DUSTY

He was my best friend, that little dust-mop of a dog.

His name was “DUSTY” because, well, he was  (most all of the time…dusty and dirty I mean), and he looked like one of those janitorial, industrial push mops you see in school closets and such. His breed was Lhasa Apso, but he had the heart of a lion and the courage of a pitbull terrier. That’s so true with most smaller breeds of dogs, isn’t it? Always the first in line to protect their own. Well, you know what they say, it ain’t the size of the dog in the fight, right?

  My folks got Dusty when I was 15 years old. I was a teen-ager in the 70’s, when Dico was king and if you didn’t like it, you were considered weird, or rebellious.

I didn’t like it!

  While everyone else was bopping and Hustling, I was head bangin’ to Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. My folks hated both genres of music, but they especially loathed rock! So, for a time, my childhood friends that I grew up with, they went to the teen disco clubs and skating rinks. And I stayed home…with Dusty. Sure, I had two younger brothers, but they were just as into that lifestyle as most teenagers were then.I refused to conform. “Disco is just a fad”, I’d say to my buddies (and anyone else who’d listen), “but rock-n-roll is foreever!” We won’t go into who was right there, that’s a story for another time.

  Dusty and I would spend all day outdoors, fishing in Pounder’s pond, or sneaking around old man Clapp’s farm, hiking off to 7-11 to grab a SLURPEE and a bag of chips. After ignoring several “NO TRESPASSING” signs posted on the various properties he and I violated, we would lay down in whatever field we found ourselves in, and just stare up at the clear blue summer sky and watch the lazy clouds billow overhead. Dusty never ran off. He never attempted to go his own way without permission. Whatever I was doing, that’s what Dusty wanted to be doing. Wherever I was, that’s where you’d find Dusty. We were virtually inseperable. I spoke to him just as I would you, and he would bob his head from side to side and wag his tail.

It was as if he understood my every word.