bobofish
Two-fisted Atom Smasher
A couple of days ago, I found out that my best friend
was dying.
He's lived a long life, and done many things. The
stories he could tell would amaze all of you..the
loves he's had, the places he's been, and the people
he has known.
He appeared at my parents' house 14 years ago,
starving and in love. We fed him, we tried to find out
where he came from, but he had been abandoned. Charlie
was madly in love with Suzy, someone who was probablly
three times his size.
Charming as he was, she tolerated his advances,
although her heart beat for another.
We named him Charlie, after John Steinbeck's dog, of
whom he wrote in "Travels with Charlie." He had
appeared at our house as a wanderer, world-worn
and well educated by life. He knew every trick you could
ask of him, and had a presentation and demeaner no
worse than any cultivated royal of England or Monaco.
I called him Charlemagne, Charles the Great and Karl
der Grosse, although he weighed, when wet, less than
30 pounds. Sometimes I called him Senior Carlos, or
sometimes Don Senior in honor of his spanish heritage;
he is a Cocker-Spaniel.
As I think back, and nearly choke with sadness, I
realize that I have known him more than half of my
life; 14 years. Nobody knows how old he is for sure,
because anybody that looks at him thinks he is still a
precocoius puppy. Until a few weeks ago, he could run
and jump like any young dog, and if he saw a piece of
food in your hands, he could jump twice his height to
get it, sometimes without your intention of giving it
to him. He has always been as well something of a
sexual deviant, though in the manner of a deviant
European gentleman. I will never know what people
called him when he was young, nor whence he came,
because try as I might, he won't tell me.
When I was young, he was my friend. Not my only
friend, but always a friend when I needed him. I think
back to when I was 14, when I was filled with anger
and frustration from mistreatment by my parents;
sometimes I took out my anger on him. He never
deserved it, but he never complained. He would come
back to me and console me, though I had hurt him. No
matter what, he was always there for me.
He has only ever had one enemy in this world.
Midnight, the lover of Suzy (with whom he had one,
single love child) hated Charlie for his freedom, and
his rivalry for the affections of Suzy. Living in the
country, our dogs were chained. I insisted that since
Charlie came of his own free will, he should be able
to leave freely if he ever wanted to.
It was because of Charlie that I realized that animals
can play jokes on each other. He would always meet us
at the top of our driveway as we drove up, and run as
fast as he could down the hill towards the house. As
he got close to Midnight, he would run into Midnight's
chain circle, and just as Midnight was about to get
him, he would be out again. He taunted Midnight
mercelessly for years. Sometimes, if he had a
particularly juicy treat, he would eat it slowly, just
out of reach of Midnight's reach. Midnight would
eventually become so angry and frustrated that he
couldn't kill Charlie in these situations, that he
would collapse, drooling from exhaustion.
A few years ago, after I studied in Vienna for a time,
where I met my wife, we came back and lived in my
parents' house for a few months. She would go on walks
in the countryside, and Charlie would escort her and
show her the best and most beautiful places. Once,
very soon after we first came from Vienna, she was
walking near our house, on the main road. She had a
chocolate muffin in her hands, and as she and Charlie
were walking, she heard footsteps behind her. When she
turned around, she saw our neighbors' Rottweiler
stalking her. The Rottweiler had always been badly
abused and underfed by our neighbors, in order to make
her as mean as possible. Often she broke out of her
terrible cage and came to our place to look for food.
A few times I convinced her to let me pet her, and she
showed one emotion: surprise.
Often, she was so hungry that she was delirious, and
at those times, she was very dangerous. She would bite
our car tires when we drove by.
My wife tried to ignore the dog, hoping that it would
go away. She kept looking back to see where the dog
was, and every time she looked, the dog was closer,
and growled louder and louder, and more menacingly.
She threw the dog the muffin, which the dog gulped
with one bite, but the dog kept coming closer, and
started to foam at the mouth as she growled. My wife,
who had grown up with champion German Shephards and
even a Caucasian Sheppard (the dogs that guard Russian
missile silos, and hashish farms in the Caucasus) was
desperately scared of this dog, who was by this time
no more than 3 meters away, and getting ready to jump
on her.
She looked at Charlie, and in Polish said "bronie
mnie" which means "protect me," although Charlie had
never heard a word of Polish in his life. Charlie
looked at the dog, looked at her, looked at the dog
again, and then, the only time in his life, he
suddenly became truly vicious. He attacked the other
dog, even though it was 3 times his size; he jumped on
the dog, and they tumbled over and over for a few
meters...he then grabbed it by the neck, growling and
barking, and pulled the dog down the hill to her home,
shaking her back and forth; then he calmly, and
peacefully came back to join my wife, who was standing
in shock at what she had just seen.
He saved her life two other times that we know of, and
although I never again saw or heard of him being
savage like he was that day, he saved me once too,
from some people who wanted to rob me.
My parents had occasionally raised ducks over the
years, for no particular purpose.. One time they
bought some eggs, along with some eggs that our ducks
had laid, and they put a lamp in a box to hatch them.
Thus we had a box brimming over with ducklings inside
the house, by the front door. My mother always
insisted that Charlie live outside (he would sleep not
next to the door, but on it, in such a way that when
we opened the door, he rolled into the house). One
afternoon, a few days after the incident with the
Rottweiler, somebody left the front door open a few
inches. My wife was making some lunch (I was at the
university) and heard the door squeek open. A couple
of minutes went by, and she heard the ducklings quack
louder. When she walked around the corner form the
kitchen, she saw Charlie standing in the box of
ducklings, and she started screaming like a mad
woman, thinking that he was eating them by the
handful.
Charlie raised his head in complete surprise, and then
put his head back down to push the tiny ducks, maybe
one week old, one by one onto their bedding. He had
been playing with them, and not one feather was
harmed.
For years before that, duck eggs had been one of his
two great passions, along with digging for animals
which he never caught. Because of small predators and
raccoons, my parents had the idea of having the ducks
live in a pen raised off the ground a few feet, and
the ducks would always lay their eggs in what anybody
with a brain bigger than a bird's would know was a bad
place: on some fence wire that made up part of the
bottom of the pen. As a result, very often eggs would
fall to the ground, and Charlie would make short work
of them. Soon it got to the point that when we came
home, or were getting ready to leave, he would only
come to see us for a minute or so, before he had to go
check on his flock, and would return again and again.
They were as much his ducks as anybody's.
Knowing Charlie the way I know him, it would surprise
me greatly if he hadn't come to the conclusion that
those little ducklings in the box would one day lay
eggs for him. That he wanted to play with them, and
make sure they were comfortable and happy in their
childhood would therefore possibly insure a great
reward in the future.
I call him the "Dog of few Barks," because when he
does bark (once or twice a year at the most) it is of
the gravest, and most sincere importance. He has been
suspicious of men in uniforms, after the FBI raided my
parents house 8 years ago, because the wood stove in
the basement had a heat signature similar to that of a
marijuana lab.
Last summer, he found a chocolate bar that I had
forgotten on one of my bookshelves, and eaten nearly
the whole thing. When I woke up in the morning and
came to the living room of our apartment, I saw his
face covered in chocolate like a little boy's. His
eyes were big, and he was clearly stoned from the
chocolate. When I yelled at him and took the remaining
small piece of chocolate away from him, for the first
time in his life, he bit me on the thumb. To prove
that his 16 year old teeth were still in great shape,
he ripped my thumb quite badly, and I ended up getting
a mild case of blood poisoning. Other than that one
time, when he was stoned out of his mind, and the time
he attacked the rottweiler, he has never hurt anybody
in his life. (unless perhaps 14 years ago he was
running from a dark, and criminal past)
Charlie has impeccable taste in art, and a magnificent
sense for people. A simple way to judge a person's
intentions and character is to introduce them to
Charlie. If Charlie lets them pet him, then the person
invariably turns out to be good. No person whom
Charlemagne has ever rejected has ever turned out to
be good, no matter how hard I tried not to believe
him. If Charlie jumps onto their laps, it means those
people are incapable of wrongdoing.
Once, three summers ago, I visited my wife while she
was attending a summer immersion program in German, at
a local university. I had attended that program a few
times, and I wanted to listen in on one of the
seminars that day by a Turkish professor. Charlie and
I sat down, but after a while, he sniffed the air, and
decided to explore the building a little. As the
program was hosted by a local university, and attended
by students from all over the country, it was in a
dormitory. Charlie has always been well behaved, and
completely house-trained. After a few minutes, Charlie
returned calmly, and sat down next to me, where he
slept through the rest of the lecture on Anatolia.
An hour later, as a few of the students and I were
sitting outside smoking, one of the professors came
outside with a note. He quietly pulled me off to the
side, and could barely contain his laughter. On the
note, written by a horrible man, one of the students,
who was both a mysogynist and rascist (although he was
both gay and black-hispanic) it said simply "es gibt
Hundescheisse vor meiner Tür." ( There is dog-doo in
front of my door) Neither of us could contain our
laughter.
This man, in his late sixties, who had attended the
program for a decade (for no particular reason) had
been exhiled to a wing just by himself. His was the
only occupied room on the floor, because over the
years, he has tried to photograph men in the shower,
tried to molest women, and generally behaved very
badly. Charlie had pooped dead-center ON his door
while the man was in his room, and then quietly
returned upstairs. Not only were none of the
professors mad at Charlie, but all of them, when they
heard of this story in the following days, brought
Charlie treats, and congratulated him on his valiant
action.
The ceramics lab in the new art building at my
university was adjacent to the open room where the
senior art students' small studios were. All their
studio-ettes were open on one side, and faced each
other. Most of the students did not have any talent,
and I would guess that only a few of them do not
either sell insurance or coffee these days. At any
rate, many of them considered themselves to be
painters, and would proudly display their newest work
at the outside of their little cubicle, drying propped
up against the wall, facing outwards.
As I have said, Charlie has impeccable taste in art. I
noticed after a few days of bringing him into the lab
with me at night (I usually work at night) that he
spent a lot of time in the senior studio area. After a
few days, I became interested in what he was doing
there, so I quietly followed him one evening, without
him noticing me. What I saw was both so surprising and
funny, I could barely keep myself from falling on the
floor in laughter.
Charlie would walk up to each painting, proudly
"unintentionally" placed in a position of prominence
at the entrance of each studio-ette, and look at each
painting for possibly one minute. Some he would then
leave, but often, he would lift his leg, and pee
straight onto the painting.
He displayed refined, and educated taste, as the
paintings of any worth or potential were unbesmirched,
but the paintings of lesser quality smelled a bit the
next day.
Another, possibly unintended result of Charlie's
actions was that occasionally, the composition of an
acrylic painting or pastel drawing would be slightly
changed by his urine...I would hear the professors
critiquing the students' work the next day, and the
only painting they would comment positively on would
be the one that Charlie had "signed." The comments
were invariably something like "such a wonderful
effect, you've blended the colors in this particular
way...it's very evocative of something Paul Klee would
do today" The students of course would pretend that
they had achieved some affect on their own...they
never knew about Charlie and his artistic endeavors.
And I'm not joking.
I've known Charlie for 14 years, and he still
surprises me to this day. Until very recently, the
only sign that he was getting older was that his eyes
had quite bad cateracts, and that he was losing his
hearing. Often during our walks (at night, because it
was peaceful) he would lose track of me, even if he
was only a few feet away. If he didn't find me with
his nose, he would almost always run the wrong way to
try to find me.
One night, my other dog, a labrador, had run too far
ahead, and I didn't know where he was anymore. I
turned to Charlie and said "Charlie, do you know where
Skip is?" At which point he immediately took off
running straight to the park. When I caught up with
him, he was standing in the middle of the park,
holding Skip's tail in his mouth, trying to pull him
to me.
was dying.
He's lived a long life, and done many things. The
stories he could tell would amaze all of you..the
loves he's had, the places he's been, and the people
he has known.
He appeared at my parents' house 14 years ago,
starving and in love. We fed him, we tried to find out
where he came from, but he had been abandoned. Charlie
was madly in love with Suzy, someone who was probablly
three times his size.
Charming as he was, she tolerated his advances,
although her heart beat for another.
We named him Charlie, after John Steinbeck's dog, of
whom he wrote in "Travels with Charlie." He had
appeared at our house as a wanderer, world-worn
and well educated by life. He knew every trick you could
ask of him, and had a presentation and demeaner no
worse than any cultivated royal of England or Monaco.
I called him Charlemagne, Charles the Great and Karl
der Grosse, although he weighed, when wet, less than
30 pounds. Sometimes I called him Senior Carlos, or
sometimes Don Senior in honor of his spanish heritage;
he is a Cocker-Spaniel.
As I think back, and nearly choke with sadness, I
realize that I have known him more than half of my
life; 14 years. Nobody knows how old he is for sure,
because anybody that looks at him thinks he is still a
precocoius puppy. Until a few weeks ago, he could run
and jump like any young dog, and if he saw a piece of
food in your hands, he could jump twice his height to
get it, sometimes without your intention of giving it
to him. He has always been as well something of a
sexual deviant, though in the manner of a deviant
European gentleman. I will never know what people
called him when he was young, nor whence he came,
because try as I might, he won't tell me.
When I was young, he was my friend. Not my only
friend, but always a friend when I needed him. I think
back to when I was 14, when I was filled with anger
and frustration from mistreatment by my parents;
sometimes I took out my anger on him. He never
deserved it, but he never complained. He would come
back to me and console me, though I had hurt him. No
matter what, he was always there for me.
He has only ever had one enemy in this world.
Midnight, the lover of Suzy (with whom he had one,
single love child) hated Charlie for his freedom, and
his rivalry for the affections of Suzy. Living in the
country, our dogs were chained. I insisted that since
Charlie came of his own free will, he should be able
to leave freely if he ever wanted to.
It was because of Charlie that I realized that animals
can play jokes on each other. He would always meet us
at the top of our driveway as we drove up, and run as
fast as he could down the hill towards the house. As
he got close to Midnight, he would run into Midnight's
chain circle, and just as Midnight was about to get
him, he would be out again. He taunted Midnight
mercelessly for years. Sometimes, if he had a
particularly juicy treat, he would eat it slowly, just
out of reach of Midnight's reach. Midnight would
eventually become so angry and frustrated that he
couldn't kill Charlie in these situations, that he
would collapse, drooling from exhaustion.
A few years ago, after I studied in Vienna for a time,
where I met my wife, we came back and lived in my
parents' house for a few months. She would go on walks
in the countryside, and Charlie would escort her and
show her the best and most beautiful places. Once,
very soon after we first came from Vienna, she was
walking near our house, on the main road. She had a
chocolate muffin in her hands, and as she and Charlie
were walking, she heard footsteps behind her. When she
turned around, she saw our neighbors' Rottweiler
stalking her. The Rottweiler had always been badly
abused and underfed by our neighbors, in order to make
her as mean as possible. Often she broke out of her
terrible cage and came to our place to look for food.
A few times I convinced her to let me pet her, and she
showed one emotion: surprise.
Often, she was so hungry that she was delirious, and
at those times, she was very dangerous. She would bite
our car tires when we drove by.
My wife tried to ignore the dog, hoping that it would
go away. She kept looking back to see where the dog
was, and every time she looked, the dog was closer,
and growled louder and louder, and more menacingly.
She threw the dog the muffin, which the dog gulped
with one bite, but the dog kept coming closer, and
started to foam at the mouth as she growled. My wife,
who had grown up with champion German Shephards and
even a Caucasian Sheppard (the dogs that guard Russian
missile silos, and hashish farms in the Caucasus) was
desperately scared of this dog, who was by this time
no more than 3 meters away, and getting ready to jump
on her.
She looked at Charlie, and in Polish said "bronie
mnie" which means "protect me," although Charlie had
never heard a word of Polish in his life. Charlie
looked at the dog, looked at her, looked at the dog
again, and then, the only time in his life, he
suddenly became truly vicious. He attacked the other
dog, even though it was 3 times his size; he jumped on
the dog, and they tumbled over and over for a few
meters...he then grabbed it by the neck, growling and
barking, and pulled the dog down the hill to her home,
shaking her back and forth; then he calmly, and
peacefully came back to join my wife, who was standing
in shock at what she had just seen.
He saved her life two other times that we know of, and
although I never again saw or heard of him being
savage like he was that day, he saved me once too,
from some people who wanted to rob me.
My parents had occasionally raised ducks over the
years, for no particular purpose.. One time they
bought some eggs, along with some eggs that our ducks
had laid, and they put a lamp in a box to hatch them.
Thus we had a box brimming over with ducklings inside
the house, by the front door. My mother always
insisted that Charlie live outside (he would sleep not
next to the door, but on it, in such a way that when
we opened the door, he rolled into the house). One
afternoon, a few days after the incident with the
Rottweiler, somebody left the front door open a few
inches. My wife was making some lunch (I was at the
university) and heard the door squeek open. A couple
of minutes went by, and she heard the ducklings quack
louder. When she walked around the corner form the
kitchen, she saw Charlie standing in the box of
ducklings, and she started screaming like a mad
woman, thinking that he was eating them by the
handful.
Charlie raised his head in complete surprise, and then
put his head back down to push the tiny ducks, maybe
one week old, one by one onto their bedding. He had
been playing with them, and not one feather was
harmed.
For years before that, duck eggs had been one of his
two great passions, along with digging for animals
which he never caught. Because of small predators and
raccoons, my parents had the idea of having the ducks
live in a pen raised off the ground a few feet, and
the ducks would always lay their eggs in what anybody
with a brain bigger than a bird's would know was a bad
place: on some fence wire that made up part of the
bottom of the pen. As a result, very often eggs would
fall to the ground, and Charlie would make short work
of them. Soon it got to the point that when we came
home, or were getting ready to leave, he would only
come to see us for a minute or so, before he had to go
check on his flock, and would return again and again.
They were as much his ducks as anybody's.
Knowing Charlie the way I know him, it would surprise
me greatly if he hadn't come to the conclusion that
those little ducklings in the box would one day lay
eggs for him. That he wanted to play with them, and
make sure they were comfortable and happy in their
childhood would therefore possibly insure a great
reward in the future.
I call him the "Dog of few Barks," because when he
does bark (once or twice a year at the most) it is of
the gravest, and most sincere importance. He has been
suspicious of men in uniforms, after the FBI raided my
parents house 8 years ago, because the wood stove in
the basement had a heat signature similar to that of a
marijuana lab.
Last summer, he found a chocolate bar that I had
forgotten on one of my bookshelves, and eaten nearly
the whole thing. When I woke up in the morning and
came to the living room of our apartment, I saw his
face covered in chocolate like a little boy's. His
eyes were big, and he was clearly stoned from the
chocolate. When I yelled at him and took the remaining
small piece of chocolate away from him, for the first
time in his life, he bit me on the thumb. To prove
that his 16 year old teeth were still in great shape,
he ripped my thumb quite badly, and I ended up getting
a mild case of blood poisoning. Other than that one
time, when he was stoned out of his mind, and the time
he attacked the rottweiler, he has never hurt anybody
in his life. (unless perhaps 14 years ago he was
running from a dark, and criminal past)
Charlie has impeccable taste in art, and a magnificent
sense for people. A simple way to judge a person's
intentions and character is to introduce them to
Charlie. If Charlie lets them pet him, then the person
invariably turns out to be good. No person whom
Charlemagne has ever rejected has ever turned out to
be good, no matter how hard I tried not to believe
him. If Charlie jumps onto their laps, it means those
people are incapable of wrongdoing.
Once, three summers ago, I visited my wife while she
was attending a summer immersion program in German, at
a local university. I had attended that program a few
times, and I wanted to listen in on one of the
seminars that day by a Turkish professor. Charlie and
I sat down, but after a while, he sniffed the air, and
decided to explore the building a little. As the
program was hosted by a local university, and attended
by students from all over the country, it was in a
dormitory. Charlie has always been well behaved, and
completely house-trained. After a few minutes, Charlie
returned calmly, and sat down next to me, where he
slept through the rest of the lecture on Anatolia.
An hour later, as a few of the students and I were
sitting outside smoking, one of the professors came
outside with a note. He quietly pulled me off to the
side, and could barely contain his laughter. On the
note, written by a horrible man, one of the students,
who was both a mysogynist and rascist (although he was
both gay and black-hispanic) it said simply "es gibt
Hundescheisse vor meiner Tür." ( There is dog-doo in
front of my door) Neither of us could contain our
laughter.
This man, in his late sixties, who had attended the
program for a decade (for no particular reason) had
been exhiled to a wing just by himself. His was the
only occupied room on the floor, because over the
years, he has tried to photograph men in the shower,
tried to molest women, and generally behaved very
badly. Charlie had pooped dead-center ON his door
while the man was in his room, and then quietly
returned upstairs. Not only were none of the
professors mad at Charlie, but all of them, when they
heard of this story in the following days, brought
Charlie treats, and congratulated him on his valiant
action.
The ceramics lab in the new art building at my
university was adjacent to the open room where the
senior art students' small studios were. All their
studio-ettes were open on one side, and faced each
other. Most of the students did not have any talent,
and I would guess that only a few of them do not
either sell insurance or coffee these days. At any
rate, many of them considered themselves to be
painters, and would proudly display their newest work
at the outside of their little cubicle, drying propped
up against the wall, facing outwards.
As I have said, Charlie has impeccable taste in art. I
noticed after a few days of bringing him into the lab
with me at night (I usually work at night) that he
spent a lot of time in the senior studio area. After a
few days, I became interested in what he was doing
there, so I quietly followed him one evening, without
him noticing me. What I saw was both so surprising and
funny, I could barely keep myself from falling on the
floor in laughter.
Charlie would walk up to each painting, proudly
"unintentionally" placed in a position of prominence
at the entrance of each studio-ette, and look at each
painting for possibly one minute. Some he would then
leave, but often, he would lift his leg, and pee
straight onto the painting.
He displayed refined, and educated taste, as the
paintings of any worth or potential were unbesmirched,
but the paintings of lesser quality smelled a bit the
next day.
Another, possibly unintended result of Charlie's
actions was that occasionally, the composition of an
acrylic painting or pastel drawing would be slightly
changed by his urine...I would hear the professors
critiquing the students' work the next day, and the
only painting they would comment positively on would
be the one that Charlie had "signed." The comments
were invariably something like "such a wonderful
effect, you've blended the colors in this particular
way...it's very evocative of something Paul Klee would
do today" The students of course would pretend that
they had achieved some affect on their own...they
never knew about Charlie and his artistic endeavors.
And I'm not joking.
I've known Charlie for 14 years, and he still
surprises me to this day. Until very recently, the
only sign that he was getting older was that his eyes
had quite bad cateracts, and that he was losing his
hearing. Often during our walks (at night, because it
was peaceful) he would lose track of me, even if he
was only a few feet away. If he didn't find me with
his nose, he would almost always run the wrong way to
try to find me.
One night, my other dog, a labrador, had run too far
ahead, and I didn't know where he was anymore. I
turned to Charlie and said "Charlie, do you know where
Skip is?" At which point he immediately took off
running straight to the park. When I caught up with
him, he was standing in the middle of the park,
holding Skip's tail in his mouth, trying to pull him
to me.
