No booze before a contest. By the time I came into his life he was a wiry man, gray hair in a buzz cut, the face of a confirmed alcoholic. Broken veins, deep creases, and sallow skin made him look a lot older than his sixty-some years. He walked everywhere or rode an old black Schwinn bicycle, so his body looked a lot better than his face. Everyone on the Harmon, Huff, Zepp, Finster, Buckingham side of the family is good with machines, especially the women. For a guy, PopPop did okay. But if something really broke down, Mother and Aunt Mimi would come and fix it. They could fix trucks and tractors, so bicycles were a snap. Back then, riding a bicycle wasn’t necessarily an admission of alcoholism. Even with Ford’s mass production revolution, motor vehicles, whether trucks, cars, or boats, remained out of reach for many. But PopPop needed his bike, swore he wouldn’t pedal it drunk. Usually he kept that promise but sometimes he’d fall over in a ditch only to wake up wet and muddy, hauled home by a friend.
I showed a flair for hounds very early. This thrilled my grandfather. He promised Mother if I stayed with him sometimes, he wouldn’t drink. He didn’t. When I look back I wonder what that cost him. Sometimes he’d shake, his hands just trembling like leaves in the wind, but he never complained and he didn’t cheat on his promise. He had a Marylander’s pride and he never wanted me to see him in that deplorable condition where he’d get so bad he’d mess himself.
Sometimes Mother and Aunt Mimi would find him and need to clean him up. I think even today there are people who care for their blood or friends that way, but most, if they have any money at all, pack them off to rehab. No rehab then. Not that we knew about.
Mother always said that even falling-down drunk, PopPop fed, watered, and cleaned his hounds.
He taught me to put bag balm on their paw pads if they became footsore. He showed me, after a cow or sheep was rendered, how to cook up a meat and barley stew for them. Start with a little flaxseed or corn, toss in a touch of cheap bourbon or whiskey. I’ve never seen hounds since to match PopPop’s hounds.
I’m trying to build an addition onto my kennels so that I can have a block and tackle, a walk-in freezer, and one of those huge iron pots that take four men to move so I can duplicate PopPop’s recipe. Until then, it’s commercial kibble, which is good, but what could be better than warm gruel on a cold day after you’ve run fifty miles?
Conditioning and nutrition are critical. Teaching me gave PopPop a lift to his step. He wasn’t talkative. He’d tell me what I needed to know, like, “Buzz, cook until the meat falls off the bones. Dry the bones out. Save them, let them dry out, and then grind them up.” He’d pour into the gruel the ground bones from, say, last week’s cooking. “Use barley. Don’t use wheat. If you can get rice, that’s good, but we can’t get it here as easily as barley, which is all around. Put in this much flaxseed.” He’d pour in two gallons (the pot could hold two grown men). “Corn oil is good but expensive. If you become a rich woman, use corn oil.” He’d wink. “Course you could marry a rich man, but don’t marry him if he’s not a foxhunter.” A deep breath. “Or at least some kind of hunter. A man that doesn’t hunt isn’t a man.” I never disputed this and don’t much to this day, although I realize for many, hunting opportunities are slipping. Then there are those who demonize all hunters, portraying them as bloodthirsty dolts.
On these lessons would go. Usually I kept my trap shut. Sometimes I’d ask a question. Training fascinated me. He’d go into a run with puppies, eight weeks old. “All they need to know is their name.” He’d call a puppy’s name and if they came, he’d give them a little treat. He played games with them, which encouraged hunting prowess. To this day, I still use some of those games with my own pups.
The most important things he taught me were:
Love your hounds.
Trust your hounds. If you can’t trust a hound, don’t hunt him.
If anyone mistreats your hound, never speak to them again. If they hurt a hound, bide your time but hurt them back.
Now, that might sound ugly, but people are pack animals. Let one misbehave, and the pack begins to disintegrate. If you don’t establish your position, people will walk all over you. If you have to hurt them, hurt them. He never told me how to hurt them, but over the years I learned a variety of ways to get even with anyone who misread my cotillion manners for weakness and to really smash anyone who hurt a hound, a horse, a cat, or a fox.
People that hurt animals will eventually hurt people. You can’t tolerate it. The law allows what honor forbids. Besides, in my experience, the law only belongs to those who can afford it.
I’d go with him to contests. Dad drove. Frost sparkled on cornstalks. What excitement. Men would pay an entry fee per hound, usually two dollars but sometimes as much as five, which was a lot of money. You could eat for a week for five dollars. The hounds got a number painted on each hindquarter. The judges mounted up, usually on quiet horses since some of the judges couldn’t have gotten back on if they fell off. Too much pie. Wives, girlfriends came along but I didn’t see women hunting the hounds. We all knew some of them worked in the kennels, but back then you made the man look good even if he wasn’t. If the ladies resented it, I didn’t know, but I was too little to know. I sure resented it as I grew.
Two incidents from those hunts are vivid and still guide me today. One I wrote about in Rita Will. As PopPop deteriorated further he started to cheat. I unwittingly helped. He’d go to the cast (where you’d first let out your hound or hounds) with a gorgeous hound who ran silent. We’d go in the middle of the night. We’d follow on foot as best we could to learn where the foxes were and where the freshest scent was up to that time. Then we’d come back the next morning and he’d release the hounds that spoke. If the hunt was way far from his little house we couldn’t do this since he couldn’t drive.
I told Mother once I realized what was going on. She said, “Keep it to yourself. Sometimes people have to break the rules to live. He’s suffered in this life.” So I never told until I wrote Rita Will because they’re all gone now.
There are people who break other people for the sake of obeying the rules, and there are people who break the rules to help others. I hope, thanks to Mother and Dad, I fall into the latter category. Not that I’m looking to cheat, but I figure you could throw out ninety percent of all federal, state, and county legislation and we’d all be happier, and far, far more productive.
The other lesson I learned involved a German baker. He’d been successful, eventually selling his store and recipes to a larger company. He’d fled the rise of the Nazis, and he was a decorated World War I vet. He grew up with a different kind of hound than we had, but he enjoyed working with hounds. So he got himself some American foxhounds and started learning about them and vice versa.
I mention American because here there are four kinds of foxhounds: English, American, Crossbred (a combination of the two), and Penn-marydels. Each has its virtues. I prefer the American, most especially Bywaters Blood or Skinker Blood (Orange County) hounds from The Plains, Virginia.
PopPop and Hans (PopPop called him Johnny) met at a hound trial. Typical of hound people, they started trading stories and tips. PopPop helped Hans a lot because Hans wanted a system. American hounds, like Thoroughbred horses, are terribly sensitive, though often very affectionate. Not everyone can or should handle them.
“No system.” PopPop would shake his head. “Each hound is a snowflake.”
Hans struggled with this. He’d been in the German army, after all, and rules and orders were the breath of life. Systems tend to be a German trait. I base this observation on my numerous visits there, and let me be clear: I really adore Germany, and I’m partial to Austria, too. But PopPop kept telling Hans he had to relax, be flexible, let the hound tell him what it would do and how quickly it would learn. He used a horseman’s term: “Don’t run him through the bridle.”
Since these men were born before automobiles, Hans got it. His English, heavily accented, a northern accent, was very good. He was a fine man with
a booming sense of humor who always fussed over me. Naturally, I adored him, and his wife, too.
Hans worked tirelessly with his American hounds. He began to win. He won a big one, walking off with fifty dollars. The first person to shake his hand was my grandfather, who really could have used that prize money.
When PopPop, Dad, and our two hounds, Buster and Bromo, loaded up in the car, we found an envelope on the driver’s seat written in the most beautiful script I ever had seen. It was addressed to Herr George Harmon and Buster and Bromo. The paper was watermarked. I noticed signs of elegance like that, even then, because Mother pounded it into me.
The letter simply read, “Corporal Harmon: Thank you. Sergeant Haxthausen.”
PopPop, much as he needed the money, struggled, for the gift was so large. Dad finally stepped in. “George, to return or refuse a gift is an insult pretty much anywhere in the world. Go thank him.”
PopPop’s eyes got glassy. He folded the letter and I watched him walk to where Hans was receiving congratulations, along with his wife. Well, she was so pretty, the men just wanted to touch her, so they shook her hand, too.
I tagged along at a distance but Dad held me back from joining the crowd. PopPop shook Hans’s hand and I heard him say, “Thank you, Johnny.”
Then Hans, happy as he could be, loudly proclaimed, “Taught me how to deal with an American hound. I just got lucky today.” He paused. “To think we nearly killed one another.” Everyone laughed.
“Daddy, why are they laughing?”
He squeezed my hand. “They were within a hundred yards or so of each other in the trenches.”
This troubled me. “Does that mean Johnny is our enemy?”
“No, honey. Old men start wars, young men fight them. It’s ugly.” Dad, in the Civil Air Patrol, escaped combat, not by his choice.
A few years later Hans died in an auto accident. PopPop went to the funeral in his uniform. When they lowered the casket he saluted. He cried, everyone cried. A good man is a good man in any country, any time.
That was an important lesson for me, but just as important was seeing how animals brought people together. What healers they are as well as best friends. Foxhounds truly saved my grandfather.
PopPop finally died in the mid-1950s. There was hardly anything of him left. His friends who competed against him knew the value of his hounds. They gave Mother and Aunt Mimi money for them, which upset me as I swore I could hunt them. No one derided me, but it wasn’t in the cards at that time.
Beauty, the hound who ran silent, came to me and she lived with Chaps, who loved having a friend. What I know of hounds and hunting I credit to PopPop, G-uncle Bob, and Beauty, and to the fact that love never dies. Those hounds I followed, the puppies he taught while I watched, PopPop himself, they each loved me in their way. I’m sending it along.
Chickens stick to their pecking order even more strictly than humans. Photo by Judy Pastore.
The Pecking Order
Ever notice how there’s always a low man on the totem pole no matter what the group is? Herd and pack animals create hierarchies. Cats don’t, since every cat is the king or queen of all he or she surveys. Why hierarchies are so important I don’t know. I never will. On the one hand, they create stability. On the other hand, they engender suffering. The worst thing you can do to a pack animal is to remove it from the pack. Even being the bottom man isn’t as painful. No wonder solitary confinement is perceived as the worst punishment for a human, short of torture and death.
Chickens stick to their pecking order even more strictly than humans. A human has the possibility to rise through effort. A chicken doesn’t, until some of the higher chickens die. Then the bird can move up the ladder. But some birds, just like people, are so peculiar or outlandish to other members of their species that they can’t be borne.
Except for those times of purgatory when I had to live in cities to acquire my higher miseducation (the Greek and Latin were worth it) and to establish my career, I’ve kept chickens. When I was quite small, I fed them. In our family, as soon as you could walk, you were taught to perform service. You didn’t work, you didn’t eat. It only took being sent to bed a couple of times without supper to end laziness. Pride grows when you see your chores help the family.
Our chickens were Rhode Island Reds, Leghorns, and Plymouth Barred Rock. When I entered the pen they’d rush up to me. The cats reposed outside the pen, dreaming of the day when one, just one, chicken would escape. The dogs, bored stiff by the cackling, showed little interest.
One big white chicken, a Leghorn, was literally henpecked. She had no feathers on her back. Much as I felt sorry for her, she managed. One other chicken was ostracized from the group completely. I’d throw her cracked corn as far as I could, after putting out a big pile for the others, so she could eat in peace. She lived under the chicken house because the others drove her from it. I asked Mother if I should find her a pen of her own and Mother replied that the chicken would rather be near her own kind even though they mistreated her.
Feathers decorated hats then. The more exotic the feather, the more expensive the hat. All ladies and gentlemen wore hats. Everyone looked attractive. You acquire a sense of personality when you’re sporting a hat. Different hats were suitable for different occasions.
Didn’t matter if you dressed up to go to town or you bumped along on your Johnny Pop (a John Deere tractor that made a pop from the exhaust), your work hat or everyday hat became your signature.
Dress-up hats, church hats, and rain hats contributed to your turnout, but your work hat really was you. Mother’s work hat was a soft straw hat, wide brim, black grosgrain ribbon. She gardened in it, went to market in it. Sometimes in winter she wore a navy blue fedora.
One lady in Mother’s group of friends, Agnes, sported the best hats. She had pheasant feathers for sporting occasions, feathers I couldn’t identify but that were dyed for other social occasions. She favored capes, too. As she was statuesque and a registered redhead, every man in the county was in love with her except her husband. She craved affection and found it easily. When the wives of the men supplying the much-needed emotional attention discovered their husbands’ generosity, Agnes found herself the subject of sulphurous reaction. What fascinated me as a child was that the wives nine times out of ten put the husband on their reserve shit list, while Agnes topped it. Agnes didn’t take a vow to be faithful to their marriage, though the husbands sure did. Agnes wasn’t often invited to parties. She wasn’t completely ostracized, but she was often pushed outside the circle.
Mother liked her. The woman had a great sense of humor as well as style. And she wasn’t the first woman to look for love in all the wrong places. Divorce was a horrendous stain then. Better to be in a miserable marriage than no marriage at all. Her solution to the desiccation of her emotional life seemed better than no solution at all.
Around this time, when I was about seven, I noticed that many women drank secretly. It was one of many things I had observed in the adult world that mystified me.
The chickens lacked recourse to sippin’ whiskey. Their pleasure was their feed, hence plumpness. Some people take that route, too.
One of Agnes’s worst critics, Deirdre, was an engine of exclusiveness, forever stirring up other women. She’d make her bid at the bridge table and then casually look at her opponent and say, “Anne, saw Hoppy chatting up Agnes down at the filling station today. He checked her tire pressure before the grease monkey could get to it.” As Hoppy was Anne’s husband, this produced the desired effect.
Mother loathed this. Aunt Mimi learned to listen but she swore she didn’t like it either. Mother could turn away from gossip, cutting the person short. Sis had to hear the whole story, slapping on her moral cosmetics.
One day Mother and I walked through the town square as Agnes approached from the opposite direction. The two women waved, and when they reached each other, they noted the weather, the standard conversation opener in our parts. Then they moved on to events,
politics, upcoming holidays. Agnes’s hat, green, resembled a Borsalino. A wide same-colored grosgrain ribbon banded it with a quarter-moon pinned on the side of the ribbon, badger fur protruding. A mass of pheasant feathers with a few red feathers interspersed provided a vivid backdrop for the groomed tufts of badger fur. I coveted that hat. Mother wore a simple slouch, I wore a lad’s cap. I still wear them, as they keep your head warm and they’re so comfortable.
Sure enough, sailing around the Square like an outrigger in a high wind, Deirdre approached. Her hat, broad-brimmed with cascades of ostrich feathers in electric purple, bounced as she clipped along. All she needed was a mainsail.
As she passed she called hello to Mother while snubbing Agnes. Agnes’s face turned red.
Mother said, “Agnes, don’t go out of your way to piss on a skunk.”
Agnes laughed, and that was that.
Later Aunt Mimi stopped by. The two sisters rarely passed a day without at least one visit, usually two.
Mother said, “Sis, saw Deirdre on the Square and she appears to have recovered from her recent bout of good health. I was talking to Agnes and Deirdre snubbed her. I know it was Deirdre even though I could barely see her face for the feathers on her hat—screaming purple, mind you.”
Aunt Mimi perked up, “What kind of feathers?”
“Vulture.”
Agnes persevered. As she aged and opportunities for outside affection waned, she accepted her lot. Like most women she needed her husband’s money to survive. A middle-class or working-class woman who could manage to get herself an education might become a nurse, a schoolteacher, or a secretary. But the wages were pitifully low. Small wonder divorce wasn’t an option. Agnes’s looks held up and she let her hair turn a beautiful silver. Little by little she moved further into the circle.
Animal Magnetism Page 6