{"id":5748,"date":"2020-01-24T07:32:08","date_gmt":"2020-01-24T15:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/?p=5748"},"modified":"2020-01-24T07:32:11","modified_gmt":"2020-01-24T15:32:11","slug":"dogs-reigning-in-my-mind-part-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/meditations\/dogs-reigning-in-my-mind-part-18\/","title":{"rendered":"Dogs Reigning in My Mind (Part 18)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n

In John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of\nWrath<\/em>, The Joad family takes only one of their three dogs (all\nnameless) on their journey of America diaspora west. They leave the\nother two behind with a neighbor who hadn’t lost his farm to the\nrapacious banks. Not long after the the Joads depart, their dog gets\nhit by a vehicle and dies. They don’t grieve. They move on. They\ndon’t even bury it. They should have taken all three dogs. The story\nmight have turned out better. Interestingly enough, members of the\nnew American diaspora unfolding have dogs, a lot of dogs, and would\nnever leave them behind. What changed there? There’s a novel in that\nquestion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who wouldn’t have wanted to be Jennifer\nBeals’ dog in Flashdance<\/em> and get to watch her work out every\nday? Jesus Christ. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometime in the mid 1970s Steve Martin\nperformed a stand-up routine on Johnny Carson’s The Tonight Show\n<\/em>for an audience of four dogs\nthat were on stage with him. Before the performance, Martin asked\ntelevision viewers to bring their dogs over to the television so they\ncould watch. He waited a bit, then said, \u201cIf you’re a human being\nyou won’t get the jokes.\u201d He then began his routine, and within\nseconds, three of the dogs trotted away, but Martin kept on going.\nIt’s a very funny thing to see a human comedian bomb in front of\ndogs. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the third grade, I fell off a shed\nand broke my left wrist. As some sort of therapy, my parents\nsurprised me with a beagle. I named him Tex and he became my best\nfriend, boon companion. Until we finally confined him to the yard, he\nwould often follow me to school as I walked, wait outside the\nclassroom door, and then I played with him at the recesses until we\nwalked home together. My most indelible memory of Tex involves leaves\nand football. I would spend hours raking leaves into giant piles that\nI arranged to resemble an offensive line in football. Tex would stand\non the opposite side of the piles. I would toss him a hamburger chew\ntoy, he would snag it with his teeth, then bolt through the piles\nlike the fat fullback he was. I would play middle linebacker, meet\nhim in the hole, tackle him, and boy and dog would roll and roll on\nthe grass, and the leaves would fly and fly. He never fumbled. After\nthe game, I’d rerake the piles and then we’d go at it again. I\nsuppose this wasn’t the most efficient use of the time spent raking,\nbut in reflection, maybe it was because I am writing about it now and\ncrying. We played this game this for years. He knew it was coming\nwhen I started raking and waited with the hamburger in his mouth.\nWhen he died my freshmen year in college, he was buried in the yard\nwith that hamburger. Raking alone the next fall produced some of the\nsaddest moments of my young adulthood. Raking hasn’t been the same\nsince. I once told a woman I was dating that I grieved more over the\ndeath of Tex than the death of my grandfather. She later cited that\nas the moment she knew she was going to dump me. Another woman I was\nsort of dating once suggested that my three dogs sleep in my truck\noutside her home. It was over right there. Another woman I dated once\ntold me it would never work between us because I had three big dogs.\nPerhaps the truest rock song about dogs is \u201cGonna Buy Me a Dog\u201d\nby the Monkees. A man gets dumped by his girlfriend over the phone.\nShe shreds him with invective. What does he do?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nI’m\ngonna buy me a dog [A dog, a dog! Why?]
‘Cause I need a friend\nnow. [Say, you need all the friends you can get]
I’m gonna buy me\na dog,
My girl, my girl, don’t love me no how.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nHaven’t\nso many of us been there in one way or another? \u201cHey Bulldog\u201d by\nthe Beatles is a curious member in the temple of rock songs about\ndogs. I have listened to it dozens and dozens of times and don’t even\nthink it’s really a song about a bulldog, but rather the bulldog is\nthe narrator of the song and making observations of human beings. Who\nknows? This interpretation could change if I ever listen to the song\non magic mushrooms. \n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, The Joad family takes only one of their three dogs (all nameless) on their journey of America diaspora west. They leave the other two behind with a neighbor who hadn’t lost his farm to the rapacious banks. Not long after the the Joads depart, their dog gets hit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5749,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[203,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bonnie-and-clyde-files","category-meditations","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5748"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5748\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5751,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5748\/revisions\/5751"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}