MORE DOGGEREL

Zip Greenlaw

I don’t own a dog. At the age of 50, just when I thought I was getting over the hump called mid-life, I developed an allergy to animal dander. Now, in my family ancestry, dogs are considered one of the staples of a happy life; and if not dogs, cats. So, in a sense I’m a black sheep among a clan of dog and cat lovers; namely, my Scots ancestors, the Greenlaws,  from whence my mother came. Growing up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, we always had dogs around, tunneling holes in the backyard, sitting on the back porch barking all night, and, finally, one cocker spaniel named “Tee-Nap” that accompanied the family in a crowded Ford coupe all the way to Diddy Wah Diddy, my father’s name for California.

Great Uncle Ed Greenlaw was the consummate dogologist and ‘though he wasn’t a misanthrope, he was fond of quoting the maxim, “The more I know of man, the more I love my dog.” He immortalized his fox terrier in a pamphlet published on his own printing press entitled Zip Greenlaw, Autobiography of a Fox Terrier, that is now in the archives at Louisiana State University. Zip was a regular terror of a dog who often fought with the cat next door named Kitty Gamard and was taught to squeeze a water pistol loaded with water at grand nieces (mostly me) when Great Uncle Ed didn’t want to be disturbed. Great Uncle Ed also suffered from a disease called “children intolerance,” sorta’ like W. C. Fields. The water pistol incident is the only live memory I have of  Uncle Ed and his dog, which I immortalized (?) in a poem that I published in Grandma’sGood War: A Verse Retrospective of the Forties.

I try to avoid dog licks, pounces, and other shows of affection because such expressions usually cause me to sneeze, get teary-eyed, and itch all over. However, in cases of emergency I’ve been known to get within barking distance of short-haired hounds, namely dachshunds. These hounds exhibit a certain intelligence that Great Uncle Ed would appreciate and write about if he were still alive.

For example, the other day I visited a friend in my official capacity as a deacon in the Episcopal Church (an office which Great Uncle Ed wouldn’t have respected because he was an agnostic and spent an hour every Sunday parked in his Cadillac, waiting for his daughters to emerge from an Episcopal Church in New Orleans, Louisiana... or on some Sundays, he simply watched the trains go by until decent folk emerged from their Sunday pews, when he’d say “They’ll be all right on Monday”). Anyway, one Thursday, I put my Communion kit under my arm and took Communion to a close friend who has been confined indoors for a spell. Her constant companion is a miniature dachshund named “Gus” (oddly enough, the name of Great Uncle Ed’s cook!). Most of the time when we visit, Gus climbs into a basket in front of the hassock where my friend stretches out her legs and after playing “Man’s Best Friend Is His Dog” on his squeak toys (shades of the old water pistol), he goes to sleep for the duration of our visit.

On this particular Thursday, while I'm  preparing my miniscule altar and placing the vessels on it, Gus pulls the blanket over his head, I suppose, so that he doesn’t have to listen to the prayers – or maybe, smart dog that he is, he’s going into his closet and praying like Jesus enjoined us to do. I finally reach the part where I lift the paten with wafers on it and announce, “The gifts of God for the people of God.” When I moved to put the Communion wafer in my friend’s hands, Gus burst from his hideaway under the blanket and came over to the hassock, panting for his turn to commune. The most irreverent laugher ended our home Communion service. My friend explained to me that Gus appears at the card table on cue when the ladies put down their cards and bring out the dessert tray because they always include treats they’ve prepared for him. I had committed the sin of dog omission!

I wouldn’t want to leave anyone out of the Eucharistic Feast, even dogs to which I am allergic, so this morning after Eucharist at St. Mary’s, I asked for an increased supply of Communion wafers. Dogologists that the Sisters are, they approved an extra wafer for my next visit with Gus. I could hear Great Uncle Ed laughing up yonder.

Here’s a portion of the bit of doggerel from Grandma’sGood War:

IN DEFENSE OF DOGGEREL

It began with Great Uncle Ed who called himself a dogologist,

a man who perhaps needed the help of a skilled psychologist,

Great Uncle Ed whose favorite quotation

was the maxim of long duration,

“The more I know of men, the more I love my dog,”

a sentiment reinforced by the writing of a daily log

that became autobiography of a dog named Zip Greenlaw,

a fox terrier that would hold a water pistol in his paw

and douse children if they came near Great Uncle Ed,

more evidence that Uncle meant what he said

about not liking humans as much as those canine,

claiming Greenlaws could speak Dog, a language more divine

than, for instance, his son-in-law who spoke with vigor

about work toward a Ph.D., short for “post hole digger.”

“If one made a hole to let something out,”

Zip wrote, “then without a shred of canine doubt,

one has also made a way to let something in,”

citing his backyard hang-out as evidence of this spin.

Zip claimed that a Ph.D. impeded rather than protected,

that man could live a life more inner directed

without advanced degree, a hole in the yard being a feature

he could wiggle into but also be forced out by larger creature…”

That’s only a portion of the piece of doggerel, but you can imagine the rest of the dialogue. The above essay about dogs is what happens to poets on a rainy day on The Mountain, but doggone, it’s the closest I can get to a creature that the One Whom None Can Hinder keeps from my “spoliation” by endowing me with an allergy to our canine friends.

ON THE USE OF THE COMMON FORK AND KNIFE

It all started with a remark made by Lady Mary, a daughter who is being urged by her aristocratic parents, the Crawleys, to marry an heir to the family fortune in the televised Downton Abbey series. The scene is a country home in Edwardian England, circa 1912, and the discussion centers on a gentleman who is sole heir to the kingdom of the Crawleys. After watching the heir’s table manners, Lady Mary remarks that she could never marry a man who couldn't hold his fork like a gentleman. “Oh,” I said to my friend who was watching the series with me: “I know how Brits feel about Americans’ table manners, and I wrote all about it in my column, Cherchez la femme, back in the 70’s.”

At noon today I unearthed a compilation of the columns, which I once planned to showcase in book form, and read aloud the column involving the use of the common fork at the lunch table. After reading it, I decided that there could be some Downton Abbey fans who would enjoy the revised column I'm posting below:

Good manners rank with good grooming and good behavior. And if you don’t believe that adage, ask the British. They’re sticklers for the proper use of china, glass, and silver. I know because I underwent considerable teasing about my American style of eating when we lived abroad.

The problem had to do with the common fork. One noonday at a church camp in the Garden of Evangelism in the Elburz Mountains near Tehran, Iran, I was casually cutting a piece of meat with knife in my right hand and fork in my left. When I transferred the fork to my right hand to devour the meat, I found several Brits looking at me and snickering. “Oh, you Americans,” one of them commented. “You always do things the wrong way—and certainly the hard way.”

If you’ve never tried eating continental style in the manner that my British friend recommended, you must try forking food “the proper way,” as the Brits say. You spear meat with you fork and cut it off with the knife. With the meat fixed on the prongs of the fork (prongs down, prongs down) you place the knife blade underneath. The Brits say, “A slight twist will help to fix it firmly.”

Don’t stop with the meat. You also pile a small amount of potatoes and vegetables on the topside of the prongs, along with the meat. The heavily-laden fork is then conveyed to the mouth by twisting the wrist and raising the forearm slightly. The biggest “no-no” is that of changing hands. And you aren’t supposed to stick your elbows out and raise your entire arm either.

I worked on this fork operation for the ten days of church camp I attended that summer of 1974, but I was still viewed as a clumsy fork user. “Why?” I asked my British friends, “why isn’t the fork used to scoop food when it is fashioned with a gentle curve in the middle for holding food?” Well, they didn’t know, and no amount of researching turned up the answer either.

Actually, mention of the fork in literature dates back to the 11^th century when a lady journeyed from Byzantium to Venice. She married a rich Doge, Domenico Selvo, in 1070. The first person in history to mention forks was an Italian named Saint Peter Damian. He wrote that this Doge’s wife from Byzantium did not touch her food with her fingers. She carried it to her mouth with certain gold, two-pronged forks she had brought with her from Byzantium. At that time, people were shocked by the lady’s extravagances, and very few people followed her example.

Well, forks aren’t everything. The Brits at the Tehran camp didn't know how to eat watermelon southern style. They tried to cut the melon in dainty snips just the way they cut meat. “Look,” I told them in my best Louisiana drawl, “watermelons are to be held. Put down those forks and knives and watch me.” I grasped a large slice of melon with both hands, lowered my face, and zipped through the choicest pulp, swooshing the melon from one side of my mouth to the other.

“But what do we do with the seeds?” they asked. Would you believe that there are now Brits who returned from their stint in Iran to live in places like Sussex, London, Surrey, and Buckinghamshire who mastered the art of spitting watermelon seeds through their teeth almost forty years ago?

Yes, I know good manners are as important as good grooming and good behavior, but we Americans also believe that good digestion is vitally important. And how can you digest food properly if you’re uptight about conveying food on a heavily-laden fork to the mouth?

Just between us, in that seed-spitting contest, I was lucky to get one watermelon seed through my teeth with the first shot (which landed in the lap of the Anglican minister who was director of the camp). And, truthfully, I always eat watermelon with a knife – sometimes with a fork.

SAFE (?) CYCLING

Ready for another ride on the Pink Flyer!

Most people who have been cyclists can tell you the exact year they learned to ride a bike. I was seven when I attended a birthday party in Lake Arthur, Louisiana where the most important moments of the party weren’t cake and ice cream or opening be-ribboned packages – it was the opportunity given each child to try out their cycling legs. I don’t remember what the bicycle looked like, but I do know it was an adult bike (bikes with training wheels were unheard of in the 40’s), and I balanced myself and wobbled off on it at first try, experiencing the exhilaration of what I imagine a baby bird feels when she makes her first flight. The year was 1942.

Almost seventy years later, this past Christmas, I received a new bicycle, a gift from my oldest daughter Stephanie, who had called me daily before Christmas Eve, asking, “Are you sure you want a bike for Christmas? You could break your bones? All the ones with foot brakes are really ugly anyway. You are older, Mama.” Well, despite threats that she would give me a bike so unattractive that I’d be embarrassed and give up the idea of riding a bicycle again, she made sure that the bicycle was a beauty. It’s a pink and white Schwinn, complete with luggage carrier and a bell on the handlebars, super “stop quickly brakes” (more about that later), and white sidewall tires. It’s a real wowser! Christmas Eve, the family, including my great-grandson who can’t walk yet, gathered on the drive to watch me pedal off on this pink baby. “You looked good,” they unanimously declared, and I felt strength surge in my legs and arms, assuring them I would cycle faithfully.

Well, rain has fallen, temps have dropped and risen, cloudy days have passed, and every evening since Christmas Eve, I have lingered on the glassed-in porch and eyed the pink and white Schwinn. The porch contains a Granny rocker and the pink bicycle, and they seem to symbolize two choices – choose senility in the rocker or choose life by riding the bike. Finally, yesterday, I strapped on the sinister Darth Vader-like black helmet and took off. No cape fluttered in the wind, I wore no metal breastplate or leather undersuit, but I resembled the Phantom Menace looking for a victim to run over as I raced with the wind down the runway of the drive. No family members presented themselves to see me take off, and I accelerated easily on the first mile around the neighborhood. At one point, after I had negotiated a curve, I took my hands off the handlebars to see if I could stay balanced (I rode without hands throughout my teens). That feat only lasted two seconds before the bike began to wobble.

Three of my favorite birds, purple/black crows, circled above and cheered me on. “Connie Carpenter (gold medalist )?” the first bird asked. “Nah, Rebecca Twig (silver medalist),” the second crow jeered. “Nah, Sandra Schumacher (bronze medalist),” the third bird said. Then they began arguing among themselves about whether I was in a “road race” or a “time trial,” and I left them appraising the quality of my ride. “It’s a cinch she won’t join 92-year old Eileen Gray when she carries the torch in the London 2012 Olympics torch relay races,” I heard them agree as I sailed around the corner near the apartment complex. “Well, she has aged, but like Eileen, she was a WWII cyclist too,” the kindest of the ravens declared.

On the second mile, I ran into my handicap – a golden colored Shih Tzu, weighing in at eight pounds (otherwise known as a lion dog in China and a descendant of the Chinese wolf, but really a very small dog with a ferocious bark). All eight pounds ran to the curb and snatched at my blue jeans, breathing heavily (these dogs develop breathing problems at some time during their lifetime) on my tennis shoes, but I pedaled free and dared it to follow me by touching my hand to the Darth Vader helmet as if invoking a curse.

When I had pedaled for twenty minutes, I made a perfect turn into my drive and arrived at the glassed-in porch, braked quickly and fell off, my legs becoming entangled in the pedals. I landed on my Darth Vader cybernetic right arm at the elbow where blood began to flow as if I wasn’t fooling anyone about having a cybernetic right arm. I looked out at the street where one of my neighbors had stopped her SUV at the end of the drive. “Are you o.k.?” she asked, watching me attempt to disentangle my legs and come to a sitting position. I was determined for her not to see my bleeding elbow and flattened out on my back, then did a fast sit up. “Just braked too quickly,” I replied, waving her away with my left arm. She didn’t budge the SUV until she saw me walk to the door of the glassed-in porch. No blinds were raised in neighboring houses, no fire truck or ambulance arrived, and after I had calmed myself in the Granny rocker on the porch, I headed to the icemaker to freeze my wounds.

In an e-mail to my most caring Bishop yesterday, I mentioned the fall, and he fired a message back this morning, asking, “May I enquire how long it has been since you rode a bicycle?” I figured that I gave up the sport in 1984, the year that the three women mentioned by the crows won the Olympics.

I know, I know, when a horse throws you, climb back on. Maybe tomorrow. Today is the Sabbath, and I believe in a day of rest. But the Pink Flyer will ride again.