The Ice.

Woof, Woof!

These last two days have been rather trying, and I expect I’d better tell you my version of what happened, before My Lady decides to tell tales.

I was surprised yesterday when I bounded out the door in my usual fashion and my feet landed in this cold white stuff that was on the porch. Well that made me slow down, I can tell you! 

Airmail on a nicer day

 I always enjoy going to the end of the sidewalk. That’s where I stop and I sniff the air in three directions. My Lady says that I am reading the airmail.  That first step off the porch landed me in belly-deep snow, so I just turned around and headed back to the door where My Lady waited. The airmail could wait and that brief dip in the white stuff left my belly kinda shivery. Later I was allowed to go outside without the leash. Of course it didn’t take a genus to know that I wasn’t going to run off in all that white stuff. Later,I sneaked out again while My Lady was picking up wood. That was not the smartest idea I’ve ever had, but it sure was fun watching those cats hunt a hiding place. Still, I remembered the time once before, that had me mediating in my quiet corner for hours, so when she really yelled in that certain tone of voice, I scooted for that door pretty fast. I guess I was lucky to escape a whack with one of those sticks of wood!

It turned into a long afternoon. We couldn’t go get the mail, we couldn’t go shopping and that long cord to allow me to meander around the yard was buried three inches below the snow.  Anyway, I finally got so bored that I couldn’t stand it any longer so I begged and begged until My Lady consented to take me out again.

Now the moment we went out the door I spotted this piece of bread lying on the porch. Now to my way of thinking, that was an unexpected trophy, even if I don’t like bread. Well, I grabbed tha bread and away I went down the length of the porch. Okay, okay, I knew it belonged to the cats! That made grabbing it even more fun. Anyway, I was moving along fast, when I met a cat, so I did what my instincts told me, and I turned to chase that fellow.

 That’s when it happened!  I’m a little embarrassed to tell you that when I wheeled around, my feet lost traction and I did a belly flop right there on a patch of ice.  Oh my! My feet went every which way and I just wiggled along on my underside until I reached a dry spot. By that time the cat was out of sight so I very carefully turned and picked up my bread and continued on my way.

Of course, a trophy is meant to be saved, so I found a likely spot in the snow and started digging. That turned out to be a poor choice, so I moved to another spot which turned out to be perfect. Digging a hole in soft snow should be easy, but it wasn’t. The hole kept filling up with more snow but I finally got a decent hole and dropped that piece of bread in it.  I’d had enough of digging with my poor cold paws, so I just used my nose to start nudging enough snow over to cover my prize. That took a while and my nose got cold. When I was through I could feel snow all over my face. I think I heard My Lady snicker, but I just ignored her and headed for the door.

Now that it’s dark I’m ready for a long nap , It really hasn’t been such a bad day, considering that I got to chase a few cats and didn’t get scolded and, and I snitched a piece of cat-bread and got it buried, and have had a nice fire to lye by most of the day.

Woof.

Dandy

NOTE:  Always have a camera at hand when around the animals. The burying of that slice of bread was  hilarious! 

Magazines

      Some browsing on a long, long day, took me to Facebook where I found a recent posting by Karen Rutherford telling of her love of the New Yorker magazine. I was  reminded of the magazines of my younger days.

     As a child, I remember the Saturday Evening Post, which came bi-monthly to our mailbox.  I don’t know what we did without in order to subscribe but my father always managed somehow. I Googled the Saturday Evening Post and found that in those days the newsstand cost was 5¢ so he had to dig up about $1 for a one-year subscription! Remember that these were deep depression days when the listing of flour on the weekly grocery list always threw him into a panic; a 24 lb. bag cost almost $1, a loaf of bread was 8¢, a quart of peanut butter was 23¢, and a can or pork and beans was 5¢.

      The Post always had three or four short stories: several, featuring characters such as Tugboat Anne and her rival Bullwinkle, appeared often, and there was always one serialized novel. The one I remember most vividly was Mutiny on the Bounty, which my dad read to me while holding me in his lap.

     Today, issues of the Saturday Evening Post from that era are priced at $35 to $65 dollars; what a pity the mice made nests of all those old copies!

     As a beginning reader, one magazine that I looked forward to carried a children’s short, one-page story featuring Peter Painter and his magic paintbrush. With all the information that the Internet makes available, I cannot find a trace of this feature.  I did learn that there is an old Chinese folktale that could have been the basis of the stories I enjoyed so much. 

     Other magazines of those years were Colliers and the Country Gentleman. Another periodical was the Progressive Farmer. A Progressive Farmer salesman often appeared at the door with his subscription pad and seldom left without a new subscription, for if cash was short, they would take almost anything in trade.

     In the ‘60s a salesman stopped by my husband’s business attempting to make a sale and apparently did not understand “no.” He finally proposed taking an old radiator in trade so my husband said “Go for it,” since there was about half an acre of old car parts behind his shop. The salesman worked over half an hour trying to collect his payment and finally had to be helped. The stack of Progressive Farmer issues that collected on the desk were never read but somehow my husband got some satisfaction from the hard work the poor salesman did in order to get something of value for the subscription.  

      Changing interest and increased publishing costs have changed our world of magazines. The Cosmopolitan changed drastically and Good housekeeping, Redbook, Lady’s Home Journal and others that we enjoyed so much in the ‘60s and ‘70s no longer feature short stories or novelettes.  The much thinner publications of today, have large sections of recipes, “how to “ articles, or decorating features. Another loss from the good ole days!

     

  Dannie