Caught Stealing
© 2012, C. D. Bonner
The little house in Stockbridge was one of the nicest places I remember living. It was a simple white frame house with high concrete steps leading to the front door. It sat in the triangle where Highway 138 departs Stockbridge on its way to Conyers. Only a patch of milkweed separated our front door from the old store wedged into the fork of the road. Jake and I weren’t allowed to go all the way to the store, but we did play at the edge of the milkweed, a plant we studied with great interest.
The house was nice and we were making ends meet. Dad was a truck driver, hauling local loads around Atlanta and working the loading docks. He only occasionally made a long-haul run with a big rig. Mother got a job welding and bending pipe at a muffler shop. She earned enough money to buy a compact car, a little English Ford Prefect. It resembled a yellow and white potato. I remember feeling the rain sting my hands that I stuck out the window on the way back from Grant Park Zoo. We would visit the zoo to admire Willie B. the gorilla and meet up with Mother’s sister at the A&W drive-in for a milkshake afterwards. The Kennedy years were good to us.
We had a young Basset hound named Sammy. He loved kids and we enjoyed playing with him. He spent most of his time indoors with us, but would do a little exploring. One day, Dad sat on the orange vinyl couch watching TV. A woman was irritated and shouting something. Her shrill noise was getting closer to him–never a good sign. It was like having a police siren approaching your house, but you don’t know why they are coming. This couldn’t be good.
Texts of prescription de viagra ayurveda mention various herbal preparations using different parts of mango tree. Existence of super generic viagra ED in male personalities: The problem is many men who are not suffering from ED issues and those who wish to enjoy a dose of ecstatic night with their partner at times. http://greyandgrey.com/spanish/third-department-cases-dealing-with-workers-compensation-3-12-15/ discount viagra pharmacy But, with Kamagra chewable tablets, you can get Wisconsin ginseng for sale. Anabol 5mg (Methandrostenolone) is a derivative of vardenafil hydrochloride cialis without prescriptions mastercard made by GaxoSmithKlein and Bayer.
He reached the door in time to see Sammy running up the trail through the milkweed, his long ears swinging. Sammy had the end of a baloney stick in his teeth, and he struggled to run with the stick trailing between his short legs. The sweaty, rotund lady huffing and puffing after him on her own short legs had shorter ears. Sammy had scored a stick his own approximate size and shape, and he wasn’t about to surrender it. My Dad was still chasing Sammy around the house to pry the baloney loose when the storeowner caught up, arriving in a cloud of steam. She was livid.
Dad walked down the slope to the store with the baloney tucked under his arm to make amends. Sammy straggled just behind, growling. Although Dad tried to do the right thing, the owner was uncooperative. Dad offered to pay her for the damaged end of the stick, but she demanded he buy the whole thing. He argued that the delivery guy had left the baloney outside on the store’s front porch, and that dogs will act as dogs do. My Dad lost the heated argument and had to pay fifteen dollars for the baloney–a couple of days’ pay. We ate baloney at every meal for a long time.
Our friend Sammy disappeared soon afterwards, under suspicious circumstances. I wonder if she was still mad about the baloney.