A Dog's Life, Circa 1958

 June 20, 2004

(This article was written for a now defunct weekly publication at a time when our local municipality was debating new ordinances regarding dogs in the borough)

            My home town of the 1950’s was an eclectic mix of brick, stone and stucco homes, clapboard bungalows and the very occasional new ranch dwelling, all situated among a cross hatch of streets and sidewalks shaded by large, old, overhanging maples and elms.  Alleys dissected the large blocks of homes and these paths, seldom used by adults, were well traversed by us children, providing shortcuts all over town that we roamed on foot or on bike.  Our parents drove us nowhere – there was no need.  On endless Saturdays we could range as we pleased, far and wide in that town, crossing paths with one another and engaging in adventures from the Hill Theater on Market Street for a matinee all the way up to the park and beyond to run mad cap through the woods or track turtles in the Conodoguinet Creek.  And as these adventures unfolded, our dogs often accompanied us or ranged on their own, for they labored under even fewer constraints of authority, and so I recall on occasion while bumping my bicycle over some gravel path in a remote part of town, a fellow might call out, “Hey Mike, isn’t that your dog?”  And sure enough, leaping through a gap in a split rail fence was our squat, black, slightly plump, ageless mongrel whose lineage could be less easily traced than that of the elusive yeti, and whose breed was no more distinguishable.  We called her simply, “Puppy,” a moniker she carried from her weaning before my memory to the end of her days some twenty years later. 

            Puppy started a typical day arising from a carpeted floor to scratch at the side door and was let out to begin her route.  In a treatise drafted when I was about nine years old, entitled “Observations on Dog” I recorded her wanderings one day after surreptitiously following her.  Out our back gate, across Mr. Meck’s yard and into the alley and thereby to Mrs. Burkholder’s back porch door she ambled.  She had a knack of reaching up to pull down the simple lever handle to the screen door and thus gain entrance to the porch where Mrs. B. usually left a bit of her breakfast in a dish for her frequent visitor.  Finishing this repast, Puppy then traipsed across the alley, behind the Myers’ two story brick house, and around to their side porch.   Here she encountered a similar and no more confounding screen door which she easily solved.  A slow amble across the living room and the front hall and thence to the kitchen and, finding no one home, she devoured the remains of the Myers’ cat’s most recent meal. 

            With utter calm, for this routine had been completed countless times previously, Puppy sauntered back out through the door through which she entered to continue her morning escapades.  The next hour or so was consumed with bush sniffing, occasional bathroom breaks wherever she liked and finally a rest in the shade of a pin oak situated by a home several blocks away.  On week days, when my older brothers were in elementary school about a half mile from our house, Puppy began to get restless at 3 p.m.  Mom let her out and then she ran, on a mission, through Meck’s yard, into the back alley, across the Myers’ yard and thence 27^th Street.  Here she might cross paths with Valentine, the Keller’s English Spaniel, but if so, she paid little heed as she made a beeline the final two blocks to her designated waiting spot on the corner of the Schaeffer School playground, right by the backstop of the baseball field.  And there she situated herself until Larry and Jim made their way up from school minutes later, to greet her warmly but with little fuss, for meeting your dog was as common as saying hello to the milkman or bread man or any of the other vendors or service persons who were so ubiquitous in those days. 

            The point of this rambling is that nobody cared.  Children and dogs wandered the streets, alleys and yards of my town in the 1950s with carefree impunity.   Dogs were welcome in our own yard as long as they were friendly and treated my father’s prize rhododendrons with respect.  Growlers and diggers were shushed of with a few well-chosen epithets and a waved broom or rake.  The lesson learned, they either didn’t return or minded their manners next time around.  But nobody really cared.  There were no angry phone calls to neighbors, the police weren’t notified.  I can only imagine the incredulous expression of the police officer on duty, telephone to his ear, upon hearing a complaint from a citizen of that day that the neighbor’s dog was in their yard.  He would have been no less amazed had the caller complained that the sun was too bright or the birds’ chirping too loud.  I recall a day when Puppy had ensconced herself smack dab in the middle of the intersection of 26^th and Lincoln – the corner on which our house sat.  Officer Wally Hoag happened by in his police car.  (“Occifer Hog,” my father titled him after he gave my dad a ticket for running a stop sign late one night when the sign seemed pointless to my ever-practical father on a traffic-free, midnight street.)  He brought his already puttering cruiser to a halt in front of the dog and gave a tap of the horn, which was enough to make Puppy get up and saunter unhurriedly back to the yard.  Officer Hoag resumed his slow patrol and gave a little wave as he passed, no more concerned about the dog than he would be a rabbit scooting across his path.  Nobody cared. 

            Today, the town of Pen Argyl is embroiled in a debate over where dog owners should be allowed to walk their charges.  I’ve read the newspaper articles and shaken my head over the vehement arguments and apparent acrimony involved in the debate.  I empathize with both sides.  Dogs provide companionship, enrich families and form an important part of our social fabric.  Yet, nobody wants the neighbor’s dog pooping in his yard, or urinating on his bushes.  Each side has a valid argument and, really, I don’t know how I would solve the dilemma if it were up to me.   I suspect that Pen Argyl, PA in the 1950’s was very much like Camp Hill, PA that I described above.  What comes into focus as I study the debate is how our world has changed since then.  I don’t miss the closed-minded social thinking so ingrained in that time.  Camp Hill was lily white and steeped in prejudice in the 1950’s.  But to navigate through the 60’s race riots, the assassination of a sitting president, an endless war and a moral revolution we had to give up our innocence.  I miss that innocence.  Yes, much of it was my own but some of it, I believe, belonged to the time.  And it saddens me so, when I get lost in a reverie of those days, and ponder that my children never got to experience that time, that innocence.  And what’s more – and this is truly silly, but it’s true nonetheless - I even feel sad for my dogs.