The Big Dog

The Big Dog

As a little boy growing up in the late 50’s early 60’s my parents owned a small two bedroom one bath house in the southside of San Antonio. The street our house was on, looked huge to me, as a youngster and my backyard was a huge park filled with plum trees, grapevines and my swing set. I remember walking out to the backyard from the kitchen and running to the back fence and looked at the wild alley that grew back there. It seemed like wild country, but it was just an overgrown piece of access that separates one yard from another.  I played soldiers, hide and seek, and all kinds of outdoor games you played when it started to get dark outside in South Texas.  

I really didn’t have friends, at least not the kind you think of; I had imaginary friends when I was at least 3 years of age.  Two characters by the name of Jillys and Cobert. I couldn’t describe them, I never really saw them, all I knew they were the best playmates and I played with those two “friends” when there was no one else to play with..  It turned out, which was a good amount of time.  

I also had “seasonal” friends, some little girls who only showed up around November and would leave around late March.  Their father owned a huge truck with wooden panels on the bed. 

My mom told me that they would go where the harvest was happening.  My friends were part of a migrant family that traveled to Michigan to pick the cherry harvest in early spring and follow “the crops” till it was time to come home to Texas during winter. 

I would play those outdoor games, including stick ball, that and all sorts of activities, but the one thing we would do is go to the little store and buy treats for ourselves.  Now that required that (mom insisted) we go in a group to the “tiendita” little store. Back then sodas had to be finished there because there was an extra 3 cents a bottle, unless you had and empty soda bottle to trade. So we would carry our empties from our house, walk down the street, walked on to the next block to the huge flood control ditch and have to cross that ditch by way of a large water pipe that stretched across the span or walk all the way down cross the muddy little stream at the bottom (and get muddy) then walk up the other  side of the ditch and voila there was the little tiendita. The tiendita had chips, bread, milk, candy galore along with big chest filled with cold sodas of all varieties (many that are not sold today, which is really too bad).

The one thing that we were all afraid of was the “big” dog that was owned by a man who worked for a soda bottling plant as a delivery man. The girls were always in ghastly fear of that huge animal, and big he was. He was German Shepard, and that meant if he chased you and caught you it was going to be disastrous.

The girls older brother swears he was chased on the  way to the tiendita just getting away by doing his best tight rope walking on the water pipe that crossed the ditch. I never really saw that Shepard up close, but the few times he did run from the house, which was set way back on the lot toward the gated fence (which was always closed). I usually started running so I would be well down the ditch before that dog would even get near the fence. I would hear his barking. Very loud barking.

One late Summer day, it was hot and I wanted some candy and a cold soda. So I asked my mom if I could go by myself.  I had gone before to the store with no problems and she said “ok”. But first I had to ask the girls down the street if they would go with me; it turned out that they couldn’t go. ( I later found out they were terrified of the big dog.) So I was entrusted to go by myself, and that I did. So I had my money in my pockets and was thinking what kids think about like. The warning those little girls told me about the big dog.  He was always gated and I did walk on the other side of the street, so I should be o.k.!? Well, I was walking by the Dog’s yard and then I noticed it, the gate was wide opened and who should see me from way back in his yard...yep you know it. He did what most dogs do, that peculiar little lurch just when they start running and as for me I was flying for my life toward the ditch. 
Hoping that I would reach the water pipe before the dog would get to me.  No, I was not really athletically inclined and I could hear the dog, right behind me.  I mean I could hear his breathe. (I swear I did this in 1962 before Gene Wilder’s Young Frankenstein) I only had one option, quickly turning around I said “ Hi Boy” and I reached out to pet him.  He stopped, cocked his head to one side and then put his front paws on my shoulders and started to lick my face. “Good puppy” or whatever to my little, young self kept on saying over and over. I realized he had only been chasing the kids to play with them and not tear them to shreds...I made a friend that day. The rest of the kids refused to go the tiendita, and they  wondered how I could get by that big dog.  
He He..