Most of my life I have grown up in the Midwest. My father a businessman and a musician. My mother a reader and a “mom with a routine.” Monday was for laundering, Tuesday for ironing; pressing and starching white shirts for hours, Wednesday for cleaning, Thursday for cooking and baking ...
Oh we kids had routines too...but Friday night was for High School sports and Saturday T.V.
We were transferred to the East Coast. My mother and older sister cried. My mother’s family would no longer live in the same community and my sister was in High School and she was “in love”. I am the youngest and my brother was less than a year older, so we watch wide eyed as our new venture emerged. We felt as if we were characters in a movie...in real time.
We went to visit my parent’s friends, a business associate of my father, shortly after are arrival to Connecticut. It was a beautiful setting with rolling hills and stone fences like I had never seen before. It was a fun new adventure for my brother and I as we laughed at words like bubbler and ideaer while listening to the adults talk. They had kids too, so before long we were whisked away to see the new puppies. A new batch of Labrador puppies, that were jumping and licking and bouncing around by the dozen. Adult discussions continued as we were about to leave and into our Ford wagon jumped a black lab we named “Nicky.” As my father would say, “Nicky was actually a nice dog but had two strikes against him...one, he was with a family that had limited skills on how to train him and two, had a genetic problem that regardless of how often he was washed and groomed his coat smelled.”
As a result my mother decided he was an “outdoor dog.” Now remember this is a small town in the early ‘60’s”, so it was still allowed for dogs to develop a “free spirit.” He was fed and cared for from a home stand point but wandered a bit now and then. Our Saturday routine changed as my brother and I bathed Nicky so he could watch T.V. on Saturday nights-- his only adventure into our household domain. But if he would fart, he would be immediately put outside. Many a time my brother and I would pretend we did it, just so we could lie on the floor and wrestle with Nicky a bit longer.
One Friday night we went to attend a local high school basketball game, when lo and behold Nicky bounds out on the floor at half-time. My mother was mortified, my sister who sat across the bleachers with her new friends slide way down into her seat. My brother and I looked at my father who had just a moment of weakness and tried to pretend it wasn’t “our dog.” But then he “faced the music” as he would say and grabbed the dog and the rest of the family and went home.
The announcer said, “that lab would make a good point guard.”
We got home and my father tied Nicky to the tree in the yard and then went indoors to fix my mother a stiff martini. It was at that same moment my sister arrived and screamed some inaudible words and went sobbing and screeching up the stairs to her room. Now martini’s were also reserved for Saturday night, so my brother and I slipped out of the room and went to bathe Nicky. We had to come up with a plan; we could build a dog mansion, promise to keep him tied or on a leash except when we could roam with him, we could bathe him daily, (my nose scrunched up on that one) but we had to come up with a plan.
SO, when Nicky was so clean he squeaked and we thought we had enough arguments to face the debate queen of the world, we entered the living room and stood as statues, frozen with our fear of loosing Nicky. Silence prevailed, except for the quieting muffled sobs from upstairs. The minute seemed like an hour and then my mother said, “Somebody go feed ducky.” My brother and I muffled our giggles. My father sternly said, “Go do what your mother said!” And my brother and I went outside and burst into laughter as we fed “ducky.”
Nicky had a new name Ducky.
and many further adventures occurred.
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