December Dogs, Too

A few days ago, my puppy pleasures were nearly complete – or so I thought. Too many posts and too much time staring into my gadgets, and now more cuteness added to the canine collage posted on December 19th here on Doug Hugs. I have lots of friends with, well, dogs … and they love to show them off on social media. This month, in particular. The holiday of all holiday months when a particular jolly guy shows up a week before a new year. Everyone is camera happy and the pups are overcome with outfits, impromptu poses, and loving glances from around glittered trees. All is growlingly, belly-tickingly satisfactory.

As it should be, I suppose. Everyone – including four-legged family members – should take this time to enjoy the holiday. Even Abby:

I’ve written wonderful words about her before today. She is in my life usually every week or so for a small amount of time. No, not an internet sensation by any stretch … this picture is of my own doing and she has no YouTube channel with treats of followers. I consider her part of my extended family and am the only one within her circle to frame her beautiful snoutful of charm online. This step is her happy place as I visit her humans. Every time, holiday or not, her happiness surrounds my legs and wiggles down through a white, rapidly moving tail. She stays warmly welcoming throughout my visit – always vigilant. Always kind.

With Abby, I’m adding to the copious amount of dog faces in the galleries we see walking virtually through the halls of our hand-held museums. These aren’t the velvet poker playing, cigar-smoking Bulldogs of our past. Today’s stars are elegant snow hoppers, slinky couch-dwellers, and sophisticated fur walkers who’ve matured into the 21st century lifestyle. They’re demanding food online that has a higher nutrition content than ancestral meal chunks full of filler. Special outfits, walking gear, colorful personalized leashes and customized treats round out the experience for some. Haircuts are more expensive and tailored to suit while nail cutting, veterinarian trips, and cone shaming, regrettably, still remain a constant.

Yes, they’re dogs and we love them. Chloe, Charlie, Abby, Jasmine, Vito, Sammie, and others like them in my life – they’re around my feet in the 3-D museum of my reality. Others I really enjoy seeing peek their way up from the bottom of my phone as I scroll down through the December days. Whether in a heap of trouble or just being cute, these knee-bender friends look to us for companionship, love, friendship, and a home in which to enjoy their lives.

I think, from what I see, that is being accomplished. So, so many brag on about their dogs … for good reasons, I may add. Look at those faces and attitudes. There was a whole lotta peaceful pleasures going on inside those brains when pictures were gladly taken and posted online. Can’t say for sure there were any words or structured sentences, but who cares? Sometimes words aren’t necessary.

Pictures are worth a thousand of them, anyway. December dogs know this, too. You could learn a few lesson from them while sitting around the tree opening your presents. They’ll be enjoying time with you – just being with you. Take a picture … then another. Enjoy them as well.

I’ll take my pleasure one silent, smiling picture at a time remembering Shopan who sits in frame overlooking our December festivities. His picture’s worth a lifetime of memories as the jolly holiday gets underway and a new year is just around the corner.

All will be belly-tickingly wonderful soon for us, too. I promise.

Ghee What a Ghal!

Ghosts and ghouls are past us by about two months during which gharries possibly arrived carrying ghastful gharials.

Admittedly, I knew three words starting with “gh” used in the above paragraph. The other two? Yep. Google. By the third grade – or sooner, if the chalk dust and marvelous marker smell has cleared my mind – I also knew these are the consecutive 7th and 8th letters of our 26 developed from the Etruscan alphabet sometime before 600 BCE (also Google 😄). It takes a bit of brain power to engineer opening paragraphs around the letters G and H and I’m not sure this little engine in my skull is puffing up hill effectively. Most likely won’t know until I’m looking down over my connected paragraph cars to the conclusion caboose. If everything is intact and there’s been no derailment, the G&H Line has been a success!

All I’m sure of is those two letters meant something to me today – and that’s all that really counts. So, hop aboard and let me tell you about my nice conversation today.

There’s a station in life where we stand. These weirdly words slapped on us are defined by society and there’s not much that can be done about it. We’re either married, or not. A pastor, or not. Have 12 children, one, or none. Maybe you’re one who employees hundreds, an employee, or not an employee at all. Ok, so we can do something about them, right? Get married, employed, or pregnant if so desired … but all these do is change the station. You’re still assigned a station in life, regardless. The life train comes and goes – in and out of your station … day after blessed day. We have to find a way to enjoy that station upon which we stand. Somehow enjoy the freakin’ show we see as people walk up and down, across and between our paths every. Single. Day.

I had that experience today. The happy human I conversed with is enjoying her station in life. Circumstances being what they are, I’m sure she would hope for better days ahead. Being careful on details for obvious reasons, I will bind this together like a coal car and engine gracefully tying their couplers for a wonderful journey ahead.

We met for less than an hour this morning. She, a purveyor of a service I needed to tie up a loose end for a holiday present, and I talked over health, religion, family relations, politics, music, and oddly enough, a little witchcraft. There is a small, friendly, historical connection between us as our pasts intertwine ever so gently. I do believe our chit-chat session could have extended beyond the time we spent before I had to leave for other engagements. This was, simply, a nice conversation with a nice, sincere person. Someone who is face-to-face with some real things as she stands on, and in, her station.

I drove away thinking about that. Moments later wrapping some presents … thinking about … that. Boy, what a waste of time arguing with a “friend” on Facebook when that time could be better spent talking to someone about their life’s struggles in person. Laughing (six feet away) from a relative stranger who needs a good joke rather than sharing a goofy meme seems to be far greater. In-person vs. Out-impersonal?

I know it’s tough, probably. My business affords me the chance to interact daily with folks. Without it, especially during this pandemic when we’re forced into distancing and lock-down situations, I’d be lost. Today’s wonderful conversation may have been a one-off’er because of the holiday need. Regardless, she certainly stepped up and lifted my spirits this morning while giving me a little hope in the midst of this rather bleak 2020.

She’s definitely on the right track for what she believes in and who she trusts. Her station in life is on pretty solid ground from the little I know, anyway. She believes in herself and trusts in herself to make the best decisions for herself. I’d say that’s a pretty good place to be. From where I stood, “Ghee What A Ghal” is pretty darn accurate…

…and her initials – engineered to be identical to the company name emblazoned on the side of her engine that CAN – is all the information you’re going to get as you watch her get up that hill. The “G & H” Line proudly steaming ahead as an example to all of us of what humanity, grace, and honesty looks like in the midst of life not being particularly kind.

Yes, two letters and not much of a start to any words, really. Didn’t expect them to be. Then again, I didn’t expect to be talking about broomsticks and Wiccans this morning, either.

December Dogs

A little thumbing down my Facebook screen this morning. Every ten or so pictures. In between Christmas lights, cookies, snow, and silly jokes, … these guys and gals. December dogs. I could’ve filled the screen with more. Additional canine poses and smiles were plenty as I saw one after another touted in various poses for all friends to see. Yes, December dogs for now, but furry huggles year-round.

The urge to show them is, happily, too great for most. I completely understand. If our Shopan was still alive today, I’d have him posing his stupid little self in front of my Samsung as well. We have oodles of pictures from years ago, of course. Silly ones. Serious ones. This, from a gallery we should have titled, “Sit there and just do it … please!” done over a decade ago, is why I still miss him:

He didn’t want to pose, nevertheless did it anyway because he was – at his heart – a good dog. Years removed from losing him, and six days away from Christmas, this is the 19th day of December, 2020. A year when all of us get up every day looking for the comforts in life, dogs certainly add a joy to what’s been subtracted from us. Even when they’re not here anymore, the memories are.

Shopan was not a nice puppy. Stubborn? Oh, there’s no subtlety in that word. He’d grimace and growl at the least suggestion of behavior modification. His idea of playing? …Well, there was no puppy play, really. Maybe we misunderstood the rules as first time human owners, I guess? He squatted like a girl when doing #1 which, to me, suggested a slight confusion in his boney brain. Why not lift a leg like a normal boy puppy would do? Dunno. Maybe he saw “XX” dogettes doing their thing and his “XY’s” never fully engaged?

To add to the Magic 8-ball of his life, the vet coded his lineage some weird tag opposite of what he ended up being: 1/3 shepherd colors, 1/3 collie bark, 1/3 Rottie head and fully all ours from the time we picked this little runt out of the litter at the humane shelter back in 1995. This all black little fur guy sat in a newspapered, cold corner of an impersonal pen, all by himself, probably picked on by his bigger sisters – the ones who were most certainly going to be chosen first. No wonder he had a chip on his shoulder. I would, too. We had no choice.

After a week or two, he was certainly ours. Pain in the ass that he was, we were committed to the daily tasks of dealing with him. He didn’t pick us up. We leaned over and plucked him out. We started to believe he scammed us and, uhm, plucked us over … if you get my drift. He didn’t, of course. Dogs don’t have that ability to think resentfully like us stupid humans. They’re go along to get along creatures. Shopan was scared, confused, probably hungry, tired, unsure of us and very, very young.

All of us weathered the puppy years. Adolescent ones, as he grew long legs and his torso elongated, began to see a settling down of his excitability. Full of energy but unable to have stamina, which was an enigma until later years – he played flying squirrel across and around all the furniture. Yes, our bad for allowing him to be a circus performer especially hoping on top of my father’s dining room table when visiting one fine day. As an aside, I found this to be absolutely the funniest, most highly amusing, uproariously tear-filled moment in my life, btw… You need to know my dad’s history with dogs, I guess, to understand. (He wore oven mitts and used spatula-prods while disciplining dogs – as the poor puppies hid under sofas). No human or animal was ever harmed. Dad loved all our pets. He was frustrated at their lack of respect for his rules … oh, and he was heartbroken, in his own way, when they died…

As I was when we had to take Shopan on his final trip to the vet. He and I bonded during his last years. I came home in the mid-afternoon hours most days and we spent some time together. These moments weren’t the crazy times similar to all the years prior. Unlike the trips in the car when he nervously paced back and forth, slicing his paw on the iced snow covering one winter, patiently seeing his way through an amateur Westminster Dog Show video production, protecting his owner while walking in the neighborhood one spring day, or getting a “conveyor belt” dog wash to fool his grandmother, these were simple half-hour snuggles. The moments I miss now. Silent breathe-in, breathe-out seconds when we connected our lives in a way that surpassed the stresses of my life and let him know I was there for him. A person, a being, a friend. Someone in the cage with him who understood.

We drove home with only his leash. His last moment here at the house was one paw resting on the bottom step as if to say, “Thank you.”. He had enough energy to squat near the steps one last time as his heart failed him. Still couldn’t lift his stupid leg. For a puppy-guy who lived 13 years, he did all right by us. He put up with our failings as owners and we put up with his headstrong you-chase-me ball game in the yard. I made him do silly games and he made me a better person. We were good for each other.

That’s what pets do. That’s why my friends post pictures of their furry loved ones – especially now, in December. A holiday month for most. We feel so connected to everyone including our pets. Goldfish, parrots, hamsters, caribou, snakes, … whatever fills your stocking. Hug them extra tight.

I have pictures of Shopan. For now and the distant future, this is my December dog I’ll remember for the remainder of a year when all seems to be a bit disjointed. Yes, I enjoy all the Facebook pictures. Yes, I certainly enjoy Chloe – the rather cantankerous puppy across the street who seems to enjoy upsetting me off my rocker lately. I have this ability with puppies. Go figure. Chloe, as was the case with Shopan, will eventually come around. All these little pelted pissers do … someday.

The someday is special. In the meantime, if you have a December dog, give ’em a hug for me. Don’t make that trip back from the vet, with leash in hand, regretting any connecting moments you didn’t embrace.

Thankful Three

As has always been the usual treat, my dad brings way too much ice cream through the door. This. One gallon. Filled to the creamy brim with three distinctly delicious flavors – chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry – it is the all-in-one creme de cacao in his visiting glass of Neopolitan courteousness; Also, an over-sized contribution to the holiday to match his need … a need to belong. We welcome him in. Every time.

A holiday, three times a year event it is. Very seldom does he come by other times. Christmas, Easter, and today – Thanksgiving.

He’s an independent sort of guy, but wants to be a part of his family. We’re small since mom died eight years ago. Seldom will he turn down an invitation to be around, yet hardly ever he’ll call with an idea to go somewhere with us. Relatives are distanced or gone, for the most part, and his friend circles are closing in, save one who stays in touch every day. Walks are twice per day, routines are vital, health is extremely important, and my relationship with him is better than ever.

Today. Over the threshold, once again, one-hundred twenty-eight ounces of ice cream for three people. Again, it didn’t matter. An army of one-thousand Navy Seals or two toddlers skirting along in diapers, a gallon of neapolitan from the local market was coming through my front door today. This year, 2020, changed perceptions about a lot of things, for sure. When it came to my dad standing in front of an open freezer door with cold, frozen dusty air blowing across his masked generationally worn face? … everything had to remain the same! Good for him, I say. Good for him.

He came into a house where we positioned the seating arrangements 6-feet apart. A masked hostess greeted him at the door, took the precious gallon and placed it in the freezer next to all our frozen pizza slices, removed ham, potatoes, and green beans from the oven … and we ate. Three people, two sofa denizens and one love seat, tv tray dad discussed politics and grammar during a pandemic, Thanksgiving day, meal.

My dad, a retired English teacher, could probably correct some errors here. Surely he would find some. During dinner, we talked through gerunds, whom vs who, subjective vs objective pronouns, and why television personalities talk bad English, according to dad. He has his political views, I have mine … interrupted by the fortunate forgetful nature of his short-term memory as we’re on opposite sides of the national chasm.

Pumpkin pie time (whipped cream) with ice cream and coffee (the last of those three for the other two, not me … not a coffee guy) came quickly as it doesn’t take much for three folks to eat meat, a starch, and veggie. Ten minutes later, dad headed out the same front door he came in only one hour before – in tow, a partially empty one-gallon, three flavors tub of ice cream. As has always been the usual treat, my dad brings way too much ice cream through the door.

We never know, do we? This has been the most unusual Thanksgiving. So far, though, I’ve had my thankful 3’s. D-A-D; Chocolate, Vanilla, and Strawberry; Ham, potatoes, and green bean casserole; My wife, dad, and I together.

Small? Of course. Had to be this year. A short visit? Yep. Dad had to get his second walk of the day in.

We’ll wait until Easter to see what the world looks like. It’ll be different than today, probably. Numbers will hopefullly come down as a vaccine could be among us. A new administration, a new attitude, a new way of life? Who knows?

Tell ya what. When Easter is flipped over on the calendar and we open the front door, dad will be standing there with a gallon of ice cream. Assuming he’s eaten all of what went home today by Christmas, that is.

Prince Demetrius and the Leaves of Loretto

It’s a few short minutes drive up the mountain from home, but I don’t go often enough. Prince Gallitzen State Park. Named in honor of Prince Demetrius Gallitzen, a Russian nobleman turned Roman Catholic missionary priest who founded the nearby town of Loretto, the park is home to Glendale Lake – a 1635 acre man-made lake. This state park is near PA Rts. 253 and 53 close to Pattton, Pa. This picture is very familiar to my friend you’ve met here before … a skilled photographer with an eye for the beauty around us.

This location is familiar to me. Our family went there early on in my life. A significantly larger group than today’s remainder met there for smotherings of hugs and non-judgmental gatherings back when divorces were less common and death seemed less familiar to me. A space where old and young kin folks talked, laughed, and played games around checkered tablecloths on splintered tables, and swarms of bees chased us little ones into the woods. Bees that, unfortunately, are as distant as the memories I have to this day.

My dear friend sometimes captures these memories of mine as I look at her pictures she posts. This one above is one of many from her collection labeled, “Glendale Roadtrip 2020”. Her gift is walking along our memory lanes with us without knowing she’s beside our footsteps.

There are times she strides alone, I suspect. She, like all of us, need those days when no company is desired. A picture taken during a solitary saunter can mean a lot when life requires self-reflection from a pond of either regret or satisfaction. Her roadtrip reasons are for her, alone, to settle into her personal picnic basket of emotional needs. She feeds her soul without the need to justify any fruitful endeavor to us. We’re just the fortunate viewers of her gift.

This photographic journey trip to a princely park is worth writing about because today’s breaths are better spent on leaves and a wonderful friend’s keen eye than election what-ifs and presidential prognostications. A small, quaint Loretto, Pa, leafy fall picturesque lake only a few minutes drive from the hustle of Altoona is soul settling – even if only looking at it on a Facebook page. A railroad city where empty buildings sit – in contrast to empty park benches quietly remembering a family’s reunion forty-five plus years ago – can never replace the images in my mind. A grandmother, with her arm around me, saying, “Look at the lake. Isn’t it beautiful?”

Why, yes it is … yes, it is.

Over the benches and through the leaves, we see the reflection. Black against blue is my favorite contrast in all her photographs. There are no people in this photograph like there are in my memories stirred up by looking through her album. Granted, you can’t see my mom with her frosted 70’s hairdo, or my now bald dad with a crew cut back then. My sister, brother, and I together throwing a football, frisbee, or half-deflated ball from the Murphy’s five-and-dime store is a memory once locked up, but free again. Uncles, aunts, cousins, … all mostly removed from my life now due to unpreventable reasons. Events the trees at Prince Gallitzin and Glendale have seen over and over, family by family, generation by generation.

Life moves at a remarkable pace. Quicker than I ever imagined years ago staring out over a lake years away from my first driver’s license or first date. This is where life is.

I don’t know where you are, nor do I know what ever happened to Prince Demetrius. A quick Google search would turn up the answer, but I like the mystery of not knowing. We shouldn’t want to know everything even if everything is accessible and at our fingertips.

The mystery of the leaves of Loretto included.

I do know I have my memories and a well-respected friend who helps me reach back to grab them every now and then with her pictures.

Life is a shared journey. A Roman Catholic missionary, local State Park, picture, friend, my past, and I – all on the bench beside a calm lake are we … bound together by that unbreakable understanding that life is one picture at a time. One day at a time. One virtual hand-hold together down memory lane.

Today is a good day.

There Are Bones About It

This wonderful boney poker game is on display in a local neighbor’s yard. I’ve driven by at least ten times but haven’t been able to stop. Due to cars behind me occupied by drivers with impatience coursing through their veins, opportunities to take this picture have been rare – save one. Today was the day. I grabbed carpe diem by the ankles of its Latin legs and tackled it to the pavement.

What fascinates me the most here is a passerby – whether by car or foot – cannot, by any means, determine the gender or political leanings of either the four players or the dealer. Yes, THIS is my take-a-way from the hard work and imagination of a neighbor I don’t know. No player uncomfortably seated or unhappily handed has the slightest poker tell as to his/her liberal, conservative, Democrat, Republican, Independent, or Don’t Give a Sh*t agenda.

This isn’t a normal Halloween season. Every opinion, FB post, family meal, and/or spooky social commentary is sitting around a political or Covid table. Make no bones about it. Even I can’t drive by fabulous femurs without first figuring a way through this maze of viral thoughts and political posturings.

It’s where we are. It’s the hand we’ve, strangely enough, dealt to ourselves.

Today is October 31st and the t.v. in front of my 7 a.m. eyes is broadcasting prognosticating pretty polling predictions that may – or may not – come true next Tuesday. I’m weary from the deluge of information. Steve Kornacki, analyst usually seen on MSNBC, is quite fascinating. He presents state-by-state stats, digs into data, and creates charts I used to find artistic, colorful, and pleasing. Being Saturday morning, I don’t expect to see him until Monday … a few days into a new month, past this Halloween day, and in the midst of a barrage of election, bad-to-the-bone, 24-7 broadcasting.

This isn’t to fault them. I guess we need to be informed voters. But, how much is too much? If you don’t know Mr. Trump or Mr. Biden’s life and times by now, right? We need to know results over coffee on the 4th. That’s all we require at this point from our media. Who won … and who lost. Turning on my smart phone or the t.v. next Wednesday at, say, 7:12 a.m. – exactly 4 days from now – to see a President Trump or Biden – would be just fine by me.

… and it isn’t just the President-to-be.

It’s all in the cards we’ve been dealt and are holding – and, by extension, have allowed our representatives to play our hands. We voted in the senators who will lose, or retain, their seats, because of performance. The down-ballots are important, too. There are more than a handful of Republican senators who are in marginal to major danger of losing their seats because of their proximity to President Trump’s policies and personality. Thinking the ace-high flushes they held last year would be gold, they called a bet against the straight flushes held by their opponents …. and are in trouble. Jamie Harrison has a great chance against Lindsey Graham in S.C. He had a 17% chance in March and, now, is in a statistical tie with a guy who needs to go. According to Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan newsletter that tracks election forecasts, ” … other Republican senators who could lose their seats to Democrats after Election Day are: Arizona’s Martha McSally, Colorado’s Cory Gardner, Georgia’s Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, Iowa’s Joni Ernst, Maine’s Susan Collins, Montana’s Steve Daines, and North Carolina’s Thom Tillis.”

These are scary times that surpass even the gallows of the eeriest of medieval Halloweens. A once-in-a-century health crisis with a national case record of 99,000 just yesterday. We are not carving our pandemic pumpkins properly. They’re ugly. Everything is a mess.

Apparently the mail is messed up with (R) judges changing the rules while ballots have already been sent under a previously agreed upon, publicly posted, set of guidelines. Some states are allowing ballots to be counted after Nov. 3rd, some aren’t. All this gleaned from the news I’m frustrated with, anyway.

Today we walk through the last day of the 10th month of 2020. Three years, two-hundred, eighty-four days into the Trump presidency and here we are – holding the hand we dealt to ourselves. This is either to our fault or merit. I’ll let that decision up to you. I have election-weary.

After I vote in person, I’ll be changing my party affiliation. Make no bones about it. I haven’t changed who I am at all. What’s changed is who I choose to represent me going forward. There are no perfect systems or people, but there are expectations that can be strived for and I want those I vote for to at least try to get there on my (and our collective) behalf instead of feeding their own self-interests.

When I do eventually leave this earth and sit my boney self around a poker table with my friends, I want to leave this place better than the way I left it. I can’t do this alone. Any national policy worth dreaming up requires help from a person in politics and the news to help circulate the message. Can’t coat this fact with any less sugar than that.

For today, Halloween 2020, masks are more important than ever. Sugared candy IS important for socially distanced kiddos if you can somehow swing it for them. Wash your hands frequently in person (and from the news the next few days) … the former is for the safety of your neighbors and the latter for your peace of mind.

If we play our cards well, all this can turn the tables around. There are bones sitting about that require a sane, but fun, game of who has what. We make our bets on the future and hope for the best based upon what we know now. That’s all we can do.

You’re doing good and I’m glad you’re sitting here with me. Flesh and all. Happy halloween.

Simply, Roberto Clemente

He would have been 86 years old this past August 18th had a plane crash not taken his life. Simply one of the greatest baseball players to ever play the game. Period.

I’m a little too young to have ever seen him play in person. There aren’t enough film clips from the era to satisfy my curiosity about how his grace looked on the field. My dad, and older friends, who did see him play at Forbes Field in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, recall an athlete of refined talent, strength, and finesse.

I can’t conceptualize a man of such natural aptitude in this day of superficial sports strength. As well, I can’t imagine a more genuine human sports figure than this man who died in a DC-7 crash while being a true humanitarian – leaving Puerto Rico on a chartered flight after supervising aid delivered to earthquake victims near Managua. He previously chartered, and paid for, three planes to deliver much needed cargo to the area and felt a fourth was required – with his personality aboard – to oversee the operations due to possible seizing and profiteering by the local military. He lost his life on December 31st, 1972 one mile off the coast of Nicaragua … and the world lost a true humanitarian.

All this after collecting his 3,000th hit on September 30th, 1972 … his final at bat.

The baseball card above is my all-time favorite of his. It’s as beautiful outside as he must have been inside. The 1972 Topps baseball set ranks high among the enduring memories I have of my childhood. When I think of class and charm in the baseball card collecting world, these early 70’s little pieces of cardboard always hit a homerun with me. Yes, that is such a hobbling analogical word to use … and I apologize for the lame insertion, but baseball cards back then represented really cool bubble gum, easy to open wax packs, and trips to the local store up the street to buy some candy and, of course, cards. Simple.

Harry. He was a taller, stout man. Then again, for a little guy like me, everyone was. My sister and I walked along a dangerous two-lane road – not knowing it was, of course. Cars whizzed by at higher rates of speed than we knew was allowed by law as we entered his store, laughingly dusting off our white socks. Harry’s display case on the right always had the candy and the boxes with unopened packs of those great smelling cards inside. To the left sat soda bottles, bread, and newspapers we had no interest in reading. The object was to quickly throw our change on the counter so he would know how many packs of cards we could buy. He was gentle with us, but stern with math. Not a quarter more, or less, garnered us favor no matter how many times we visited his little store a quarter mile up such a treacherous road we had no business walking along.

Once back home, the little brown bag opened dreams. My sister and I quickly ran our little fingers down through the wax seal to open the packs that, seconds earlier, gently fell out of the bag. We knew, even then, to be extra careful at the start. Now, I would jam those same cards into my bike tires within the hour and she, being my older, wiser, thinking-ahead sibling, carefully placed sharp four cornered gems into a box for safekeeping well into her fifth decade of life. Today, I live in regret (happily throwing away my youthful gem-mint perfect rookies of hall-of-fame players / retirement money into ten-speeds and concrete walls, while she, never mind …). Regret can be a strong word. I absolutely loved my childhood, baseball card days … and I adored the 1972 cards. They were the charm during some of my rough years in life.

… and I harbor no regret. That was a tinge of sarcasm above. Today, my collecting is active and engaging. The hobby has changed. Kids don’t walk beside dangerous roads with excitement – hoping to see the next, new design on the cards.

I waited with enthusiasm every spring. Colors, lines, team logos, spacing, borders … all artistically flavored in a card dessert for the eyes. In 1971, Topps baseball cards, however, were a delicacy disaster. Here’s the 1971 Clemente (bottom) compared to the 1972 design (top)

Isn’t this the most depressing card design ever? Ugh. That was the Edsel of the card collecting years. I figure the guy sitting around Topps just gave up. Saying, “Hey, I know what! … I’ll go all black on the border, with block letters for all the writing, and go get a beer.”, the head designer was probably one paycheck away from retirement and didn’t see the bad decision rounding third base. Ironically, the cards from this amass of mundaneness – if found in pristine condition – are the rarest due to the black borders. It is the most condition sensitive of all Topps sets and is huge – coming in at 752 total cards. A mint-9 Clemente, for reference, recently sold for $14,500. Still, I hate the design. And yes, no apologies for using hate.

Enter 1972. Low expectations when I opened the first pack. I imagine, now, the 1971 head designer was sitting on the beach sipping a less-than-well deserved cocktail as a newly appointed, forward thinking, awesomely creative, artistically pen-wielding sports lover took the helm. Imagined beauty. Essence at my fingertips back then. Out of the blackness into the light.

Comparisons of life to sports in words have made many writers millionaires. In reverse, many sports figures, who are already millionaires, have written words about life – as it relates to sports. The connection, in my world, has been – and is – at the end of my fingertips when I hold a single 2.5 x 3.5 inch piece of thin cardboard. My age doesn’t matter. My memories do and when I see something as beautiful as a 1972 baseball card, or the recalled vision in my brain of a much younger self sitting on a front porch with a small paper bag, I feel better about the present moment. A peace.

Probably the same feeling Clemente had boarding the plane knowing he did something nice, once again, for his people in Nicaragua. He was a hero. A true sports-man of his generation who knew his beauty. Someone whose legacy and honor has lasted well beyond that fateful last day of 1972. A year when artistry bloomed out of darkness in the card collecting world, but we lost a gentleman, a father, an athlete of refined talent who I never saw play.

This is ok in my world. I have card #309 to remember his strength and humanity – two qualities in life for all of us to remember when opening packs of kindness in our hearts.

Incredible Feat

6 feet. We’ve all known the rule for at least that many months as well. Completely unrelated, seventy-two inches just happens to be my exact height. One being a guideline for the pandemic of the century, and the other an out of control genetic mutation caused by parent’s wine-and-dine how-do-you-do nine months prior to my birth. Six feet, in both cases, not a bad thing. The former, presumably preventative, and the latter helpful when standing in the back of a crowded elevator wondering who just passed gas – by being able to recognized the face of the guilty party – is certainly socially advantageous.

There is something much better, however: a pair of feet. Especially, a pair of ankle-socked stompers wearing inexpensive Avias purchased in haste from Walmart … inexplicably, the most comfortable, casual shoes I’ve worn in a long time. Light, airy, invisible to the feet, basically no support except to my emotional well-being … this pedestrian pleasure pair is making strides in what I now know as a tootsie utopia.

Life never used to be this way at times. Pinches, heaviness, stiffness. All of us know the uncomfortable qualities we can assign to shoes not fitting correctly, right? Shoe horned into our lives were cheap leathers, knocked-off racks we knew existed for the benefit of parents discounting pennies at the end of a hard earned paychecks. Mom and dad had to do … what they had to do.

Those days long gone, but memories stay. Everytime a shoe turns against me, or a sock knot twinges in the toes, I’m reminded how difficult it must have been for my parents make the laces of life meet in the middle. Our Christmas bills lasted until the following April – just in time for the taxes to be due. Vacations the first week in June burdened my dad’s remaining summer days with work to pay off those sandy beach times.

Fall ushered in a schedule replete with the requisite pre-first day of school shopping outing for … school shoes. That 70’s, badly coordinated, brown polyester, bowl haircut era when my mom piled us into our paneled station wagon with the guarantee of a cheap McDonald’s lunch if we behaved. Every year, one after another, pair after pair, my siblings and I clanked into our homerooms satiated to the gills with 25-cent hamburgers and the finest, unfittest shoes a school teacher’s credit budget could afford.

More pairs I’ve owned as an adult than ever as a child, of course. Sneakers, loafers, slip-ons, slippers, flip-flops, casuals, tuxedo blacks, – all of them purchased without urging from my mom who isn’t around to share a McDonald’s meal with me anymore. Dad’s comfortably able to buy expensive shoes – or take any vacation he wants, with time and money no longer obstacles, but age and willingness is waning.

What steps are we taking in life with what we’re given? It isn’t just our feet, of course. So much we had isn’t here anymore. My mom. My dad. What I had. What they needed to do.

My inexpensive Avias are surprising. They are really comfortable. A big box store should not, by all intents and purposes, be providing me this level of ease for such a small price. I was not raised to believe low price equals comfort; Nor should I expect to receive this heavenly blisterless bliss in the future. I will take off these one-offs as long as I can count my blessings each time.

And I guess that’s what it’s all about. As Neil Armstrong so famously said, “That’s one small step for (a man / man), one giant leap for mankind”, each small metaphorical step we take forward in our lives is one giant step helping everyone else. Our life is a contribution to everyone else’s experience. The oft used “butterfly effect”.

Remember that the next time you find yourself looking down. I bet you’ve taken a lot of remarkable steps thus far to be where you are right now. Some not as comfortable as others, but you’re here and that is what’s important.

… and if I must say so, that’s some incredible feat, or two.

Where’s Chloe?

She didn’t intend to be Waldo. I have my doubts she even knows who Waldo is. I’m positive Martin Handford and Chloe never met, so, in my asking, “Where’s Chloe?”, there’s no chance Mr. Handford will answer, “There. Right there … snuggling in her pink doggie bed!”. His character Waldo (better known as Wally in North America) is a literary, spectacled success. I applaud the many hours, days, and perhaps years Mr. Handford invested developing his craft. Aspiring authors, painters, musicians, athletes, sculptors, designers, chefs, and inventors all … my best wishes for your success.

Chloe’s success is measured in smaller increments: pulling at socks while they’re only half way up my feet, eating ends off of papers in the trash, barking into closed doors … all the while refusing to pass through open ones, sneaking away with any shoe available, and crotch rocketing into my unsuspecting, shall I say, nameless part gentile. All of these a tiring day’s endeavors for a puppy of five months. Also, very exhausting for a neighbor willing to dog sit such an excitable little puggle. A neighbor who doesn’t have a cute little pink snuggle bed to rest away the stressors of the day.

Ah, but Chloe does … and isn’t that just perfect! (sarcasm). Good sarcasm … if that’s a thing.

Where’s Chloe? I’m constantly asking that question every day. There are moments it’s too quiet. You know what I mean. For a rug rattle consistent with puppy play to then disappear into silence means some paw-hankery is afoot. One certain Chloe is not considering her blessings, or reflecting upon the return of her owners. She’s usually up to something.

Today, the issue was a simple math problem. How to not keep jamming a simple blue racquetball into the corner seam of a sectional sofa … over and over again. Here’s the equation:

BALL + SEAM / SOFA = Doug’s Time × 4

I’m a busy guy these days, but my Waldo story is pretty easy. Facebook updates keep my datebook oars in the water with a pretty steady headwind. With that, my mornings stay predictable … unless there’s a little puggle under foot. Don’t mind the company. The occasional yip or brush against my leg is no more a distraction than the random thoughts bouncing around in my noggin.

When the blue ball comes kitchen knockin, however, it can’t be ignored. There’s traction in Chloe’s puppy play world and that ball will bounce an infinite number of times until it’s thrown back into another room. So again today, I obliged. I had to. This week, the lesser of the options between a set of big, brown eyes staring at me, and the paw-patter of feet across the wooden floor into our living room … until silence.

The deafening quiet when I knew she pushed the ball, somehow, up into the most remote corner of the sectional sofa. A crevasse so deep that her head – in combination with her extra long tongue – could not, under any law of physics, remove the deeply embedded ball. Silence.

I knew the dilemma. Fuzzy donuts, monkeys, head socks, bones, … none of these readily available toys within snouts distance were a sufficient replacement for the simple, old blue ball … in her mind. In my mind, why not, right? Any puppy mouth occupier that can keep me from interrupting my routine is gold. Not to be. Silence is too loud for my liking, so off I go to unjam the ball.

Oh, but this starts the game all over again. Cheery Chloe, with ball slightly larger than the very mouth it occupies, enters the kitchen once more – bringing with her a small shadow from the morning sun that beams through the window over the sink. It’s where I find myself looking down, again, at eyes I can’t resist. Three more times. Each time digging the same ball … out of the same seam … of the same sofa … for the same dog-ette.

… And then, later, she rests. After hours of other activities and fun frolicking – most of which I’m not aware. The working thing gets in the way of my Chloe time as she occupies her time with other humans. My time with her – as dog sitter – is limited to seven days now and will end in a few. Back to her true owners she’ll go and I’m sure she’ll be very, very happy to return.

I’ll be glad to hand her back, too. Not that I haven’t enjoyed her visit, mind you. Kinda like Grandparents “graciously”, and lovingly, handing over their grandkids back to the parents. Her owners are wonderful people, great neighbors, and terrific people-parents for Chloe.

For the next few days, I’ll suffer gladly through the minutes. Hopefully I won’t hear that silence too many more times. If I do, I’d like it to be less about a ball and more of her snuggled in a pink, warm bed.

At least then I would know the answer to “Where’s Chloe?”

Show Me Chloe

Ok. Since you asked. Here she is once again.

This past July 3rd, I introduced you to Chloe, the puppy. She’s still scampering about in our neighbor’s yard, tethered to – in her happy, anxious mind – a rather annoyingly short lead. If not, every whim and whisper nature provides would have her half way to China by now. This is her world. Her “I see Doug and want to give him something to think about now” universe.

“U” see, I am not one of those whims and whispers, supposedly. Considering I’m only that one letter off of being a dog myself, you’d think Chloe and I should be can-do, man-dog sypaticos. I think we are. She … well, … may think so. At this point, I’m not so sure. The occasional side belly rub gives me some puppy-cred and the special ball toy we play with at times sheds wonderful light into our friendship, however, one rather annoying habit of hers strikes a sour note across my heartstrings.

Being my canine neighbor across our not so well traveled avenue, she stares uninterrupted at me with her sad, wanting eyes. Beautifully calm, still, unwavering, she sits a few blades of grass from the edge of a driveway no more than 40 or so paces from my five trips back and forth on my property – loading the van for a day ahead. I always see her out of the cautious corner of either eye, depending upon which way I walk … careful to not make direct contact with the beast-ette. It is a dangerous game we play, for I would be tempted to smile uncontrollably at her insistence that I immediately approach – abandoning all my business needs at the moment.

One of any intelligence should assume, when finishing the task of loading said van with time to spare, this barely-out-of-puppydom would then welcome the very person to whom such pleas were advanced, right?

Uhm, wrong. That sounded too abrasive, so let me phrase it another way: Chloe wants me to come across and play a few minutes with her, then doesn’t, then does, then doesn’t, then …. you get my point.

If she wasn’t so damn cute and petable, I wouldn’t play this dog and mouse, “who wants to be a schmoozer the least” game at 7:30 in the misty morning. She sits there with her little butt barely on the grass, leash extended to its full length, … and brown marble eyes staring across like arrows lasered on my heart knowing full well I have a blue racquetball somewhere. Ah, the little, round rubber morning ball. It isn’t me she wants at all …

So, I walk “casually” over, pacing my step as if approaching a sleeping bear. Chloe’s tail wags a bit left and right and her, now, slightly larger than puppy body still does not move. Then, I’m only five steps away, a few seconds later, when she abruptly jumps a high-dee-ho, her leash gives a sigh, and back to the porch she runs … taking a path of zig-zags and look backs as if to say, “Ha! … gotcha again! .. Ya big sucker!”

There is no licky-lapy, jump into my arms, nice to see you moment. No Lassie found me alive in a well revelation. She runs from me the very moment I reach down – extending my arms to caress the very compassion and love she so wonderfully extended to me only seconds earlier. I, somehow, got a version of the smelly anti-dog plague in the four-point-six seconds it took to cross the street; OR, perhaps Chloe is playing a game, as usual.

It IS a game. A big freakin’ game I get sucked into almost every morning. Why? Because I’m me … and you’re you … and you’d do exactly the same thing, so don’t judge me.🤣

The lure of cuteness overload is exhausting sometimes. Chloe is sweet. I’ll continue to dance the dance. After a few minutes of rah-rah back and forth, she will settle and we’ll have some quality time as I sit on the stoop on her front porch. Ball-bouncy and side-scratchy morning time, as afforded by my nice neighbors, are important to Chloe, I guess. After all, she’s only a dog and I can only pretend to know what goes on inside her fuzzy little noggin’.

As for my brain, well, it’ll never change much. In about 45 minutes, the pleasure sensors will trigger puppy chemicals once again as I carry heavy coolers out from my commercial kitchen to the van. She’ll be sitting there … staring at me. Geesh.

I’ll not resist. Can’t. Show me Chloe and I’m done with all self-control. The best way to start any morning … on her terms, of course.

The dance begins …