It was during the summer between my first and second year at college. I was back home and was employed by the local Western Auto store for the summer. For those of you who are not familiar with Western Auto, it was kind of like Wal Mart without the groceries and the drugs and the clothes. I guess that means it wasn’t anything like Wal Mart. But Western Auto had a variety of stuff, including appliances.
That’s what got me into this mess. My boss sold a refrigerator to a family that lived east of Wewoka. He asked (told) me that he needed me to deliver it, but he didn’t have anyone available to help me. I was on my own.
He did help me get the thing loaded into the back of the truck, and off I went on my merry way.
When I got to the house where the refrigerator was to be delivered, I noticed a few things. There was enough stuff in the yard that I wasn’t going to be able to back the truck up to the porch. There are a couple of diaper-clad kids running around in the yard. There was a most elderly man leaning back in chair on the porch against the wall. And there was a dog on that porch.
I explained why I was there. The most elderly man did not seem too impressed with me or the refrigerator or my obvious dilemma. So, I managed to get the refrigerator out of the back of the truck by myself.
I started pulling the refrigerator on the dolly towards the house. It was a bit of an obstacle course with the stuff in the yard and the holes that had been dug. But I was managing until it happened.
I felt something on my right ankle. Without looking down to see what it was I made the assumption that I had stepped on something in the yard or one of those diaper clad kids and waddled over to me and kicked me in the lower leg.
When I did look down, I discovered that the dog had come down off the porch and was now chewing on my right ankle. To say that I was startled is an understatement.
Then it dawned on me. As I stared down at the dog chewing on my right ankle, I realized that I was not feeling any pain. Maybe the dog had already severed my nerves. Maybe I was tough enough not to let a little pain stand between me and my mission. But nope. Neither of those were the case.
Come to find out, that dog didn’t have a tooth in its head. But it was doing its best trying to gum its way through my ankle.
Once I figured that out, I looked at the old man who was still leaning back in his chair on the porch for a little assistance. He did nothing to call the dog off and stop the gumming. Instead, he leaned forward in his chair until he got all four legs on the porch. He then spit a stream of tobacco juice about 10 feet into the yard and said, “You know that old dog has gotten to where it will bite just about anything.”
And he leaned back in his chair on the porch.
And I was still in the yard holding a dolly with a refrigerator on it watching a dog feverishly gumming my ankle. I finally got that dog shook off of my ankle. I guess the dog decided it had done all the damage to me that it could and had made its point and wandered back to lay on the porch.
I finally got the refrigerator delivered. As I pushed the dolly back out on the porch, I momentarily toyed with the idea of running over that dog with my dolly. But I like dogs. So I didn’t do it. But if it had been a cat, this would have been an entirely different story. (Please. No hate mail from cat lovers. I am just teasing. Besides, no cat was injured in
this story.)
So here’s the deal. One, you have to be careful when you are by yourself. We all need others in our lives who will help remove a dog from your ankle or help you in other unanticipated ways. Two, everything that goes haywire in your life may or may not be someone else’s fault, but it will be your responsibility to find a way out of it. Three, always keep your eyes on severely old men leaning back in a chair on the porch and toothless dogs.
