A Million Little Pieces Of My Mind

When I moved the family to Elkton, Florida, it was into a double-wide trailer on a large piece of property—a couple of acres, at least. And my son had been asking for a doggie. Well, this being the first time we'd lived on a large enough piece of property for us to have a dog, and with Mary's permission, I decided to go for it. We picked up a rescue from the local dog pound and named him Blackie.

The kids got a disposable camera so they could get photos. Because Dottie isn't in those pictures, I assume she's the one who took them. These would have been among the first photos she ever took, so it took a little extra processing on my part to get any useful image from them at all.

John was quite conscious that Blackie was his dog, though. And whenever I came home from work, John and Blackie would be running from one end of the property to the other.

Blackie was also the first dog I'd owned since I was a kid in Vermont, and I'm sorry to say I had never really yet learned how to incorporate a dog into the family. My mom wouldn't let my first dog in the house, so we also wouldn't let Blackie in the house. He had food and water outside but I retroactively feel bad, because he would have loved being inside when we were.

In any case, we didn't get to keep him long. We were only in Elkton for six months, after which we moved to Virginia and, knowing that most apartments wouldn't let us have a dog (it was hard enough finding an apartment that would allow four kids!), we had to rehome Blackie to my sister, Mary Joan, and her family.

But even they couldn't keep him long. He just couldn't be discouraged from chasing cars, and one day he caught one, which killed him. Mary Joan's husband buried him near the gully in front of their house.

I had already broken the news to the kids. By that time I think they'd kind of forgotten about him anyway. I thought John, at least, would be devastated; but he took it pretty well for a six-year-old.

Later, on a trip back to Florida, when we visited Mary Joan the kids wanted to know where Blackie was buried. The kids wanted to see where, and I figured they wanted to pay their last respects. But then suddenly they were all excited and ran back up to the porch where we adults were sitting. John held up a scrap of something white. "Look!" he said, as if he'd just discovered gold. "It's Blackie's rib cage!"

Which had come out of the ground on its own; the kids did not dig for it.

I was bemused that the kids, especially John, were so cavalier about the remains of their beloved pet. But in the end I had to settle for being happy they weren't devastated.