the glendoran Jan/Feb 1994

A CASTLE STORY

…tail wagging dogs, phunny friends

and sentimental stuff

By Dwayne Hunn

This started out being a story about a friend and his friend. Then it turned into

a story about a friend and his dog. In the end, the story’s the same. They’re true

stories, only a name has been changed.

This story about tail wagging dogs, phunny friends and stuff that hangs around reservoirs and refrigerator floors, started like this.

Michael (Rubel of castle fame) was adorned in his stained, greasy overalls, bottomed off with another pair of unmatched loafers. He was in the reservoir working on something - pushing bottles in squiggly cement, tying rusty mattress springs to some crooked rebar for the next day’s cementing, or wrenching with a pipe on some rusted lug nut on one of the aged vehicles. (1 can’t remember over which of those important ventures he was toiling.)

Glen and I entered the reservoir and in the course of talking the time of day was mentioned. With important business men who become absorbed in establishing empires, the hands of time are often lost. So it was so often with Landlord, Head Janitor and Castle Builder Michael. Losing his grip on the swirling arms of time accounted for many broken dates, some dashed romances, and a few crushed hearts. Remembering a date with a budding romance a day late, after spending the previous 15 hours laying and connecting a donated 42 year old glass bubble gas pump, doesn’t bond the heart as well as waiting with aflower at the doorbell on time.

After a few minutes of talking with Glen and me, Michael bolted erect under his greasy, hale punctured hat. “Gosh, isn’t today Wednesday?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s 5:55?”

“Right

“Oh, no! Bradley will be here! Will you put these tools away for me? And if Bradley comes will you send him up? I’ve got to shower.”

Michael rushed off, acting as though his room was on fire or he had locked his mother inside the Tin Palace. Glen knew Bradley much longer

and better than I. But I guess even Glen had forgotten what was etched in my memory from that day forward.

Wednesday was “ Bradley’ s Day”.

Whenever 6:00 p.m. Wednesday arrived, so too would 75-year-old Bradley. Often he and Michael would go out to dinner. Sometimes Michael would cook for him. If friends invited Michael over for dinner or a party that day. Michael politely refused or asked if Bradley was also invited. Then he’d check with Bradley. If Bradley didn’t feel like going, they did whatever else Bradley felt like.

Some of those Wednesday nights would find a motley crew of the Pharm* suspects and the Pharm posse spread out on the hardwood floor of Michae!’s former orange crate packed refrigerator bedroom. Bradley would be in one of the two bedroom chairs. Michael would be in the other.

The rest of us, numbering from two to 20, would be laying about or sprawled outside the six inch wood door into the packing house, sipping that gallon of wine from Pharm jars and old shrimp cocktail glasses. Bradley, in his gentle voice, would partake in the conversation when he wanted to. The rest of the time he just shared his ever amiable presence or cracked his warm, glowing smile.

On more than one night I came for a little refrigerator floor conversation and camaraderie to find Michael and Bradley each asleep in their cushy chairs.

On a Thursday after one of those tiptoed-away Wednesday nights, I asked Michael, “Do you and Bradley ever run out of things to talk about?”

“Oh, sure. Lots of times.”

“What do you do?”

“Oh, sometimes nothing.”

“What do you mean ‘nothing’?”

“I do whatever Bradley wants to do.. .Sometimes we just sit. Sometimes he falls asleep. Sometimes I fall asleep

“Isn’t that kind of boring?”

“I dunno. I guess so.... It doesn’t matter though… “

“You see I love that man Whatever he wants to do is fine with me. it always will be He was more than a father to me. I owe him so much

About here I stopped writing about Bradley. Oh, there are wonderful stories to tell about him which hopefully will come from this keyboard another time. Instead here and now, I’d like to reveal his most devious side.

Quiet, benign Bradley encouraged truancy. Can you imagine what our education president would have to say?

Back then Michael didn’t appreciate school much and often wanted to skip it. His mother wouldn’t allow it. If, however, Michael said he wanted to spend the day with Bradley or Odo Stade rather than go to school, his mother said, “Well you’ll probably learn more from them than you will in school, so go ahead.”

There’s also a side to quiet Bradley that some might find hard to believe. This humble, professional dish-washer, if you want to believe stories that emanate from a place referred to as PhunnyPharm, may have been involved with launching an American business venture that arches above almost any oilier. Anyway, that’s about where an unleashed bite moved me to telling a related tail wagging story instead.

Maybe dogs are man’s best friend. Maybe they ... are the only things on earth that love you more than they love themselves.... are smarter than some people because they wag their tail and not their tongue... are best friends because they are not always calling for explanations.

Maybe those doggone truths are why, back in ‘its frontier and building days, when the Pharm was an all male bastion, there were so many dogs around. Pharm guys needed that doggie camaraderie and moral support that Pharm fireplaces, big beams and tool sheds, didn’t supply quite enough of, to us of the weaker gender.

When this guy took up residence at the Pharm, Nadia was ruler of the Dog Pack. On any outing she expected the respect afforded any top-notch Master Sergeant. If Michael’s 28-year-old jeep was to lead the patrol ,Nadia would point the way as she tried to balance herself as the hood ornament over the rusted tan engine cover. If she wasn’t hood pointing while trying to dig her sliding paws into the metal of the jeep, she barked orders from the worn-through to the foam and busted springs front cushion, as us mere boys and other dogs piled into the back’s metallic rumble seat.

Then Nadia was still an imposing 80+ pound black and white German Shepherd. She seemed far less and didn’t hesitate to remind the other dogs who was “Ruler of the Pack”.

Of course, even dogs get old and their rules wind down. In winding down, however, unlike some packs of jungle animals, the Harms’ dog pack lived by a more civilized rule. Since Nadia had always ruled with a fair paw, the other dogs still followed and gave her the comforts she was due. Pharm hands, the errant Knights of the Pharm round table, even more respectably followed their point dog’s lead into any Quixotic escapade.

That is not to say Natlia totally had her way. Even a ruler has to tow around a headache or two.

After a year or two at the Pharm, the Pharm hands recognized that I was in need of a companion who without ever reading the book, could help me “Win Friends and Influence People”. They forced such a gorgeous companion on me one Saturday.

I was up early that day pounding nails into 2 X 4’s, hoping this puzzle of wood would soon stand and turn into a home. Early Saturday morning pounding may not have been my activity of preference, but Michael had deviously imprisoned, shackled, cuffed and limited my sleeping hours with an alarm clock made of corrugated tin and the early morning sun.

Flow is fettered by an alarm made of tin and the sun You receive such a Rubican honor by spending months in the Virgin Islands trying to ineptly help Pharm architect Glen Speer build a St. John business, only to return to the Pharm to find someone else now residing in what was once your tree house. As you sit in the big kitchen with Michael, asking if there might be another place on the Pharm for you to be, he pours you the customary Pharm Lipton tea and gives you au uncustomary fortune cookie. The fortune says: “You can build your house on the northeast corner of the Pharm...maybe.”

After diligently studying the crumpled words, I question, “What’s the

‘maybe’. Michael?”

“Well, you can try to build the place but I won’t buy anything for it. You either build it with what’s around here or you buy what you need,” said the dumb head janitor and cunningly keen landlord.

“Okay,” said I, understanding the Pharm rule that he who nails the piled around Pharm junk first gets to homestead it. I figured I’d road runner those piles of Feather River project rail road tics, junk wood, beams, 2 X 4’s and other stuff lying around, into the walls of my house. For the rest I’d rely on the special Pharm genie who always seemed to come by and offer what was needed. (As usual, she did, with the precondition that I supply the labor in recycling old barns into the wood that would eventually surround the bed, fireplace, kitchen and bathtub.)

“Oh. and one other thing...”

“What’s that?”

“Until you finish you have to live in the bottle house,” continued the keen one.

“The bottle house?” swallowed I.

“Yep. The bottle house. It’ll inspire you to work hard and last,” smiled the cunning one, as he waltzed away with that “gotcha” smile on his face and twinkle in his eye.

For those of you who haven’t “lived” in the bottle house, which includes most of the western hemisphere except for some of Michael’s cousins, the Misfits, Jim Larnbert, Dan Sugdcn, Scott Rubcl, Bruce Burr, myself and empathetically many of the third world’s poor - allow me to describe.

The bottle house was built by Michael around his eighteenth year while parts of his brain still functioned at warp maturity speed 12. It was made of neighborhood donations - bags full of emptied colored wine, ketchup and 7-up bottles. Neighbors left enough bags of bottles and the Pharm had enough bags of cement to construct a house measuring about 6’ X 8’.

Sitting smack in the middle of the reservoir, the bottle house’s interior was designed by some degenerated decorator. It held a chair that the Salvation Army threw away before Michael was busy being 12. It’s heating system was a Civil War state-of-the-art pot bellied stove chuck-full of wood, which burned for an hour or two to stem the chill of the night before reverting to its refrigeration mode - by sucking in the night’s cold through the caves’ gaps between tin an(t the last row of cemented bottles.

Visitors to this lavish retreat reached the second floor via a ladder that bumped one’s head into the corrugated tin ceiling. Nestled on the uneven beamed floor of the loft was an old mattress, covered by a wounded World War I sleeping bag. Both these garments of nighttime repose fleas refused to share, even with as tasty a body as mine. That, except for a couple bottle necks that stuck out enough to function as a closet, on which one could hang one’s trousers and shirt, was each and every one of the bottle house’s amenities.

The bottle house was built as Michael and his dogs’ hideout from Mrs. Rubel’s Tin Palace orchestrated theatrical productions, which often included fan dancer Sally Rand and Alfred Hitchcock. In addition to being an escape during those dramatic times, Michael used the bottle house, sitting in the middle of the empty reservoir, as his launching pad for today’s soaring Castle.

On his day of negotiations with me, he used the nighttime refrigerator and morning-oven baking features of the bottle house to ensure my quick removal from the reservoir floor and into a completed house on the northeast corner. Living in “that bottle house” one learns quickly of tin’s insulating qualities. Tin cools quickly. When surrounded by a cement reservoir and encased in a cemented and bottled oven, tin heats rapidly. Sleeping in an oven, amidst the crinkling sound of baking tin, serves as a quiet but effective alarm clock to anyone within.

So, back to my early morning Saturday of pounding nails... Several hours into the morning a little girl rides into the reservoir on a horse with her hands cupping a little white puppy sitting on her saddle. Working above the reservoir I hear the Pharm hands down below “ooing and aahing!” about the puppy.

Then from below I hear, “But Dwayne doesn’t have a dog... Isn’t it pretty, Dwayne??? You know you really need a dog, Dwayne... Why don’t you come down and look at this one.”

“I don’t have time for a dog. I’ve got to have a place to live first.”

“Dogs don’t take any time. Anyway he can keep you warm in the bottle house,” chuckled John Cox as he moved into his metaphysical mode. “Now get down here and look into this doggie’s eyes. If you don’t take him, he’s incinerator ash for the dog pound.”

So that is how pure white Kia, a Samoan-Husky mix, came into my life and grew quickly to playfully exercise Nadia’s undisputed rule over the Pharm’s dog pound. Kia was not really a challenge to the throne. He was, however, smart, coordinated and healthy. Kia’s first three attributes often riled Nadia, making her get up from any number of comfortable rests to try to teach Kia a lesson, only to have Kia’s speed and coordination keep Kia free from any doffed disciplining.

Yes, Nadia was getting tired about the time Kia was wild and fancy free. Twice I wrote a goodbye ode to my four legged friend who pursued the coyote in heat in defiance of the waiting in ambush coyote pack. Each time, however, a day and a half or so later he returned bedraggled and bloodied. After a few days of licking his wounds Kia would again return to tiring Nadia, who was just getting used to resting contentedly with the other Pharm dogs at Michael’s feet.

As Nadia pushed into her doggie teens, her pace became slower, getting up became harder and her skin became more brittle. Nadia was suffering a lot in those days. Even rambunctious Kia would tease the leader no more, but merely lay at Nadia’s feet in silent homage to the proud dog that could do little more.

Nadia’s mange had spread over her body. She scratched and itched. She suffered stoically. When Michael went to the jeep or just to go, Nadia wanted to also, but her feet would no longer go. Instead her eyes followed sadly.

Michael sprinkled and bathed her, lifted her, brought food to her, treated her gently, as she could do little more than lay on the rug at his feet.

One day I asked ,“Michael do you ever think about putting Nadia to sleep?”

“Yes...” he said looking first at her, then puffing his pipe and looking at the smoke float upward. “But I couldn’t.... You see, I owe my life to her.”

“Your life? What do you mean?”

“You weren’t here when we had the mules, were you?”

“No.”

“I was given these mules on one of my treks through Mexico, brought them back to the Pharm, hiking through the mountains. Thought they’d be neat to have around. After a while I thought it wasn’t such a good idea and it would be better to take them back to someone down there who could use them. So Nadia and I hitched them up and started walking them back.” Michael paused for a while to relight his pipe which often went out when words, rather than puffs, filled his air.

“One night we bedded down under this big rock. Mules were tied down. It was a pretty night. Pretty soon I was sound asleep.”

“Nadia woke me. She was growling at the rock above. I didn’t know why until I saw the tensed muscles of the mountain lion about to jump.

“My rifle was several feet away. I had no chance to reach it. The mountain lion jumped and so did Nadia

“Nadia’s no match for a mountain lion. The lion had maybe one or two hundred pounds on her.

“Collided right above me. Hit me as I rolled for my rifle.

“Nadia was knocked out on impact, I’m sure. But right there beside me she kept fighting, like on instinct.

“I got my rifle. We survived...” Michael lit that pipe again. And watched the smoke.

Lifting those brows, he made his big-eyed face, pouted his little pout, watched the smoke roll and said, “I owe her my life.. I don’t’ think I can put her to sleep

Michael didn’t go to Bradley’s funeral either. Said “I owed him so much.... I don’t think I could go through it....”

* refers to “she farm” or the “Castle” or the place known as “Rubelia”.

the glendoran Jan/Feb 1994