Yo!

Many years later in Texas while hunting with my black Lab "Gus", after several cold hours in a cold natural duck blind, we strolled the shoreline in a warming sun until Gus took off into the thick marsh reeds and cattails, returning shortly with a very lively greenhead mallard being carried upright in his "soft mouth", quacking and grabbing Gus wherever he could. ..on the nose, an ear, a lip. Gus proudly released his prize to me and after a thorough check of spread wings etc., I found no damage...Gus had simply caught this uncrippled single in thick cover by surprise. I told Gus to stay and with shotgun in one hand and "Duck" in the other I walked about 100 feet, laid the duck on the ground and watched it fly away to find its flock and tell of its miraculous escape. Just then a voice from just a few feet away but well hidden in the marsh reeds, said "What the hell do you think you’re doing?" The guy had watched the whole scenario of me bringing "my duck" and releasing it, and again I guess it did look like I had brought my own duck! Thank goodness I didn’t shoot it! For some reason, I’ve had a lot of people - friends and strangers alike – ask me "What the hell do you think you’re doing?"

None of the preceding is too difficult to understand when you know that I once – during my drinking days, before 1982 – went to the animal shelter to recover my Yellow Labrador Retriever "Dusty", a dirty and somewhat thinner vagabond who had been lost and running for 8 days in suburban Dallas traffic. When the kids got home from school they each in turn said "Where’d ya’ get the dog?" Well, this was a reasonable mistake...this dog was named "Rusty" and it had responded with all of the joy that any animal shelter-vagabond might find with anyone offering a smiling face and a warm meal! The real owner was quite appreciative that I had recovered her dog, shelter fees, and FINE, plus Vet’s shot renewals required for the license, about 105 bucks...but she did not reimburse me! A few days later we did recover our long lost "Dusty", had the same fees all over again, and it occurs to me that we did a lot more retrieving of HER than she ever did for us!

As an older man at 48 early in 1981 – but with at least the same bright intellect of the 3 year old with the clothesline – I put Mom on a plane to return to Pennsylvania from Texas, just knowing that it would be her last visit, due to Alzheimer’s having carried her beyond ANY memories. Just before this she had asked Carole who I was and Carole had told her that I was her – Carole’s – husband and "your son". Mom with mild delight said "Oh, what’s his name?" Upon the answer she said "Oh Carole, who in the name of sense would name a baby Frank?"

After pre-boarding her for the trip back to Philadelphia, with notes with addresses and phone numbers pinned on her, her coat and purse, and while waiting in the passenger waiting area, I speculated whether this relatively newly diagnosed disease was hereditary, and Carole in her usual graciousness said "Oh I don’t think so, look at your Aunt Catherine and Aunt Louise", Mom’s sisters...and I said "WHO?"

You’ve already read enough of my indiscretions to know that this life has not been a "primrose path"...perhaps more a briar patch...but it has been a great deal of fun to have lived with and/or known the people that I have written about. It would have been quite enough to have just READ about rather than have lived these incidents...but then would the chemistry of this have existed had I not been there, perhaps the catalyst of most due to my own naiveté or even stupidity.

So, once again, not knowing where I’m going, where I’ve been, "what the hell I’m doing", or who I am, do you have any further doubt that I would have written as I have?

Bud Farrell