Neanderpundit

When Lucky was between two and five, about, she was gramma’s dog. Unquestionably. Touch Gramma, and lucky would go off on you. Four pounds of fast snapping jaws and attitude. Anyway, Lucky followed gramma around wherever she went, sat beside her, under her chair at the table, on her lap while she watched TV.

Gramma had the habit of sitting in the living room after dinner, and falling asleep sitting up on the couch. Her head would fall forward on her chest, and her teeth would fall out. Then lucky would lick those teeth absolutely clean, holding them between her little black and brown paws. Mom would come in from doing the dishes and wake gramma up, she’d pick up those teeth and stick them right in her mouth.

Dad loved dogs. He liked having them around the house, and while he would have loved to had a home full of bird dogs, we ended up with Lucky.

Lucky was the “inside dog”. A small pekingese/toy manchester mix. Slept at the foor of Gramma’s bed for years, and when Gramma died, slept at the foot of my bed.

Anyway: We went to visit a friend of dad’s. This happened a lot. Dad would go to drop some cash or food or heating oil off to someone who had fallen on hard luck, or talk to a guy who was cheating on his wife about the error of his ways. Sometimes there were.. interesting things that happened. Dad goes into a house, and a few minutes later, a guy comes flying out the bay window, followed by a couch. Dad comes out the door, dusts himself off and gets in the car.

So we go out to this farm. It’s right after mass, so we know it’s not going to be a “tuneup” visit, more like a ” bud needs $120 to send his kid so she can get out of jail in poughkeepsie” visit. We sit in the car- a 72 Olds 98 Dad bought from the local bank president. Dad goes in, the cold winter air blasting into the car for a minute, and then comes back out. My sister and i sit in the backseat blowing breath on the window and playing tic-tac-toe,mom in ther front doing the Hammond Times crossword. Dad puts the Olds in reverse, backs down the long driveway, and pulls back out on to SR2. We are about five miles away when we hear a muffled whine.

Dad reaches into the breast pocket of his big black wool overcoat, and pulled out a puppy. It couldn’t have been more than the size of his fist, and it never got more than five pounds. My sister and I were immediately in love, and we called it Lucky. We should maybe have called her Licky, because she would lick anything, anywhere, anytime.

Lucky was the primary dog of my youth. She lived a long time, finally succumbing to heart attacks caused by heartworms- in those days, worming wasn’t something anyone paid any attention to. I remember watching her have a heart attack, straining and keeling over.. I picked her up and held her, panting and drooling, as her tiny heart raced. I looked in her eyes and saw the pain there, wanted so desperately to stop it, to make it go away. I had no idea what to do so I gave her an aspirin, sat with her on the livingroom floor. She made it through, lived a couple years beyond that, even.

There are a lot of Lucky stories, I’ll post more later.

it would be Hannibal Lecter.

No, not because he eats people. Because he has had the benefits of wealth, early on. Because he learned from the best teachers. Because he himself is brilliant, erudite, well read, genteel. A gentleman in the oldest tradition. A great man. A man who prefers not to countenance the rude.

His cannibalistic tendencies aside, I have enjoyed the way Hannibal was depicted from the very first book- (red dragon) and now Harris, god love him, is about to publish the “prequel“, if you will, the life of Dr Lecter from his beginnings. I can barely wait.