Two Tales from Stanley Yokell’s book Dog Stories
Why the second amendment is important
We were without canine companionship for a long time. Mother was pregnant with my new brother Arthur but we didn’t know it because she was full figured and just didn’t seem any different to us. I was going to be eleven on my next birthday and thought I had finally convinced her to stop calling me Baby.
We kept asking when we were going to fill the void in our lives without a dog in the family. But Mother wanted a dog to be with us as much as we did, because she wanted protection for the little girl she thought she was carrying. And she told us a horrible tale from when she was a girl about a cat that jumped into a carriage and scratched a baby’s eyes out. So Mother wanted a guardian for her baby.
That’s how it was that Mother and her three sons made a trip to the Bide-a-Wee. So many dogs called out to us to be their friends as we walked through the aisles. But one named Shep was too dignified and austere to beg for friendship. He was a big, strong, proud Shepherd Collie who barely smiled or wagged his tail. Our vote was unanimous and he came home with his new family. I call him Tough Shep because we also named his future replacement from the Bide-a-Wee Shep.
Tough Shep had very firm rules about how he interacted with our family and strangers. In the household, he would accept food and water only from Mother or me. He was very particular about not being interrupted when he was eating. If you came too close to his dish, he would warn you with a growl. When Dad went for the Sunday papers, Tough Shep made it his business to walk a stately 20 feet in front. He never laid down when Dad stopped to talk with neighbors but stood like a statue until Dad moved on again.
Tough Shep didn’t deign to play the pull-the-rag game. He would just drop the towel. But he loved to chase balls or sticks that we threw. He would race after the prize, come back, drop it and wait patiently for another throw and chase. Tough Shep paid no attention to Dad’s pigeons. But no cat dared to cross his path. He was the only dog I ever saw that caught a pigeon hawk that swooped down to attack a bird on the ground.
Tough Shep would tolerate pats on the head. But he never once turned over to have his stomach scritched. He never offered his paw when asked and he never begged for a treat. He would sit and lie down when asked and responded slowly and with dignity to “Heel”. I respected him much as I respected Dad and Dad’s friends.
On a sunny April afternoon, I came home from school playing marbles and mumblety-peg with my friend Charlie all the way. Sister Ruth was in the sun porch crying with Tough Shep lying near her to offer comfort.
“Your mother had another Goddamned boy is what’s wrong.”
Soon our beautiful little brother was home with Ruth, Eugene, Bernard and me. Tough Shep made it his business to be where Arthur was, which made it hard for Mother when she bathed the baby in his bathinette because Tough Shep stationed himself as close to it as he could.
Mother always believed that children should be out-of-doors as much as possible. So very soon she put Arthur out in his carriage early in the morning. Except for changes of diapers and similar matters Arthur spent his early days in his carriage on the concrete apron that led to the stairs to our house from the sidewalk. Tough Shep stationed himself between the carriage and the sidewalk. He took no notice of passers by. But if someone approached the carriage from the sidewalk, Tough-Shep’s ears went up. Then he stood. If the stranger approached too near there would be a low, throaty growl. And if one dared to set foot on the concrete apron near the carriage, Tough Shep would simply clamp his jaws around the ankle.
Aunt Pearl Irriberry and her common-law husband raised pedigreed Chows. They were both judges of Chows at dog shows. When they were not judging, they entered their Chows in shows. Their champion was named Wookie. He was as spoiled as could be. Aunt Pearl would not let us pet Wookie for fear we would spoil his carefully tended fur. Wookie acted as if he owned whatever ground he walked on. It took only one visit of Aunt Pearl and Wookie for Tough Shep and him to become bitter enemies.
One warm spring afternoon, Mother, Ruth and I were sitting on the steps in front of our house. Arthur was in his carriage and Tough Shep was at his usual station. Tough Shep’s ears went up and he stood up with the hair on the nape of his neck ruffling. He had smelled Wookie who Aunt Pearl was walking on the sidewalk across the street. Tough Shep was growling and as Aunt Pearl and Wookie came even with our house, he dashed across the street. I had seen dog fights before, but not one as vicious as this. Very soon Tough Shep had Wookie by the throat. Wookie’s fur was so thick that Tough Shep’s teeth did not pierce his flesh. But Tough Shep was shaking his enemy back and forth.
“Get your goddamned mongrel off my dog. That son-of-a bitch is ruining Wookie’s chances to win a ribbon in the show.”
Aunt Pearl used more vigorous language than that. Her command of invective and street language astounded me.
By the time I was eleven I had learned not to try to intervene when two boys got into a fight. I figured it was a sure way to get a bloody nose or a black eye. I surely was not going to try to get between two big, powerful dogs, with their enormous canine teeth.
There was a garden hose hooked up to a tap in our across-the-street neighbor’s front yard. There was also a galvanized steel garbage can at the curb. I turned on the water and set the nozzle for full force. I held the cover by its handle to use it as a shield and advanced on the combatants squirting the water at their mouths. We all got soaking wet, but I succeeded in getting the garbage can cover between the two mouths. I wrapped my arms around Tough Shep’s middle and pulled him away from Wookie. Aunt Pearl slipped a leather loop around Wookie and pulled him away. The fight was over, but not Aunt Pearl’s anger and vituperation.
We were afraid that Aunt Pearl would have Tough Shep designated a dangerous animal to the dog catcher and have him killed. Once again, we said goodbye to a good friend who took up residence on a farm in the Catskill Mountains.
Aunt Pearl Irriberry lived with her daughter Lovey, our widowed Big Grandma and my Aunts Jane and Millie and the Irriberrys’ dog Wookie. Lovey’s real name was Abbey Louise but Aunt Pearl, never having been formally married to Leo Irriberry, called her Lovey because she was their love child.
We called my grandmother Big Grandma because at about five feet tall, she was six inches taller than Dad’s mother who we called Little Grandma. We did not speculate about why Aunt Pearl didn’t live with Lovey’s father but spent most of her time with him.
Big Grandma made the most delicious strudel and all of us kids made it our business to help get them eaten in time for Big Grandma to bake another batch. Wookie never failed to growl at us. It may have been my imagination, but I believed that Wookie had a very distinct and unpleasant smell that to this day I associate with Chows. His smell was certainly not because of lack of washing. Aunt Pearl cleaned and brushed Wookie daily. We all thought that she spent more time with Wookie’s appearance than with Lovey’s even though Lovey was always dressed in pretty clothes and patent leather shoes.
Wookie was one of two dogs I met to whom I took a strong dislike. It was mutual. He never failed to growl when I came into Big Grandma’s house. But he always condescended to try to snatch a strudel. I wouldn’t give him a crumb.
Perhaps he disliked me because I smelled from Tough Shep who each day patiently let me brush his beautiful black coat with its shiny white breast patch. Tough Shep did not lick my hand or show other signs of affection. He was far too dignified for that, but I took his letting me brush him, and once letting me take a burr out of a front paw as signs of affection.
Wookie was the canine equivalent of a spoiled brat. If he didn’t like the food in his dish, he scattered it all over the floor. Aunt Pearl would talk baby talk to coax him to eat. And she would buy special cuts of meat to mix with his kibble to entice him to eat the diet prescribed for a beautiful coat. Wookie would pick out the choice morsels and scatter the kibble.
Once I suggested to Aunt Pearl that she treat him like Mother treated me when I didn’t like what she served. Mother would not give me anything else to eat until I had eaten what she put on my plate. Aunt Pearl told me she could not be cruel to animals and would certainly not withhold food from Wookie. She clearly implied that it was OK for Mother to mistreat me but it was not OK for her to mistreat Wookie.
Wookie did not like children. He yapped at kids playing ball in the street, growled at kids on the way to or from the school he passed when Aunt Pearl walked him. He especially disliked postmen. On two occasions Wookie went after Big Grandma’s carrier who had the presence of mind to drop his mail sack on Wookie’s head, much to Aunt Pearl’s anger.
It took some time after his fight with Big Shep for Wookie’s fur to return to a condition suitable for Aunt Pearl to show him in the Dog Show, which I think took place in Madison Square Garden. I don’t know how the judges decided it, but Wookie won a blue ribbon for “Best in Breed”. Mother said, “If that mutt is best in breed, Chows can’t be much of a breed.”
She disliked Wookie as much as I but to keep the peace never said such things to her sister, with whom there was a sisterly love-hate relationship. Aunt Pearl never failed to tell Mother that our dogs were mongrels just like her children and that we did not deserve to have a Chow that Wookie had sired. Calling us mongrels was Aunt Pearl’s way of disparaging Dad who had come to America from Latvia while Aunt Pearl was native born. Mother’s response was always the same. “Wookie’s pedigree and a dime will get you a ride on the fifth avenue bus.”
What I could not understand was that Aunt Pearl forbade Cousin Lovey to play with or pat Wookie and that aside from their both living in the same house, there was no relationship between the two. We always treated our dog friends as members of the family, took them on our picnics, swam with them, played ball with them and played the tug of war on the rag game with them. It was always comforting to sit and read with a dog lying nearby.
But Wookie seemed to have no sense of family just a sense of his importance to the world. When Leo Irriberry died, Aunt Pearl, Lovey and Wookie, who was now old, moved to Florida. I never saw Wookie again. I didn’t miss seeing him.
We couldn’t be long without canine companionship. Mother and her three sons made another trip to the Bide-a-Wee kennels. For me, it was love at first sight when I saw Shep. Eugene and Bernard agreed that Shep, this handsome Shepherd-Collie, was just the friend we should have. Mother did not need convincing and Shep came home to live with us. He became my bosom companion from that time on.
Mother knew how strong the bond was between Shep and me. He died when I was serving in the Navy during World War II. But Mother did not tell me until after I came home from the war. She said, it was bad enough for me to be in danger from enemy fire, but losing a friend like Shep would have made things worse. She was right.
I could write a book about Shep and me. We spent the five years from when I was 12 to 17 together all or part of every day. When I went off to dormitory life at college, I came home every weekend that I could. Shep would greet me with a big smile and wagging tail. Sometimes I thought his eyes questioned why I wasn’t with him any more.
Shep had many characteristics that matched my own. He loved to wander but never failed to arrive home for dinner. Mother said he had learned that from me, but it wasn’t so. It was just that his way happened to be the same as mine.
When Shep came to live with us, I was in the second half of the fifth grade at an elementary school located about half a mile from home. Shep took to following me to school. I would turn and say, “Shep, go home!”
He would turn and walk a few steps. But I knew that as soon as he thought I believed he was on the way, he would turn and follow again. Thus it was that one bright October day he managed to follow me into the classroom. Our school rooms were fitted with combination benches-desks and Shep hopped up onto one of the benches and sat down. Our teacher was blessed with a sense of humor. Even better a dog lived with her. She looked my way and with a broad smile asked, “Does anyone know our new student’s name?”
“And do you know where Shep lives?”
“Well, Stanley, can you take Shep back to your house?”
Mother laughed for a long time when I explained why I had come home. “Here Shep, I’ll give you private lessons.”
She handed Shep a milk-bone treat and closed the door with me outside and Shep inside, where he could not slip under or jump over the gate of our fenced yard. School let out at three. Shep managed to meet me every school day. I carried a soft rubber ball in my pocket and we would play throw and chase all the way home.
My teacher was not married. I think it was because she loved the freedom to travel to far away places like the ones we read about in the National Geographic. She made our geography lessons fascinating by showing us pictures she took in some of the places we were studying. She was a great story teller and used that talent in teaching English. She must have told the story of Shep’s classroom visit to the faculty.
Toward the end of the term some of my classmates and I were selected to take intelligence tests to see if we would be accepted to new experimental Junior High School. It was several miles from home and necessitated a trolley ride. When our principal talked to us about how to behave and what an honor it was to be selected he finished his talk looking straight at me.
“The people at the Junior High will not administer the intelligence tests to canine students.”
There was laughter all around.
Next Spring, on the day before my birthday, we moved to a new home in the Flatlands section of Brooklyn. Brother Eugene built a doghouse for Shep that we lined with left over strips of the living room carpeting that Mother had purchased. We put the new doghouse outside the steps to our finished basement. Above the steps was a back porch on one side of which was a high picket fence that separated our nearest neighbor’s property from ours.
There was a large driveway between our house and the neighbor’s on the other side. Dad had a high wrought iron gate built across the entry which led to a stand alone garage in the rear. The back yard had a high, wooden perimeter fence that with the wall of the garage and the back of our house enclosed the property and separated it from the fields that stretched to the next street. This gave Shep ample room to patrol the place. The high fence and gate did not prevent Shep from roaming. When he had the urge to explore, he simply took a run and jumped over the fence. It did not take long for the neighborhood to have many puppies that looked a lot like Shep.
Two doors down lived a family with two boys, one about my age and the other two years younger. They had a nasty bulldog living with them. He had one blue eye and one green one. The older boy, Elliott and I became fast friends. Pug and I did not. Neither did Pug and Shep.
Shep did not mind wearing a collar. But he absolutely refused to wear a muzzle or walk on a leash. When we went out walking or running together, he always stayed close by and came to me if I called him and sat or lay down if I got busy with some activity. Just as Beauty and Tough Shep had done, Shep accompanied Dad every Sunday morning to and from the newsstand.
Dad had built a large pigeon coop on a platform with four legs and ladder near the back fence. He was concerned that the Norway rats that made their home in the field would attack the birds, but he needn’t have feared because Shep kept them away. He also kept the numerous stray cats away from Dad’s birds.
Although it was illegal to fire a gun in the city streets, Eugene, Bernard and I took turns using Brother Bernard’s twenty-two, single-shot, bolt-action rifle to fire at the occasional rat we spied in the field. Sometimes we would fire at pigeon hawks that circled overhead. Although we practiced target shooting in our basement and became expert marksmen, none of us ever hit either rats or hawks. It was only by good luck that one of these shots never hit a person either.
Mother and Dad planned to spend August of the summer I turned 13 in New Hampshire where for some reason Dad did not suffer from hay fever. Until then Dad assigned me a variety of chores to do each day. But I had lots of free time to play ball with my friends and sometimes a game of monopoly. We called it monotony. One of my chores was to clean Dad’s pigeon coop, a chore I did not enjoy although I loved being with the pigeons. Another was to sweep and wash down the driveway leading to the garage.
On this day, Mother reminded me that Dad wanted the place cleaned.
“I’m going to see Aunt Sarah and this would be a good time for you to sweep and wash down the driveway. Dad wants you to clean the grit from the pigeon coop and put it into a barrel out front too.”
I had the front gate open to haul dirt out to the street. Shep was on the street near by when a white dogcatcher’s truck pulled up in front of the driveway. Dogs crammed into the cage were barking, growling and yelping. Seeing creatures confined in small spaces makes me shiver and I wished the dogcatcher would go away. But he came after Shep with a leather loop. Shep was far too wily to be snared and he backed into our driveway growling with the dogcatcher following.
“Get out of my way kid. That mutt has been getting away from me and now I’ve got him.”
“This is private property and you can’t come in here.”
Shep could easily have escaped by jumping over the back fence, but I was angry over his calling me kid and thinking I couldn’t stop him. I ran upstairs, grabbed Bernard’s gun, shoved a round into the chamber, ran downstairs, cocked the gun and pointed it at the dogcatcher.
“G’wan kid. You ain’t gonna pull the trigger.”
I took careful aim at his shoe. “One more step and I’ll fire.”
I aimed at the heel of his boot and pulled the trigger knocking off a piece of leather.
He got into his truck and left.
I shut the gate, put Shep in the house, took Bernard’s gun up to his room, cleaned it and put it away. I decided to stay in the house.
Soon I saw the dogcatcher’s truck pull up alongside followed by a black and white police car. The officer got out and rang our doorbell.
“Son, I’d like to talk with your mother.”
“Will you open the door and let me in to talk to you?”
Dad got home late from work tired and hungry. He asked if the pigeon coop had been cleaned and the driveway swept.
“Good. I didn’t see the dog when I drove in to put the car in the garage.”
“Oh! I put Shep in the basement.”
I sought desperately for an excuse. I could not lie to Dad and in any event, could not think up a good story.
I didn’t say that he was barking at the dogcatcher. Well at least I told some of the truth.
Dinner over, Dad let the pigeons out for a fly around, whistled them down and came in to read the evening paper. The dusk settled into darkness. The doorbell rang. Dad put down his newspaper. Mother went to the door.
“Max, there is a policeman and someone else at the door.”
Dad went to see what it was about. He turned on the front door light, stepped outside and had a conversation with the policeman. Soon he sent for me.
“He came into the driveway with a leather loop to try to take Shep in. I told him this was private property and to get out of the driveway. He told me, ‘Get out of my way kid. That mutt has been getting away from me and now I’m going to get him.’ When I told him he couldn’t come into the alley, he asked who’s gonna stop him? So I ran upstairs and got Bernard’s gun loaded it and brought down a box of shells. I pointed the gun at his foot and told him that if he took another step, I’d fire and I cocked the gun. Then he said, ‘G’wan kid. You ain’t gonna shoot me.” And he took another step into the driveway.
So I took careful aim at his shoe and pulled the trigger. I could see a piece of his boot heel fly off and he got back in his truck and drove away.”
“So you’re a good shot. What would you do if you hit him somewhere else or God forbid killed him? Now let me tell you something. You are never again to point a gun at anyone unless you are prepared to kill him. Go upstairs and get the gun and all the ammunition.”
Dad’s face was very serious and he was angrier than I could remember. I ran upstairs and brought the gun down and ammunition. Dad disassembled the bolt from the gun.
Dad turned to the police man and the dog catcher. “You had no right to come on to private property.” Dad, who had emigrated from Riga, Latvia, had studied the constitution when he was getting ready to take the citizenship test and he knew all about its first ten amendments.
The police officer, “But it’s against the law to fire a gun in the city.”
Dad, “I think that defending our property gives us the right to fire a gun anywhere. Otherwise the second amendment wouldn’t mean anything.”
The police officer shook his head and got into his car with the dogcatcher.
“I’m locking this thing up until you and your brothers learn that shooting at people is not like shooting at targets.”
I took Dad’s words to heart. I don’t know where Dad hid the twenty-two. We didn’t see it again for nearly a year. Brother Bernard had conflicting emotions about what happened. On the one hand he was very proud that I had chased the dogcatcher off our property. But on the other he was very angry that I had used his gun without asking and because Dad had locked it away.
Things quieted down for a while after that. Unlike Elliott’s friend Pug, who would attack, unprovoked for reasons of his own, Shep almost always came with us when my friends and I played Chinese handball, stickball, roller skate hockey, baseball and similar activities. If a ball went too far out for the fielder to catch it, Shep would make a dash, bring it to me and drop it. The only times he didn’t accompany me was when I went on bike rides. Memories of Whitey’s being run over made me very cautions about having Shep where an automobile could hurt him.
We had come back from a vigorous game of softball. I was tired and sweaty and Shep lay down in the yard near Dad’s pigeon coop. To one side of our house lived a family consisting of a mother, father, nasty, aggressive kid named Ronnie around my Brother Arthur’s age and a mother-in-law. Ronnie regularly bullied my little brother until Arthur had had enough and gave him a bloody nose. Our family maintained cold but correct relations with our neighbors.
Ronnie’s grandmother did not like dogs. She especially did not like Shep and could not understand why we did not tie him up but let him patrol the driveway and back yard.
Every afternoon, she would stand on our neighbor’s back porch with a hose and nozzle and water their lawn and flowers. On this afternoon she took it into her head to direct the stream at Shep who leaped up to avoid the hard cold stream. But she followed his every move with the hose. I was outraged. So I picked up our garden hose, turned it on full and squirted her from top to bottom.
That led to a rancorous demand by Ronnie’s mother for Mother to punish me. Mother agreed that it was disrespectful for me to hose down Ronnie’s grandmother. Mother sent me into the house with instructions to stay in my room until supper time. I felt defiant but spent the next few hours reading. But Mother made the point to Ronnie’s mother that his grandmother had no right to hose down Shep.
Dad came home, flew his birds, washed up and the family sat down at our big dining room table for supper. Dad asked his usual questions about what had gone on at home while he was at work. I looked down at my plate as Mother told him of my hosing down Ronnie’s grandmother. I thought Dad would add a punishment. Instead he began to laugh so hard that tears rolled down his face. Soon all of us were laughing, especially when mother described Ronnie’s grandmother as mad as a wet hen. When things had calmed down, I heard Mother’s familiar, “You should only have a son like you when you grow up.” But this time she said it fondly.
The following summer, Mother and Dad spent August at a hotel in Bethlehem, New Hampshire. They took my brother Arthur, Shep and me along with them. There wasn’t much for me to do and the hotel manager insisted that we chain Shep to an apple tree on the hotel grounds except when I walked him on a leash. He also insisted that when I walked him on the hotel grounds, Shep must wear a muzzle. Shep had no use for leashes which he quickly chewed through and even less for muzzles which he managed to get off every time I reluctantly put one on him.
Both of us were unhappy. There were no other kids around my age and Shep hated being chained. The hotel had a small band that played between risqué skits that some comedians put on for the guests’ entertainment. One of the musicians suggested that I take Shep hiking in the nearby mountains. I thought it was a great idea. So we walked to the south end of town and found the trail to Mt. Agassiz, a small mountain that I recollect to be about 2400 feet high. Shep ran loose on the trail. He sniffed all the wonderful new smells, chased after small creatures that scurried away too fast for him to catch and had a wonderful time. I picked up and held a toad for a while, found a salamander and came across a snake or two. It was a glorious time for the two of us.
Unlike the higher White Mountains, the summit of Mt. Agassiz is covered with stubby trees and other plants. But it was great to walk all around it. Until the sky suddenly blackened and it began to thunder and lighten. A thunderbolt struck too near for comfort and we ran down the trail. We returned to the hotel soaking wet just as the sun came out again.
That was the beginning of many years of Shep and me tramping around together in the White Mountains. I cobbled together a blanket roll, a World War I knapsack, web belt and canteen and wore breeches and hat from a boy-scout troop that I left as a tenderfoot. To earn the money for these things and the topographical maps that showed hiking trails I set pins in a hotel bowling alley. At twenty-five cents a frame and tips it took a long time to accumulate much money. But sometimes one of the bowlers who had had too much to drink would tip me a dollar.
I did not even think of buying a tent. The cost was prohibitive. But the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corp.) had improved trails in the mountains with corduroy log fillers in swampy areas, wooden bridges over streams and built leantos all shown on the topographical maps. I would pick a site and Shep and I would hitchhike to the trailhead. Mostly we got rides with farmers in their trucks or station wagons, all of whom seemed to look kindly on a boy with a dog, blanket-roll and knapsack, obviously dressed for hiking. Mother was comfortable with my hiking with Shep to protect me. Overnight hikes eventually became week-long ones that took considerable planning for our meals. My goal was for Shep and me to climb all forty-six peaks over 4,000 feet high in the White Mountains.
Next summer Mother and Dad rented the house of a family named Churchill who supplemented their income from their dairy by moving into a summer house and renting out their main residence. It had a wood-burning stove for cooking and wood burning ones for heating the rooms and a well from which an electric pump drew water. I had grown considerably and split all the wood for the stoves. The man who supplied the cordwood saw me splitting logs and offered me a job splitting logs that paid five dollars a cord. A couple of weeks of hard work and I had enough money to fund the season’s hiking and climbing.
My plan to climb all of the Forty-Sixers eventually took me to Mt. Washington, the highest mountain on the northeast coast. I planned to climb by way of Tuckerman’s Ravine. But it had rained steadily for a couple of days and the trail was soggy and slippery. There is a motor road to the summit, but walking up a paved road didn’t appeal to me. However, there is cog railway that takes tourists to the summit and I decided to walk up that way. It was funny to see Shep carefully pick his way up the ties on which the tracks lie.
We were on a trestle that curved across the ravine when I heard the train coming. So I took Shep in my arms and carefully climbed onto the structure below the tracks. When the train had passed, we went back up and continued the walk. It wasn’t much fun and I wouldn’t have done it again if I had the choice. Finally we got to the summit where Dartmouth College maintained a guest facility. A State Police cruiser was parked in front. As we stepped behind the upper station of the cog railway, the trooper arrested us. An elderly lady on the train had seen us climbing under the tracks and fainted.
The trooper took my name and wrote down Shep’s license from his collar. I told him where we were staying and he called Mother to come and get us. He was very serious in front of the crowd of tourists when he told us that we had broken the law. But I could see that part of him was laughing about the whole thing. He released us in Mother’s custody. All the way back to Bethlehem I heard, “You should only have a son like you when you grow up.”
I had to promise Mother to never again go off a marked trail before she gave me permission to go hiking again. We succeeded in climbing all the Forty-Sixers. I signed my and Shep’s name on the records kept on the tops of them all.
In September 1939 at age seventeen, I entered New York University’s School of Chemical Engineering in its College of Engineering located in University Heights, the Bronx, New York. I moved into the Gould Hall dormitory, from which, except when I had to cram for exams, I went home weekends. Shep greeted me with wagging tail and licks and barks. No sooner was I home than he brought a towel to play tug of war or a ball for me to throw and him to chase. When I had to leave for school Sunday night his eyes told me he did not know why I was going away again.
I was home on December seventh, 1941 when the news came that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. I enlisted in the Navy, eventually serving as Executive Officer and Engineering Officer of an LST that saw combat in the Pacific Theatre. Shep had grown old. He died when I was overseas. No one told me until I came home. I was devastated that I had not been with my friend at his last moments.
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