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Hammond Indiana

Subject	Message	Replies
A dog tale Date: 03-05-2009 By: Paddy	One Hammond memory that stands out is that of my first pet, a dog named Pal. I'm not sure if I found Pal or Pal found me. All I can say is that our meeting involved a bus stop and a Catholic priest. We lived at 4842 Beech Avenue at the time. My three sisters and I went to All Saints Grade School, which was downtown, and we took the bus to and from school. Our closest bus stop was at Beech and Hoffman. The north side of Hoffman was taken up by Catholic Central High School, now Bishop Noll Institute, along with a convent and rectory for the nuns and priests who taught there. Beech dead-ended at Hoffman, but a driveway on the north side of the intersection led to the rectory and beyond. I never had a notion to venture there, but that changed when I got off the bus on a spring day and heard a dog barking. The property was surrounded by a chain link fence, so I felt safe to cross over and investigate. When I peered through the fence, I saw a huge black and tan German Shepherd leaping at the end of a 30 foot chain, barking and growling at ME. I turned and walked home, but I was curious as to why this dog, who had never seen me before, had it in for me. When I got off the bus the next day, I walked through the driveway gate to get a better look at this chained monster. He was lying down, but immediately went into attack mode when he saw me, straining at the chain and barking his head off. I don't know why, but I sensed that he was daring me to get closer, and what kid would ever turn down a dare? I was brave, but I wasn't stupid, so I took my sweet time getting closer. I stopped by every day after school and sat beyond his reach, talking to him and inching a little closer each time. As days went by, he stopped his furious barking and straining at the end of his chain. When I got off the bus, I heard the bark of a friendly dog. As I approached, he would sit there. After a very long time, I finally got close enough to hold out my hand and touch him. He licked my hand and let me pet him, and we bonded. He welcomed me into the 60 foot circle that defined his realm as the rectory watchdog, and that became our private playground. What I didn't know was that Father Junk, the principal of Bishop Noll, had been observing our bonding ritual from a rectory window. When he came out to speak to me, I was sure that he would yell at me for my sins, first trespassing on his property and then befriending the dog who was supposed to protect the property against trespassers. He caught me quite off guard when he approached us. I learned that someone had given Pal to him as a watchdog. Apparently, my ability to befriend this ferocious beast impressed him, and he asked if I would like to take Pal home with me. To me, it was a dream come true. Pal was not the average mutt that I was used to seeing around the neighborhood. This was one prince of a dog. But nobility aside, there remained the not so small problem of parental consent. Father Junk cut off a length of Pal's chain for a leash, and I walked him home to find out. My mother was home but my dad had left for work at the Socony refinery in Whiting. I made the typical kid's plea that I would feed, water and clean after Pal day and night. She wasn't happy about the situation, but she was willing to wait until my dad got home so they could discuss it. When it was time for bed, I wrapped Pal's chain around a post that supported our front porch roof and he rested at the top of the steps. All was well until Dad got off the bus at Beech and Hoffman around midnight and walked to the house. Then mayhem ensued, with lots of shouting, lights going on, Pal barking ferociously, Dad's lunch bucket on the front lawn and Dad standing in the middle of the street. Pal didn't come with an owner's manual, and Father Junk neglected to tell me that German Shepherds were fiercely loyal to their masters. When Pal and I bonded, he went from being Father Junk's watchdog to my personal watchdog. To make a long story short, Pal sat quietly when I came outside. After Dad regained his wits (and lunch bucket) and got inside, we all went to sleep with Pal on guard. Pal stayed, but everyone in the family recognized that he obeyed only me. This was not a problem until the day that my younger brother Jack did something that got my ire. I can't remember the infraction, but when Jack ran up the stairs to the second floor, I told Pal "Sic 'Em," which he dutifully did. In one bound, Pal leapt up the stairs, grabbed Jack by his shirt collar and pulled him down the stairs. I thought that the power of me and my dog was pretty cool, but Jack's incessant wailing alerted my mother to what I had done. A couple of days later, I came home from school to find that Mom and Dad had found a new home for Pal. Pal's departure saddened me, but I was young and got over it in time. Now it is just one more memory of growing up in Hammond that I wanted to share.	4

Replies

Date	Member	Message
03-06-2009 ( Reply#: 2807 )	S C Jones	Buttons was a black, medium-sized mutt that one fall "followed" my younger brother home from school. When my brother asked Dad if the dog could stay, the answer was: "Yes, but he has to stay outside." My brother and I would let Buttons come inside when Dad was at work. And on weekends, when my brother was most often staying with a family in Hobart, Buttons was my charge. As Fall is wont to be in Hessville, the weather changed pretty fast that year and pretty soon it was cold at night--too cold for Buttons to stay outside. I came home from school one cool afternoon to find my Dad in the unattached garage (Only in Woodmar were there attached garages that I knew of in the 50's.) Dad had pulled open a drawer in an old dresser that had been moved to the garage and put Buttons in the drawer showing him where he could go to keep warm. A few days later there were some of Dad's old paint-bespeckled shirts and pants in that drawer and Buttons was dutifully lying on them. It was, maybe two weeks later when I came home to find Buttons safely inside the house and he soon became my Dad's constant companion, lying beside him in his recliner and riding on the ledge of the back window of the car whenever it left the driveway except for the trip to Youngstown Sheet and Tube. Dad would say, "I'm going to work." and Buttons would sit and watch him leave the house. Buttons was a smart dog. I taught him to sit, speak, lie down, and roll over. When he wanted in the house, he barked at the door. And sometime after I went to college and my brother joined the Navy, Buttons began disappearing a couple weeks during the summer. A couple of times Dad got a call that Buttons had been picked up and was in "jail". One day, as Dad was driving to the grocery, he saw Buttons trotting down 173rd as though he knew where he was going. So Dad slowed and watched where he went. When Buttons went into a driveway and up to the door of a house, Dad watched a woman open the door for him. Dad stopped and talked with the woman. She said that every so often, Buttons came to stay with her during the summer months. On one particularly hot day--had to be in August, after all it was Northern Indiana where August is the hottest, most humid month of the year (or so I remember it)-- a neighbor boy came running to get me. He said, "Buttons is in the middle of 173rd and he won't move, I think he is hurt. I went running back up to 173rd--BTW, we lived on Maryland Avenue, in Grand Park, and were about a block from 173rd--I called Buttons to come, but he just raised his head and looked at me. I went up to him and touched him--he seemed not to have been injured, so I picked him up and carried him home. When I got to our yard, I put him down and he trotted up to the house. It could have been heat exhaustion--or he might have just wanted some attention? Buttons helped me memorize the preamble to the constitution. I sat on the front stoop and repeated it to him over and over. When he came home with a swollen snout that had cuts on it---cat or another dog, I don't know,-- it was obviously infected, so I dabbed hydrogen peroxide on the cuts and they foamed big time--Buttons took it like the man he was---he was a father, after all to one black-like-him pup whose mother lived 5 houses down from us. When Buttons died, at home in our backyard, my stepmother wrote to me and asked that I not mention Buttons to Dad--she said it was too difficult for him to speak of Buttons. I am positive that Dad missed Buttons more than he ever missed my brothers and me. And I would not have had it any other way. Buttons was the one constant in our household for the five years I was privileged to live in the same home and neighborhood with him.
03-06-2009 ( Reply#: 2808 )	Paddy	A great story. I should have named the thread "Dog Tales."
03-06-2009 ( Reply#: 2809 )	S C Jones	Paddy, Thanks writing your interesting and inspiring Dog Tale. Your story inspired me and there may be others who will join in with their stories.
03-07-2009 ( Reply#: 2811 )	Tom J	Dad got me a beagle puppy from some guy whose last name was Chapman when I was six years old. We called the pup "Chappy." I can barely remember him, because we had not had him too long when he was stolen from the pen in our back yard. I can't remember how long it was after Chappy was "dognapped" before we got another dog. I know I was seven when Dad brought home a little terrier mix black and white puppy that we called "Pepper," and I grew up with that dog. I was seven years old when we got Pepper and twenty-one years old when he was put to sleep in the summer of 1970. He had cancer. I STILL think about him, almost thirty-nine years after his death. This picture was obviously taken around Christmas time, and I believe it would have been 1961 or 1962, when I was 12 or 13. Tom [IMG]http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y145/tsjay/My%20house/Scan0016_016_016_edited.jpg[/IMG] A 1967 Graduate of Hammond High who cherishes his memories of growing up in the Hammond of the 1950's and 1960's. Bring back those days! [IMG]http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y145/tsjay/Tom%20and%20Georgeann/img014.jpg[/IMG]