Saturday, March 12, 2011

Joe Butterfly's

One of my driver friends had 3 dogs, now she only has 2. Joey is gone. I stopped by her house yesterday to say hi, it'd been a while. We, she and I and our 3 dogs, went out to Governor's Island for a walk around it. She's a night driver, and she needed to get ready for work so it had to be a fairly quick walk.

The 3 dogs were Betty Lou and Angelo, her dogs. And Gromit, my dog. Like all dogs, they love the island. It's a great place to walk, be a dog, watch birds..... It's a great place.

Joe was an English Spaniel, I think.... English retriever..... He was a tan dog, weighed around 30 pounds, and had floppy ears. He was a real nice pup. They don't come to the dog park much any more, and I don't either, but that's where I met Joe and Betty Lou. A matched pair of hunting dogs. Bet they've never been hunting, but most dogs never have been, that's not special.

Joe loved to chase butterfly's. It was really cute to watch too. Very much like watching a small child chase them. He was a really really good pup. We will all fondly remember him, I will anyway.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

The old German woman

I saw a reference to her, and to the famous Don. So, I'll tell you about her.

The famous Don, another time.

She and some other real old German folks got into the cab for an airport ride. I don't recall if it was to or from the airport, but there were 3 or 4 people in the party, and it went from this really old farm house out at the corner of Cottage Grove and Atwood.

There were huge trees, and the whole place was generally speaking, over grown. I'd seen her before, and I'd probably seen her companions too. I'm guessing they were 75 - 85 years old. It was an 1800's farm that had probably been a working farm until the 60's or 70's. I didn't think much of it, but I did remember her for some reason.

Then about 6 or 7 years ago, I had her again, and she went to an old folks home. I learned a little bit about her. He fled Germany when she was 8th or 9th grade. Her kids wanted to develop the farmstead so they took her out of her house, told her she couldn't live there, and were waiting for her to sign off on developing it or die, which ever came first.

I asked her if she liked her old folks home. She shrugged. I went and asked a friend about taking care of this woman. It would have worked out for my friend, the old woman, me, everybody except her kids. She told me if I cut my hair she'd discuss it, other wise not. I looked at her and said to myself, she's crazy.

She probably had no intention of discussing it. Just an elderly ass hole doing her little part for making the world like she wanted it, no long hair. Woo hoo. What a moron. But perhaps not, she might have simply loved that assisted living place, it wasn't cheap.

Mean while, her kids developed the place. 7 or 8 years later they still have condo's for sale, want to buy one? No? Gee, why not? Doesn't money grow on trees? Nah, the trees are gone, the first thing they did was knock them down. Just another brick in the wall.