Dog On A Chain

Before I write what I wanted to write, I want to plug my cousin’s blog. She is actually my cousin's wife and writes about the books she’s read. http://www.jcbookblog.blogspot.com/

I visited my family during my kids’ spring break, and as I was talking to my siblings, Baby Sister brought up the subject of the dog that lived in the yard beyond our back fence. That was when we had moved to the small town from Suburbia.

The kids who lived in the house back there, were named Chip and Harvey, and being the consummate cartoon lovers we were, we started calling them Chip and Dale. When they had a dog, they kept it chained with a small-link chain in the back yard. What was eventually to happen, strained our relationship with Chip and Dale for a long time afterward.

Everyday, when any of us would come out of our back door, Chip and Dale’s dog would bark and bark at us for as long as he could see us from his yard. One day, I was out in the back with my siblings when this irritating barking began. I went to the fence and the dog increased his barking and strained at the limit of his chain.

I ran to one end of the fence and the dog followed as far as his chain would allow. Then I ran to the other end of the fence and he moved toward me. I began to run back and forth to each end of the fence while the dog frantically barked and followed me. This process began to wind his chain shorter around the post so that his reach was shortened as he ran.

This amused me as the dog threw himself bodily against the restriction of his chain trying to get closer to me. What I didn’t realize at first, was his chain was also winding around this neck.

By now, he was throwing himself as hard as he could against the limit of his chain and began strangling himself, and his barks came more hoarsely. I walked away and even went into the house thinking the dog would calm down and unwind himself. After all, I never touched him or entered his yard.

A little while later, I had to come out again and as soon as the dog saw me, he began his barking and lunging again. He hadn’t even unwound himself. After a few lunges without my conscious provocation, he began making strangling sounds.

This time, one of the Chip and Dale duo was in the yard and began trying to help the dog. I became concerned as he began crying and the dog was making more pitiful sounds.

I think it was Harvey. He knew enough that I had probably provoked the dog and was becoming angry with in his frustration to not be able to help the dog.

I jumped the fence and came up to the dog. I slowly reached out to the animal and caught him and held his muzzle in case he thought to bite me. He was beyond the ability to do me much damage and I took a look at the chain wound around his neck.

I was horrified to see that the chain was imbedded in the dog’s neck. I tentatively tried to unwind the chain, but there was skin pinched between the links of chain and I was not willing to rip the skin of the dog’s throat. I said to Harvey, “You better get your mom or dad.”

I hopped back over the fence as Harvey’s mom came outside. She was understandably angry with me and began to deal the with dog’s dilemma.

Baby Sister remembers seeing the blood on the towel after the dog was freed from the chain. He was kept inside for a few days, and I’m pretty sure they didn’t use a chain to tie up the dog anymore after that.

We weren’t in that family’s good graces for the longest time after that. They had a tally of our offenses including the dog incident and all the BB gun dents in their siding.

So, not only do I have the blood of a chicken on my hands, but I am a dog tormentor as well. I really did feel bad about the whole thing, but some things can only be given time to heal.

I have a beautiful shepherd/black lab that I know I wouldn’t want anything like that to happen to. I am more kind to animals now and I stay away from live chickens.

Here's One For Easter

I have recently had the privilege of leading a young boy to accepting Jesus Christ as his Savior. He had asked me why they had killed God, and I knew that I had to help him to understand what Jesus had done for us when He gave up His life for us.

This brings to mind a time in my life when I lived in a part of the Midwest where my dad had his first church. We lived in an apartment that was built in the upper story of Dad’s church. I was five but not yet in kindergarten, and Bold One was a monkey-faced toddler bouncing up and down in his crib.

Bold One usually rattled this cage of his and grunted and squealed until he woke me up. His face would light up when I opened my blue eyes to meet his big brown ones. I used to laugh every morning at his smiling face. He used to smile with his mouth wide open, and I have pictures to prove it. He charmed me into lowering the rail to the crib and use all my strength and balance to get him down and out onto the floor.

Mom would put him into his walker with his first bottle of the day, and he would follow me everywhere he could. I found out why Mom wanted me to close the door to the staircase going to the ground floor when Bold One decided to follow me down the steps in that walker. I caught him just as the first wheel went over the top step and he was smiling the whole time I was straining to get him back up the stairs. That was the first time I’d saved his life. Another time is written in “Fish And Occasional Torture.”

Our lives were totally wrapped up in the doings of the church. I remember helping Mom mop the basement floor where all the Sunday school rooms seem to be in any older church building. We were getting ready for a Halloween party.

Another time, I remember my first experience with chemical agents. Mom had the old meat grinder out and I was helping her grind ham, pickles and onions for ham salad sandwiches for another church function. The onions were so strong that our eyes started to water. I had never experienced that before and became quite frightened and irritated. I wondered why it got worse when I kept rubbing my eyes! Finally Mom made me wash my hands and go outside for some fresh air. The only time I have ever felt that overwhelmed since was in the tear gas chamber when I was in the Air Force.

The fun part of living there was there was a huge sand box way out in back of the church where I spent most of the warm days playing in the sand. I met all of the neighbor kids in that sand box including one older boy who tried to convince me that he ate all the worms. Dad later showed me he had dropped them in the grass without me catching him.

An older girl would come by once in a while and play with all the kids. She did “Ring Around The Rosie” with us. She also taught us one called “Speedboat”. We would join hands and walk in a circle chanting, “Speedboat, speedboat go so slow. Speedboat, speedboat go so fast.” Then we would run in a circle. Then we’d chant, “Speedboat, speedboat step on the gas!” and we’d all let go of our hands and fall to the ground. We thought that was the best game.

That winter, there was a huge pile of snow from the snow removal equipment in the yard. I climbed the hill of snow at my mother’s suggestion. When I slid down the hill, my snow pants left a smooth streak in the hill, so I told my mother I had made a slide in the snow. My mom came out and tried my slide and we laughed and laughed when I told her she had made it longer. It wasn’t often I saw my mom covered with snow.

This boy that gave his heart to Jesus reminded me of this time in my life. That Easter, I was in my Sunday school class listening for the first time of how mean people had been to Jesus. They whipped him and made him bleed, and punched him. Then they nailed him to a cross where he died. I cried and cried blubbering, “Why? Why?”

The teacher kept saying, “For our sins.” That meant nothing to me. My buddy Jesus was getting clobbered! Finally, the teacher asked me if I had asked Jesus into my heart, but I didn’t answer. She could see that I loved Jesus and so she asked me if I wanted to ask Him into my heart and helped me say the sinner’s prayer.

That was the day I asked Jesus to come into my heart, and He became my Savior and friend. As time went on, I came to understand more and more what Jesus had done for all who believe.

Chicken And Fire

Living down south when I was eight was my first experience with culture shock as I may have mentioned in “Fish And Occasional Torture”. My uncle and his family were the touchstone of familiarity with the life we were used to, so we showed up on their farm quite a bit in the year we lived down there.

One day I was in the chicken coop with my cousin Patrick. He showed me this scrawny young chicken that he tossed up in the air to make it flap its wings for a smooth landing. He told me he was “making it fly”. Having no idea of our cruelty, I joined him in helping the chicken to “fly”.

So, two unthinking boys took turns throwing this poor chicken up in the air to see him flutter back to earth. Wouldn’t you know it? On my turn, this chicken keels over and dies.

I may have feared the instability of my cousin Billy, but now that I had done wrong, I was in fear of my muscular Uncle Bill. After all, his anger would be justified.

As an aside, let me tell you that Uncle Bill was wild in his own way. He had traveled with my Mom and me on one occasion where some guys in a car dogged us. It was night time and my uncle was dozing in the passenger’s seat and Mom was getting scared as this car of men kept even with us and were probably checking her out.

Uncle Bill woke up and found out what was happening and asked, “Where’s my gun?”

It was packed under a bunch of stuff in the back of the station wagon we were in, so Uncle Bill waited for the men to come even with his side of the car. He had told her to stay in the left lane for this purpose.

Now, I was wide-awake and watching this event unfold as the car pulled even with us. Uncle Bill leaned out the window so far that his belt buckle could have scraped the paint on our station wagon. He extended his arm and pointed his finger like a gun directly at the driver in the offending car. They dropped back, and we never saw them again.

Now, I had killed one of my uncle’s chickens, and for some reason, I could only hear my uncle in my mind say, “Where’s my gun?”

Naturally Patrick and I were scared, so like the two lame brained boys we were, we left the chicken where it was and left the chicken coup.

I was shaking with fear as we were interrogated and Patrick confessed we had been playing with the chicken. Uncle Bill made us bury the chicken in his cornfield while my family and his watched. I never felt so low before in my life.

For years afterward, I lived with such statements as, “Remember when you killed the chicken?” and “Did you kill the chicken or did Patrick?” Now, thirty-two years later, I think I can talk about it without too much difficulty. Just don’t bring it up first.

In the summer, my cousin Debbie led our little brothers Patrick and Bold One and me into the woods of their property. There, she taught us about watching for cotton mouth snakes and showed us what poison oak looked like as we followed a rippling creek in our bathing suits. It was very enjoyable to walk in the creek and be cool in the water, because usually I was sweating all the time in the Tennessee summer.

I expressed really liking that jaunt in the woods to my uncle and aunt. They thought I would like to spend the night out in the tent back there with my cousin Billy. It was the weekend and I was willing and so were my parents.

Billy was also in agreement. He was serenely discussing setting up the tent and a couple of cots. I was thinking this could be a pleasant outing with Billy.

That night, he led me out to the tent in the dark with a flashlight. He had the tent and cots all arranged and even had a small kerosene lamp on some sort of box with a radio. We settled in and talked.

At one point the lamp went out and he dug out some matches in the dark to light it. After it was lit, he began flicking lighted matches across the tent. They would go out on the tent floor, but I asked him if the tent could catch on fire. He said no as he continued to flick the lighted matches and I grew more tense.

The next match managed to set the whole book on fire and Billy flung it from himself. It landed on the floor and set it on fire. I was by the door of the tent and watched Billy laugh evilly in the light of the lamp and the new fire. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he would have turned into the Devil himself because he creeped me out so bad. I was out of the tent and several yards away before I saw him calmly putting the fire out.

It took him ten minutes to convince me to come back into the tent. For the rest of the night, I wouldn’t let him light anything and made him use the flashlight.

The next morning, I got up and saw a four-inch hole burned into the floor of the old canvas tent, but there were other holes in the floor as well. At least those didn’t seem to be burnt.

When Billy got up, we walked back to the house. He showed me Uncle Bill’s gun range on the way and bragged about his own ability. My uncle would put twigs in the holes of his old shots so he could see where the new ones were. I thought that was pretty clever.

When we got to the farmyard, he led me into that dreaded chicken coup to gather eggs. Then he fixed me breakfast.

Sometimes Billy could scare me to death, but I think I sensed he had some good deep down in his heart. He just seemed to have a devious streak that made me doubt his sanity at times.

Baby Brother

I was watching a three-year-old sing to her mother this week while waiting for my daughter’s vanilla smoothie at the church coffee shop. She sat on her mother’s lap singing a cute children’s song that had hand motions to it. She had her mother’s undivided attention and was as pleased with herself as she could be. When I laughed, she smiled and waved to me. I’m sure she recognized me because I used to teach her big brother when he was in my second grade boys’ class.

Her mom turned and greeted me, and I asked how old the little girl was now. I sighed and said I remembered being three and how I was the center attraction as my mother’s first child. I dominated the attention of both mom and grandmother while my dad was overseas in the U.S. Air Force.

She asked me if I had trouble adjusting when my siblings came along. I truthfully told her that I was really too fascinated with my siblings to ever be jealous of them. If you remember “Chocolate Milk”, you’ll know that I was handed an orange little baby that came to be known as Bold One. I was convinced he was the cutest baby I had ever seen until Baby Brother came along.

Now Bold One will always have a special place in my heart. In fact, I remember having an imaginary friend named “Bongo” of all things, and had a definite picture in my mind of what Bongo looked like. I still remember. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that looking at my brother’s picture when he was about three, he looked exactly the way I had always pictured Bongo! Is that freaky or what?

So Baby Brother came along. This was a little blond ball of a baby with huge brown eyes that will always be one of his most remembered features. I used to look into those eyes while I had my mouth on the bottom end of his bottle as he ate. I would mimic his sucking as if I were helping him finish his bottle. I could have sworn he would begin to suck faster as his eyes would widen with astonishment at the thought of me taking his milk. I used to always put my forehead on his and look into his eyes until the vision became just a single eye. (Try that sometime.) I would say, “You only have one eye!” I later did that with Baby Sister too.

As I’ve mentioned in another entry, Baby Brother learned to walk and broke his falls by banging his head on the furniture, and when he was proficient and got his equilibrium back, he followed me around the house. When he was able to talk, he said the most gut-wrenching thing he ever said to me considering he’s in heaven with Dad now. He said, “You’re my bestest buddy!” That statement set the tone for the rest of our relationship.

“West Side Story” came on television one time when we lived in Suburbia. Bold One and I were so inspired by the fight scene under the overpass, that we took butter knives out of the kitchen drawer on a regular basis and had mock knife fights. Mom and Dad were never there when we did this of course! One of those times, three-year-old Baby Brother was so inspired by our antics that he poked me in the leg with a steak knife! It didn’t break the skin, though.

Another time a few years later, he actually stabbed me in the wrist with a jack-knife. I lay on the bed with my self-bandaged wound until the nausea went away. That took the glamour out of knife fighting.

As an aside, we siblings learned to cut down on a lot of the tattling that goes on between siblings. One of the younger ones would say, “I’m telling!” and then the threatened one would say, “If you tell on me for that, I’ll tell Mom you ate the chocolate chips cookies from Grandma!” “Oh, yeah, I’ll tell Mom that you went sledding off the roof!” An upgraded threat would then be countered only to result in a Mexican standoff. I always dreaded the day when one was mad enough to tell anyway and the whole pack of offenses be known at once. But there were a lot of things Mom didn’t know until years later.

For a while, it was Baby Brother and I that got along the best and Baby Sister and Bold One that seemed to get along together.

When I came home on leave while in the Air Force, I remember Baby Brother came up to greet me. He had grown so much, and he picked me up off the ground when he hugged me. I told him I thought he’d been replaced by a bear.

By the time Baby Sister was about to be married, he and I began sharing aspects of our personal lives with each other that we told no one else. He knew the Bible like I knew lyrics to songs, and he knew a lot of the songs, too. When I left the Air Force and lived with him for a few months that relationship continued until I moved out.

If I had been fascinated with my siblings growing up, Baby Brother took to my children likewise. My kids sure loved their uncle.

As time went on, we laughed and talked and had such interaction when we did get together that sometimes it was hard to feel included in our antics. Mom would have to yell at us to get our attention.

Everyone always remarked how alike Baby Brother and Dad were. Dad called him his clone. When Dad passed away, all my hopes were unspokenly placed on Baby Brother as the next vessel of Dad’s ministry and prophetic ability. I encouraged him every chance I could with stories Dad had told me that seemed to match Baby Brother’s situation. It was as if my relationship with Baby Brother never had the broken piece in it that seemed to exist between Dad and me.

It broke and bewildered me when he was killed by a drunk driver at just the point in his life when he would have been fully immersed in becoming a minister himself. I was without a clue of what to think of God or myself at this point of having lost my Dad and now my “bestest buddy”.

I thought, “That’s it, I’m done. I’m not sure who I am anymore. God, I’m sitting right here, and you’re going to have to carry me where I’m suppose to go because I don’t know or care anymore.”

As I allowed Him to carry me as a toddler gone beyond himself, I began to see more of who He wanted me to be.

He also gave me a task. I was to write a story that Baby Brother had outlined, but had no time to flesh out. I couldn’t write with the knowledge of what he had intended to put down on paper, but the Lord helped to see the story lines that I could write and needed to make accessible.

One Sunday morning, I woke up with a melody in my head. I quickly got up in the early dawn and grabbed my guitar and worked out some chords and notated the melody before I could forget. In my heart, the Lord said, “This song is “The Hinterlands.” The name of Baby Brother’s intended book.

As the days passed with writing on paper, I was filled with music from God that became the CD project “The Hinterlands.” I had never felt such collaboration with God before in my life. I felt like I had done my life’s work and there was no more. Not true really, but that’s the way I felt.

I had dedicated my first CD to my dad. Now I dedicated “The Hinterlands” to the “Gene Roddenberry” of “The McClaron Chronicles”, my baby brother.

My life has been changed forever.