There was the sheep killing Red Dog – and then there was Nothing

 

We moved to that hilltop farm northwest of Charlottesville, Virginia in November of 1955. Now, of course, I don’t remember that. I was only 2 and a half years old at the time, and the prodigious mental powers that have propelled me through life were extremely nascent in 1955.  (I’ll call “BS” first. There may be some small debate as to those prodigious mental powers, but my memory back in 1955 wasn’t much better than it is now – and it has not improved one little bit since!)

But there are some things that a man remembers – no matter how flawed his memory is – his first love, a particularly pretty sunset, his first car, shooting his first gun, the sun rising over the Canadian prairie on the morning of September 11, 2001. . . And one of the things that I remember, as clear as if it was this morning, was life with “that sheep killing red dog”.

Dad rescued Red Dog shortly after we moved to Charlottesville. As I remember the story. Red Dog was a stray, running the streets in town, who had been trained to terrorize blacks. In the segregated South, certain people trained their dogs to chase and attack black people. Sometimes, some of these dogs became so vicious that they had to be put down. Dad brought the dog home and for all the years that he was with us, Red Dog never showed any aggression toward anyone.

Back in those days, at least in Virginia, there were 2 “County Agents” – agricultural advisors from Virginia Tech agriculture college - in every county. Due to segregation there had to be a “white county agent” and a “Negro county agent”. Dad developed a very strong working relationship with Mr. Butler, the “Negro county agent” in Albemarle County. They worked together to improve the hog management skills of the Negro farmers. Dad thought that improving the farm profits of the black farmers was an important step in improving things in the area. Mr. Butler would take help from any source to help his people. Mr. Butler was a frequent visitor at the farm – and I have snips of memories of Dad and Mr. Butler sitting in the shade in the yard with Red Dog laying down between them. Red Dog wasn’t any more of a “white dog” than I am a ballerina! It was a bad rap, but it got Red Dog his “forever” home – as the cliché is today. I’ve wondered sometimes if Red Dog’s owner conned Dad into “rescuing” the dog. Being a “damn Yankee”, that Gerow fella wound be an easy mark for saving Negroes from a “white dog.” Whatever the real story, Red Dog was a perfect fit for us.

So, Red Dog plays into all of my memories of the early years on that hilltop farm.  He was a big, gentle, loyal dog. He loved Mom and was very protective of us kids. He stayed with us kids when we left the yard to play in barnyard, the orchard, and the close in pastures. There were strict limits to how far we were allowed to go away from the house. I remember Mom walking us around the boundaries of the yard to show us where we could play first. Our first outside world was bounded by the chicken house and out-buildings to the east, the white board fence to the north, the orchard fence to the west, and the tractor road and garden to the south. We could play there – anytime – as long as we told Mom that we were outdoors. Going outside those boundaries would have resulted in Mom using the wooden spoon on us and then Dad giving us a lecture.

The lecture was a helluva lot worse than the wooden spoon! The wooden spoon stung, but the lecture always left all 3 of us in tears. Dad’s lectures always ended with, “Now, go apologize to your Mother.” The Man was good!

But I’ve wandered off down a different trail here.

We hadn’t had Red Dog too long when the Game Warden, Grayson Johnson, came to the house.  He told Mom that somebody had reported a big red dog chasing and killing sheep on the Wingfield place.

Mom told him that it couldn’t be our dog, that he was always in sight of the house and that he was too old to chase sheep. Things didn’t get out of hand until Grayson Johnson said something about taking the dog. Then, I guess, all hell broke loose. Mom started crying and big sister lost control of little brother and me and the 2 of us attacked the Game Warden! I guess that we threw our selves at his legs and were hitting him and trying to bite him – remember now, we were probably 3 and 4 years old. Finally, Grayson Johnson started to back away and the end of the conversation was, “Mrs. Gerow, I wouldn’t care if there was a dead sheep right over there! Ain’ no way I’m messing with your damn dog!”

Now, to fully understand this, there’s a couple things that you need to know. At the time this happened, Red Dog was an old dog. Dad would put him out at night when he went to bed – 10ish or so, and the dog was always in the yard when Dad would go to the barn at 5 in the morning. The pastures at the Wingfield place were almost 3 miles away through some of the roughest, steepest country in the county, covered with some of the thickest trashiest woods you’ve ever seen. There wasn’t any way that old dog could have trekked to Wingfields, run down a flock of sheep, killed some, and made it home in time to meet Dad at 5 in the morning. He never had blood on him and never looked like he traveled that rough country at night. He didn’t kill sheep, but that became the joke – “that sheep killin’ red dog”.

The story doesn’t end there, though. About a dozen years later, we were at church one Sunday, when Mom introduced me to a newcomer to the church. It was the former Game Warden, Grayson Johnson! As we shook hands, he looked at me and said, “You aren’t gonna try to bite me again, are you?”

Nothing lasts forever. As John Knowles wrote in “A Separate Peace”, “Nothing endures, not a tree, not love, not even a death by violence.” We don’t know that when we’re children. Children think that whatever is happening is the way things are always going to be. I’m not sure that we accept the finality of things in one big learning step. Maybe we “learn” it once, but only accept it in steps through time as different parts of our lives end. Thinking back on those endless summer days of childhood – sunlight and shade in the yard, cows grazing the tall grass on the hills, Mom and Dad – I thought they would never end. But, there came a time when no cows grazed the hills and there came a winter when Red Dog started having trouble with his hips and shoulders. I don’t remember how it started, but in my memory, by summer the dog couldn’t get up without help. He’d go outside of the yard fence and then not be able to get back until we could find him and help him to his feet. Mom was terrified that he’d go off, get down, and die alone. Mom and Dad made the tough decision to put the old dog down.

Of course, I don’t remember, but I’d like to think that Red Dog left this world surrounded by his people and I have no doubt, that he was waiting at the Pearly Gate when Mom got there.

“Nothing endures, not a tree, not love, not even a death by violence,”, not even the grief of losing a great dog. And life on the hilltop farm went on, different without Red Dog, but it went on.
High summer was coming, and Dad was gearing up for the barley and wheat harvest. Dad hired one of his hunting buddies to combine the grain with his bigger, self-propelled combine. Now, Pete Walker was a Virginia back country original. He did a little “shirt-tail” farming in the low country east of Charlottesville. He was a good plumber and electrician when he wasn’t in the woods. Pete and his wife lived almost off the grid, long before it was cool.

They lived in a big, old plantation house that hadn’t seen any paint and few repairs since before Lee surrendered to Grant. The outbuildings around the house were in various stages of collapse and chock full of machines, parts of machine, cars in various stages of construction – and deconstruction, a few sows and piglets, and the ubiquitous flock of feral chickens. The only orderly things at Pete’s place were the huge garden, and the range marking stakes reaching out from the back porch to the woods a quarter mile away. Pete’s wife Mary used these for shooting deer from the back porch. These folks lived off the land and “them dam’ deer keep eating the garden”! But Pete Walker had one heck of a bird dog! If there was a turkey within a day’s walk, that dog would find it. My Dad and Pete Walker walked many miles following that dog through the Louisa County woods. I’m not wandering down another rabbit trail of memory here, nor butting my head against the sky, Pete Walker and his bird dog are an important part of this story.

Shortly after we sent Red Dog home, Pete Walker showed up one morning to service the combine before going to the field. He rolled into the barnyard in his well – used Nash Metropolitan. He called kid brother Jeff and me over to the car. He opened the door and handed us a white puppy with a black ear and a couple of black spots. This odd-looking puppy was out of his incredible bird dog.

“Here,” he said, “he mightn’t come on to be a bird dog, but he’ll sure as hell be a good dog for you boys!” he started up the Nash, and rattled off to the field, leaving us with a puppy that we weren’t expecting. After licking our faces and waging his whole body at having us, he squirmed and wiggled until we set him down. He sniffed around. Learned his first lesson about barn cats. Lapped up a little of the cat’s milk and ran back to us with that sideways run that puppies do. Jeff and I headed to the house with the puppy trying mightily to keep up with us. We had to pick him up to carry him into the house – he couldn’t make the steps by himself. Mom was sitting at the dining room table when we burst through the door.

“Mama! Mama!” we yelped, “Pete Walker just gave us a dog!” We set the puppy on Mom’s lap and he proceeded to do all the things that puppies do to make us fall in love with them, licking at her hands and face, snuggling up close, and wagging his tail a mile a minute. Mom burst into tears and said, “That’s not a dog – that’s nothing!” And so, it was that Nothing Dog got his name, his own “pack”, and his first “for-ever” home.

And so it was that Nothing became part of the ever changing tapestry of the Gerow family. He never really replaced Red Dog; he made his own very unique place in our lives. The “sheep killin’ red dog” and Nothing were as different as night and day, but each was loyal, fiercely protective, and a source of unending, unquestioning love and devotion. Maybe there are some of the things that we are supposed to learn from dogs – that we each have an endless capacity to love, that no two objects of our love are ever exactly the same, and we shouldn’t try to replace a lost love, but rather we should build on those earlier experiences.

We will leave that hilltop farm of my long ago childhood – for now. If you’re out that way, drop by and set a spell. It doesn’t take long to make coffee and I’m sure there will be stories yet to tell.