Been Around the Block. Got Some Stories. These are Them.
For revelations about the now-widespread use of dihydrogen monixide in our world, see Dihydrogen Monoxide Research Division (DMRD), located in Newark, Delaware.
Why aren’t our governmental agencies on top of this?
Mount Shasta, March 15, 2004: For many years, Tulip our border collie has believed that she is my secretary, and yesterday she came back to work, resting on her blanket, beneath the counter beside my file cabinets.
Later in the day, she heard that we were going to the store, and she perked up and came with us. That’s her job, too; it’s our pack going hunting. She got stuck halfway onto the back seat, and needed some help. After our return, she worked as my secretary until the sun went down.
In the fading light, we walked up the sidewalk, but she was stopped by the two steps at the deck. As I had done earlier in the day, I picked her up below the chest to help her up. In my hands she went into a seizure.
Legs twitching and teeth snapping, her head lifted impossibly high toward her back. I eased her onto the wooden deck as Adrienne watched in horror. Helpless we watched as she twitched and shuddered and snapped. Over and over and over.
Then, it seemed to pass. She lay on her side, legs out, eyes blank and staring, chest heaving with gasping breath. She was not blinking at all.
It was seven on Sunday evening. I sent Adrienne to call the vet. They were closed and another vet on call. I could hear Adrienne speaking with him as I watched Tulip. The on-call vet made no out-calls, he said; I wondered, in what way was he on call?
Tulip blinked.
Slowly, as Adrienne returned, Tulip seemed to recover her eye movement. The vet had said symptoms would likely pass within an hour, or two. Tulip made a small attempt to rise, then fell back. The sky was dark, and the wind rose, blowing in the high trees. All her life, Tulip has been afraid of the sound of the wind. Perhaps this moment was why.
I fetched our coats, and a blanket for Adrienne, and blankets for Tulip. A train passed through our town. We waited on the deck with Tulip until nine o’clock. Her breathing slowed to normal. She could see us now, focusing on my face when I spoke. Although her legs twitched, she did not — could not — get up. The hour grew later and the wind colder. We heard what sounded like the cougar, not far away. The cougar comes down from the mountain in the winter, passing through the neighbor’s yard, leaving only tracks.
The vet’s prophesied two hours had come and gone, but she could not walk, so I wrapped her in the big blanket, and carried her inside to her bed in the kitchen.
Her back legs were paralyzed.
She’ll not be walking again. The back legs move, but she can’t get them under her. Through the night, again and again she attempted to rise, but she could not stand up. She would rest, and rest, then try again. She twitched, she shivered, she rested. Then she tried again. Lying on her right side, throughout the night she pushed against the floor, trying, and turning in slow cartwheels upon the floor. The shivering is not from cold, it’s the failing body. Adrienne stroked the fur of her face. It seemed to sooth her.
We went to our beds. I read and began to doze. I heard Adrienne calling me. She’d heard Tulip crying, she said. We sat on mats in the kitchen. Adrienne’s exhaustion caught up with her; she had to sleep. I stayed.
I lasted until one o’clock. Again and again Tulip attempted to rise. She cried with the attempt. I gave her water, and stroked her face. Adrienne took over at one o’clock, and I slept till five, then took another shift.
If I stroked her face, she lay still, shivering quietly. If I stopped, she’d nuzzle my hand: more! I guess it made a difference for her.
As daylight grew in the windows, Tulip became quieter. Her time was so close. We called vets, wrestled with answering services, then reached a Dr. Grace Roberts, from the town of Weed to the north. Dr. Roberts said, “Of course.” I said, “God bless you.”
I cried, because clearly it was time, but it was just the moment that I didn’t want.
As we waited, a train passed through our town. Then as promised, the vet arrived at eight-thirty. Tulip was already slipping away. Tulip received a strong sedative, twitched some, grew quieter over a few minutes. Her eyes were no longer sharp.
Into her chest, directly into her heart was injected a deadly medicine. She made a Yip! and rose to snap at her own heart, then fell back. Her eyes glazed, her mouth fell open, and with my hand in the fur upon her chest, I felt her heart beat once, then stop.
Tiny twitching, here, there, there.
Still.
Through our tears, we’d spoken our goodbyes, so she could hear our voices, feel our hands on her body. Our pal of eleven years was gone. Our pack was empty.
I wrapped her in a blanket, and carried her body down to the vet’s car. Tulip’s head lolled back on my shoulder, her far-seeing eye gazing forever beyond my head. I could smell her smell, wild like a wolf, once again and always, just as she was.
Because of blood and bile, she had to sleep in the kitchen. She wanted her own bed. She wanted her life back, but that life is gone now, fading as we watch.
Today she visited beside me in the office. This is her job, and comforts her, though she shivers, gasps, rail-thin.
I had to lift her up the steps. She is weak, and fading.
Adrienne and I spent much of last night, and most of today, sitting with Tulip while she is dying.
Tulip fades.
A year ago, tests said kidney failure. Normally, this never improves. In Adrienne’s dog-walking days, one of Adrienne’s dogs died this way. It’s not good. Tulip has lost weight, from 63 pounds down to 46. She’s thin and wobbles unsteadily, as her muscle mass fades away, her body trying to survive.
Clearly she’s uncomfortable, sometimes unable to lie at rest, shivering, weak. She’s eleven years old. Somehow we thought she’d be long-lived, reaching fifteen or sixteen. But no, it seems not.
We’ve known this day was coming.
Adrienne says she cannot imagine what life would be like, without Tulip. Tulip has been part and parcel of our lives, day in and day out, for the last eleven years. We’ve grown older, and along with us, she has grown from gangly puppy to a magnificent mature animal and now she diminishes toward that silent and eternal night, growing thinner and more frail.
Her eyes are not as clear as once, but her heart is loving as always. More these days, she comes to us for comfort, placing her head against us, waiting to be petted, waiting for us to caress her smooth fur, because we love her.
A border collie is a long-haired dog. For years, we find long black hairs blowing around the house. They gather into dust bunnies beneath the furniture, and crouch in the corners. It is difficult to prepare a meal without at least one black hair appearing as if by magic in the skillet, among the vegetables, or upon the plate. We’ve grown used to them.
Recently, since Lizzie came to live with us, with two long-haired dogs, the drifting fur has accellerated till it was making Adrienne crazy. She sent Lizzie to the groomer and had her shorn. Lizzie came back with a crew cut, looking very different, and the fur diminished.
So a few weeks ago, Tulip also went to a groomer, for the first time. She came back shorn and looking so thin, but the drifting hairs have almost vanished around our house. Then Tulip became weak and troubled, and the vet said her kidneys are failing badly. They’ve kept her the last three nights, feeding her fluids and medicines, in hopes that the flush will give her a few more weeks or months of life.
We’ve visited each day. She seems stronger, but so unhappy to be left there. She’s a good dog, but she so wants to come home with us. As we leave, she calls to us.
If we are lucky, tomorrow her new tests will say that she can come home again. If we are lucky, then she will be with us for some weeks, or some months.
Coming home, we ate at the Black Bear diner, and during the meal, on my plate suddenly there appeared a small black hair, falling from sleeve.
“Look,” I said, “One of Tulip’s hairs has got in the food again.” Adrienne looked at me, tears welling in her eyes. Her voice caught.
She said, “I wish they always would.”
After her Chinese landlord said dog goes or move, in Adrienne’s new apartment, the Danish landlord was cool, but the loony tenant downstairs first harassed Tulip in the yard, and then complained when she barked at him. Phone calls went round and round.
Moving again. To a house in San Anselmo. It had no yard, but it was quiet, though that would change later.
But still, what to do with the bouncing, energetic Tulip?
Adrienne pondered again and again. She says she wept at night for nine months, worrying how to give the dog the exercise, while working at the Larkspur vegan cafe, The Garden of Eatin’. Somehow, the answer came to her.
Adrienne’s All-Weather Dog-Walking.
Since she had to go a-walking with Tulip, why not take other dogs, too? (Why does this remind me of The Thumbtack Bugle early days?)
I was tapped to design a poster, something I’ve done in my postering days. I chose a deco woman in silhouette, dancing along, followed by four dancing dogs. Best poster I’ve ever done. Damn it was good!
And stapled outside College of Marin and Woodlands Market, it found customers immediately. They called into Adrienne’s new voicemail number. “Hi,” it said, “This is Adrienne of Adrienn’e All-Weather Dog-Walking Serivce. We offer …”
At first, timid, Adrienne said she’d walk one dog at a time. That would give them more individual attention, she said. After a few months, reason prevailed. She discovered that she could handle two to four dogs at a time. By a strange coincidence, that’s how many would fit into her car.
In the beginning, Tulip, a herding dog by nature, fit right in. She herded the dogs into the car, played them to exhaustion at the park, then herded them home.
After a few years, Tulip’s puppy nature matured, and as she grew beyond the need for day-long exercise, she became more alpha, tougher, more aggressive, and finally Adrienne could no longer trust Tulip not to fight at the dog park.
The dog business went on, now Adrienne’s bread and butter. Six months had put her full-time into walking dogs. Her heart easily ran to dogs over tofu pups, and the cafe job was left behind.
So now the dog business, started so she could spend her days with Tulip, went on … but without Tulip.
Adrienne and I lived then in San Anselmo, and I took Tulip to the office with me. On went the dog business; Tulip stayed behind, assisting me with the voicemail business.
Early in the morning, before work, Adrienne walked with Tulip, in the early light. Late in the afternoon, as the light waned, after her long day walking the dogs, Adrienne walked Tulip.
Oh, Adrienne tried various strategems to get me to walk Tulip. How it would be good for me. How it would give me a break. Few worked. Fact is, I did have other things to occupy my time.
Over several years, as Adrienne began to feel the wear from the walking, driving in smog, trying to get around road crews and traffic and contractors, and time as a constant pressure, the bloom wore off the business. She loved the dogs, loved to spend time with them, had a special touch with them. But she was getting tired. It was wearing.
I told her we were moving. She didn’t believe me, was all surprised when it came time to advise the clients: she was leaving. So long to her puppies of all these years. So long to the clients. So long to the friends in the early-morning dog park. So long to Adrienne’s All-Weather Dog-Walking service.
Now, she walks in the mornings. Our new dog, Lizzie, and ever faithful Tulip, walk beside her.
There they go.
Marin Humane Society, September 1993: It happened right after Adrienne’s daughter Celina got shot.
When Celina had married Ray, they had a child named Jessica, and when Jessica was about three, Celina and Ray called it quits, and Celina married a bum.
The bum didn’t treat Jessica very well, but one day he gave Celina and Jessica tickets to go to a spa to the north, a day-trip. How nice.
Except that when they returned, he’d moved away, taking all the furniture, leaving bare walls.
Celina got the cops involved, excellent high drama there, and one of them found an apartment for her and her child, and that’s how she and Jessica came to be living in the apartment that day, when Celina drove down to the store.
She was wearing my motorcycle jacket. I’d grown too fat to wear it, and Adrienne gave it to Celina, who liked it a lot, as had I. It turned out to be a good thing she was wearing my tough leather jacket that day.
For as her car stopped at a light, a hoodlum came up with a .22 pistol, and attempted to shoot her in the head. Yelling in fury at the guy, she threw her arm up, and the firing bullet went into the jacket, slowed and turned, nicked her arm, and spared her head. The hoodlum ran. They caught him later and sent him off to prison. Who knows what it was really about?
As it happened, Adrienne and her other daughter, Layla, had just visited the Marin Humane Society. They wandered through the kennels, and the cacophony of leaping, barking dogs, and then they spied the black and white border collie, an adolescent with big feet, sitting, leaning up against the wall, and with rolled eyes, looking up at Adrienne.
Adrienne fell in love, just like that.
She and Layla were living in Berkeley. They weren’t Marin residents, and learned to their dismay that they couldn’t adopt Tulip. And Tulip was only one day away from the gas chamber.
I was a Marin resident. I living with Stan the Snake in Mill Valley. The phone call sounded pretty urgent. I needs must go at once and immediately to the Marin Humane and adopt Tulip.
So I did.
She was one very bouncy dog. Border Collies are fast, intelligent, playful, and full of energy. Tulip bounced off the walls, overflowing with zest and high spirits. I wondered if Adrienne knew what she was getting into. The Humanes helped corral Ms. Tulip into a large crate, and my Ford van was just the ticket, driving back to Mill Valley. Great Success!
Adrienne sighed with relief on the phone, and came immediately, where she and Tulip met again with great rejoicing and bouncing, and then they drove away. On her way home, Adrienne dropped by to see Celina, recuperating in the new apartment.
Tulip was crazy for Celina and Jessica, too. And ever since, when Celina comes to visit, Tulip goes bananas with joy. The first people she knew, on leaving her vagabond existance, were Adrienne and Layla and me and Celina and Jessica. We’ve been her pack ever since.
Tulip used to come visit me at Stan the Snake’s. She went with me to the high-school track up the street, where we ran around and around. I brought a chewy rope and she’d grab it and try to stop me running. Hah! No way, doggie! There were balls to throw and fetch and grass to romp, and running and running and running. I found it work; she seemed to fly just for the fun of it.
Adrienne reports that she hadn’t known what she was getting into. Tulip’s puppy energy was boundless; three times daily Adrienne took her to Point Isabel to run alongside the bay. Adrienne took her to work; Tulip tried to herd people walking the sidewalks. Adrienne brought home supermarket boxes; Tulip shredded cardboard throughout the house. Tulip chewed the wiring off the car radio. I replaced the radio as a birthday gift; the new wiring lasted two days. Tulip ran, played ball, barked, and pranced. The Chinese landlord said, “Dog mus go!” Adrienne and Layla moved next door, where the landlord was Danish.
Adrienne and I drifted apart for a while, and I didn’t see Tulip much. Then later we found one another again, and before long Adrienne invited me to leave my rustic trailer park, to come and live in San Anselmo. I did, and there was Tulip. Tulip thought it was just great. It was just swell.
Our pack lived there for years. How the years melt away! I took Tulip to the ball field near my office. Using a gadget, I could throw the ball far, far away. She’d gallop and fetch it and come happily back for another go. But I noticed, now, at age seven, she didn’t have the same eternal energy. After a while, she flopped onto the cool grass, and rested. Then we went home.
A couple of years ago, Tulip displayed a mysterious discomfort. Her neck was stiff, and sometimes she slipped. Arthritus, said the vet. Now she was nine. Slowly, she was growing old, as we watched. Still playful, and sometimes playing jokes on Adrienne and me, smiling often, but now for the first time she napped during the day.
In San Anselmo we had no yard for Tulip.
She was too prone to go a-sniffing so we couldn’t let her run loose, and besides, that’s how dogs get killed by cars. On the front lawn, on a long tie-out cable, she’d lie like the sphinx, with our cat Percy lined up alongside her, and together they’d watch the traffic passing by.
Of course, people who came walking with dogs got an earful as she lunged and snarled at these evil dogs who were attempting to walk upon our grass. People sometimes complained, and I thought it excessive, but Adrienne said, “It’s her lawn. They don’t have to walk here.”
OK, then.
Adrienne dreamed of a fenced-in yard for Tulip.
For five years, Adrienne and I had scouted for a place to move. We’d visited Nevada, Washington, Idaho, Montana, and British Columbia. Some places might do, but we’d spent five years looking, and we hadn’t settled on a place yet.
I began to feel haunted by a disturbing thought. I wanted to get a yard for Tulip. But what if Tulip grew old, and died, and never had a yard? What if, good-hearted and loving creature that she was, she never had a yard of her own, because we took too long. She wouldn’t know she’d missed out. But I would know. And it troubled me, for in my mind’s eye I saw it happening that way, and it felt sad as whispers fading.
Adrienne didn’t believe me when I said we were moving.
I said the Spring; she didn’t believe me. Spring came and waned, and I wrapped up telephone lines and divested myself of equipment rooms in San Jose, Sonoma county, and Tiburon. I prepared to move. I was nearly ready, but Adrienne didn’t believe me. Then, in the Summer, we visited Mount Shasta, in the Northern California mountains, and we said, “That’s it.”
I told Adrienne that I’d need a couple of months to move. She didn’t believe me. But I packed the trucks and moved us, and there she was. With Tulip, and Percy our cat, in Mount Shasta on September the first, this last year.
As we got out of the car, Tulip pranced like a youngster, and sniffed at the fence. We went in through the gate, into our fenced-in yard. Inside the tall board fence, an apple tree, a pear tree, a holly tree, and deep green grass.
“Look around,” Adrienne told Tulip, “This is your yard.”
Tulip sniffed. Tulip investigated. Tulip rolled on her back in the fresh grass, kicking her feet.
I think she likes it.
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Lyon Street, San Francisco, 1990: Adrienne worked at the Fine Art gallery in Sausality, driving the surveillance vehicle to and from work. That’s what we called the grey Nissan Sentra, because I’d bought it when I was Dr. Detecto, the private investigator.
But fact is, there is a limit to how long you can sit in a grey Nissan Sentra, just surveilling. My limit turned out to be about fifteen minutes.
That’s why Adrienne drove the surveillance vehicle to work in Sausalito. We still lived in the fourth-floor garrett at Lyon and Oak, perched high on the corner overlooking the Panhandle Park, originally named because it’s like a handle on the pan of Golden Gate park further up the street. Later the Bored of Supervisors changed its name from Panhandle Park to Panhandle Park. It’s the same name, sure, but now it’s named after the bums that hang out and pester you for spare change.
So, we lived there beneath the gabled roof, high above Panhandle Park.
There was a Sunday morning, every year, when sleeping would become impossible, because as the sun was peeking through the high branches of the tree outside, we would hear, from the road below, a great murmur and clatter. Peering from our high windows, we’d see, spread out for blocks and blocks, the throng of runners in the Bay to Breakers race, as they ran in a chattering mob along the street and through our Panhandle Park.
It was very satisfying to make the coffee, staring bleary-eyed down through the branches, watching the runners and thinking how nice it was to not be among them.
Also entertaining were their bizarre costumes. Runners dressed as hot dogs or streetcars, and sometimes they were nude, except for the running shoes, of course. It must have really hurt, pinning the cloth number on, without a shirt.
And this morning, after the coffee had sped me up, I remembered that I’d promised to help Adrienne with the Chinese art dealer.
She had this customer in Hong Kong. It never seemed clear whether he was a collector, or an art dealer himself. His name was Stanley Ho.
As you know, China is on the other side of the planet. As we all learn when we are children, if you dig down through the earth you will pop out in China, where everybody is walking upside down. They must be upside down because anyone can see that we are right-side up.
Not only are they upside down, but they are sleeping in the middle of the day, and they are running around all during the night. Our day, and our night, I mean.
Now Adrienne was very happy about Mr. Stanley Ho, because now and then he called up the Fine Art gallery, and he would buy Erte sculptures. If you have been so fortunate as to have missed Erte sculptures, let me tell you that they are little statues about a foot tall, depicting mostly women in 1920’s or Art Deco garb, looking totally thin and blase from a long time ago.
Plus, they’re really, really expensive.
So it was just swell whenever Stanley Ho would call up the gallery and buy an Erte sculpture from Adrienne. There is apparently no end to the Erte sculptures. Like Barbie dolls or the science-fiction novels of L. Ron Hubbard, mere death of the artist seems not to slow production at all!
However, the problem was that Adrienne was supposed to telephone Stanley Ho. She had agreed to call Stanley Ho. She had attempted to call Stanley Ho. She had several times risen in the wee hours of night, so as to catch the daylight hours in China.
And each time, Chinese secretaries answered. They would mutter in sing-song Chinese, or in garbled English. But regardless of the conversation, never, never, never would they put Adrienne through to Stanley Ho. Never, never, never.
Adrienne had promised to call. She’d tried to call, over and over again. But she couldn’t get past the incomprehensible secretaries. It was like an impenetrable wall of singsong. Adrienne told me about this at great length, and last night I’d promised to help her.
And this morning, as coffee fumes cleared my brain, I realized it was time to strike, now!, before the Stanley Ho business office closed for the day!
And so I dialed the number in Hong Kong.
It rang.
It rang some more.
A diminutive female voice answered with some Chinese gobbly-gook. I interrupted her.
“Stanley Ho!” I said sternly. She chittered at me. I spoke louder.
“Stanley HO!” I said. She began talking again.
“Stanley HO!” I yelled furiously.
“One moment,” she said.
There was a pause. I motioned Adrienne over. I handed her the phone as a male voice said, “This is Stanley Ho, may I help you?”
Mount Shasta, in the kitchen, March 2003: “Why do good things happen to bad people?” Adrienne wails. She’s trying to get my goat, as my grandfather used to say.
She’s had trouble with her teeth all her life, whereas I have been blessed in that regard.
I have perfect teeth.
I know that I have perfect teeth because of what my dentist, Dr. Martin of Henrietta, Texas, told me, as I sat in his chair in 1960. “Open,” he said. He peered around.
“You have perfect teeth,” he said.
At that moment, and even now, I can think of no area in my life that seems perfect to me. Moments? Yes, moments were perfect. Moments of love, moments of passion, a moment when viewing trees on sweeping English hillsides that might have been Africa, a moment so late at night that the birds began announcing the dawn, a moment of clarity, a moment of dreadful realization. Yes, perfect moments, but no area of life that seemed entirely perfect … except now, as I realize that I have perfect teeth.
As best I know, I have never had a cavity. Oh, once in San Francisco, I went to a new dentist, who took xrays and then announced two cavities. Then he filled them and charged me money. I’d never had a cavity before, and I’ve never in 30 years since had another cavity. I believe that I had no cavity then, either. I think he either blundered the xrays and repaired someone else’s cavities in my mouth, or he just needed some money or practice, and I was the goat.
So now, in a vain attempt to get my goat, Adrienne is wailing, “Why do good things happen to bad people?” Ha! She’s annoyed because I have perfect teeth, and she does not.
While I am sorry that she does not have perfect teeth, I am glad for this one part of my life that has been perfect for almost 60 years. (I will celebrate my 60th birthday next month, so if you will be sending presents, please contact me for current shipping information, haw!)
And now, because you have been patient with my intermittent story-telling and lazy ways, you shall be rewarded with the inside scoop, that is, my secret method.
First, I must tell you that my mother, bless her heart, taught me how to brush my teeth and taught me that they should be brushed both in the morning and at night. Television ads at that time even touted brushing after every meal, but in my lifetime, only Dennis seems to do that.
My contribution to my mother’s method was to forget about brushing my teeth nearly all the time, and for all my adult life I still constantly forget to brush. Is my breath sometimes awful? Well, yes; so I am told. Adrienne calls me “camel breath” sometimes. I take it as a hint. I think this means I should brush and so it serves as a reminder. She is forever helping me in this way.
But, all in all, based upon the evidence I must conclude that the first key to having perfect teeth would appear to be avoiding brushing them. At least, that’s what seems to have worked for me.
Next, let us consider milk.
When I was a child, I grew up disliking only one food: milk. I begged coffee-milk by the time I was six, because it made the milk taste better. I complained about milk throughout my childhood. When I was thirteen, my mother finally told me I didn’t have to drink milk any more. No more big glass in the morning, hoo ray!
Ten years later, sitting in the restaurant at the Cabana Hotel in Dallas, I thought: Maybe I’ve been missing something, hmmm, so I ordered a glass of milk. It was evening, and dark outside the windows. The waitress, dressed much like a Playboy bunny, brought my milk. I contemplated it, and then drank it down.
And confirmed that I didn’t like milk.
So there you have it. Apparently, from everything that I can see, the key to perfect teeth is to avoid drinking milk, avoid brushing and flossing, and just leave your teeth the hell alone.
