Yes! The 4th of July is here tomorrow, and me and the family will be hanging out with friends. We’ll eat all the holiday staples; chips, dip, burgers and hotdogs. But this year, I’m telling you, we need to add an item to the Independence Day menu. And that my friends, is a Chopped Cheese sandwich. A New York deli staple since I’ve been here, and if you don’t know what it is, you need to know.
And when it comes to the 4th of July, my dog thinks that this is the day that the world is coming to an end.
Here is the dog, and she came with me to do the Alt Side Parking this morning. She has a dog bed in the car, as we take her on roadtrips, and the car bed makes it easier on her. Anyway, I didn’t feel like leaving the dog alone at home while I moved the car, so she came with. All she did was lay there, looking at me, wondering when we were going to go some place.
The other thing about this morning is that I found an old pair of pants that I had forgot that I owned. It’s a pair black colored pants that I believe I bought for puppeteering purposes. For whatever reason, these pants got lost in the shuffle, and this morning I found then again. They had been hanging in my closet for so long, the pants had a line of dust on the hanger fold. I easily brushed them off, and to my surprise, the pants fit. (Maybe I am losing weight?) I used to wear black clothes often in my deep and dark theatre phase – you know, when I was a real misunderstood artist and acting was the only thing that would save the world – but since moving to New York, I have actively gone out of my way to wear as much color as possible, and most of that color is blue or navy. But today, with this rediscovery, I decided that I would go forth with black pants today, and I already feel more somber and serious.
I learned last night that the actor, Joe Don Baker had passed away. He is most famous for his role in “Walking Tall” and in the MST3k world, he will always be our “MITCHELL.” Yet, for me, Joe Don Baker was a good old solid character actor. He was a Texan, went to the University of North Texas, served in the Army, and went to New York City and became a member of the Actors Studio. He worked solidly his entire life, usually playing heavies in TV and movies, but he was also in comedies. Hell, was in three James Bond movies, playing two different characters. He was a good guy who did good work, and was very entertaining. So, thanks Joe Don; you will be missed.
Apple picking is hokey, corny, and a sad excuse for city people to play farmer. We drive way out to the country to go to a “farm” and then pay to pick apples, which half of them will rot in our homes as we try to figure out what to do with 10 lbs. of apples.
I have a fraught relationship with apple picking, but after nine years of it, I have come to love this part of our Fall tradition.
The first time I went a’pickin’ was when the kid was a baby, and the “farm” was this almost amusement-park-of-a-place why out in the sticks of New Jersey. It took like thirty minutes to get into the place, the parking was so bad. The line for tickets was long, and then when you got in the joint, all the trees had been picked over. (There were pony rides!) And leaving the place took an hour. It was like leaving a rock concert, but with way more produce. I felt silly being there, like I was being conned.
The next time I went was when my parents came to visit New York, and were staying upstate, as they were traveling in a motorhome. My wonderful wife found an orchard not too far from where my folks were staying. That was a way more enjoyable experience. It wasn’t crowded, lots of apples, a large orchard to wander around, and most importantly, the kid had a good time. With the exception of the Covid Years, we have gone back to the apple farm year after year.
And as each year goes by, I start looking forward to it, more and more. It has become our tradition, and an activity that we can yardstick our year, and also gage how much the kid has grown and changed. It’s also the gateway into Autumn for us, as the drive takes us out of the City and into the woods of small town upstate. The changing leaves, and Halloween decorations sprinkled about every corner. Maybe it wasn’t as cool as it was last year, and the leaves were more yellow than any other color… but Fall had arrived for our family.
People love animals, especially dogs. If you have spent all of three seconds on my blog, you’ve seen my picture with our dog. She’s a mix, small, smells bad, has bad teeth, hates every other dog on the planet, but is wonderful with people. We joke that our dog won the Doggie Lottery, as she got a family that totally lets her be herself, and is even rewarded for it. Our dog doesn’t do shit, other than shit, pee, eat, sleep, occasionally play, and sleeps some more. And she’s wonderful and we love her.
I bet if you have a dog, no matter how odd or awful that dog is, you’re going to tell me that dog is wonderful, awesome, and you love them unconditionally. AS YOU SHOULD! Dogs are great, and we are so lucky to have them in our lives. And if you haven’t seen it:
No, this is more about how Cricket did one thing that no politician, or leader, could do in this country. Cricket united us. On both sides of the isle, we all came together to say that killing a dog, an adolescent dog, for the crime of being “untrainable,” is wrong. Our dogs share their lives with us, are there for us when we need them, they give so much love, and can help us in many different ways.
Rest in Power, Cricket. In your very short life, you proved that there are still issue that we all can get behind.
This is my dog, and if you met her, she would love you.
It is hard to pack an emotional pay off in under 1,000 words. Not impossible, just hard.
Joanna Theiss does this rather masterfully in her flash piece “This is a Dog,” which is one of the best examples of a story paired down to the essential, the marrow of it, and at the same time, leaving enough gaps for the reader to fill in, thus allowing the story to come alive, and have an impact.
The story is about a dog, if you couldn’t figure it out. And it’s about loving another, and the hope that you did right by them, maybe never knowing for sure.
Theiss does use a story trick of starting each sentence with “This is…” I’ve seen this type of trick before, from armature writing groups to the pages of The New Yorker. Yet, I will say that Theiss does it correctly. The “This is…” creates a rhythm to the story, helping it charge ahead, and as the piece progresses, the “This is…” begins to take on different meanings from the narrator. Also, Theiss structures her story very well, dividing the piece in five sections, each with a specific narrative function, that not only builds to the climax, but lands perfectly at the conclusion. And that conclusion also nicely ties up the “This is…” motif, making the whole story feel that we have completed a journey with the narrator, who has been changed forever by the events.
