrived at the meadow, I would take Pepper off the leash, and we would hike through the woods. Of course it would not be a great trek unless Pepper got to dive into the creek several times. Oh, what fun we both had!
Flash forward about half a century, and here I was walking Lady, our pit bull boxer mix who never got into any trouble. I was out walking her in our 55 plus neighborhood and having a great time. The only problem was we passed a pond in the common area of our community. All of a sudden, I was about to relive my days of yesteryear. I looked around and saw no people or animals as far as the eye could see. Nothing! Off the leash was Lady as we circled the pond. I talked to her the whole time (and she knew exactly what I was saying). She didn’t go in the pond and stayed within a yard or two of me at all times. Ah, what fun, until I did it the third time. Shortly thereafter, I received a warning notice in the mail from the manager of the community to say if I was reported letting Lady loose again, I would be fined. I was crushed. However, I knew I was in the wrong because of the rules of the neighbors’ association.
All I could do is canvas the neighborhood to see if Miss McKee was still alive!
Jeff Hall, Honey Brook, contributes columns to Berks-Mont Newspapers.
