Close to Nowhere

I grew up in an apartment building. And I wanted cats and dogs in the worst way.

My dad built us a bird cage and we had birds and hamsters and even turtles. But I wanted dogs and cats.

About as soon as Pop and I married, we got a dog. We went to the dog pound and picked out a pretty ugly hound kinda dog and named him Tyrone. I loved that dog. We also got a cat that we never named, but we had him for years. Mr. Cat was as good a watch dog as Tyrone was. Strangers did not hang around on our front porch without tangling with the cat. He especially didn’t like men.

A friend of Pop’s, Eddie, was eating dinner with us one night. I really felt sorry for him.

First he had to get past the cat on the front porch and get in the house. Getting past the cat was not easy.

Then, we all had to eat the dinner that I’d cooked. I couldn’t cook at all. I’d made tuna casserole and some sort of green canned vegetable and corn bread.

I love cornbread. Tyrone, our hound-type dog loved cornbread. In fact, Tyrone loved everything. This was the first cornbread I’d ever made and it was really pretty. Fluffy and golden brown, it looked really good on its plate.

Eddie had a big piece buttered, sitting on his plate. He had one bite gone. Pop had a big piece buttered, on his plate. He wasn’t as nice as Eddie and had made several remarks about the taste.

The final straw for the evening came as I was cleaning up the table. Tyrone, who’d eat anything, took the chunk of cornbread and buried it. And never made any effort to dig it up later and eat it.