Dog Days of Summer
by Maggie Van Ostrand
Just
got back from a cross-country drive with my two dogs and boy, did we have a few
adventures along the way. We were headed from Southern California to Asheville,
North Carolina, where we spent a month in a rented cottage. We checked out many
beautiful trails off the Blue Ridge Highway, where the Great Smokey Mountains
meet the Blue Ridge Mountains. Lots of cold streams and lakes for the pups to
cool their paws in. And I know every great dog park in every city we stayed
overnight: Flagstaff, Albuquerque, Amarillo, Oklahoma City, N. Little Rock,
Brentwood TN, and then Asheville, one more beautiful than the other.
At one point, we narrowly escaped several tornadoes driving east the
last week in May and, when leaving Oklahoma City after deciding to take a chance
that we could make it safely, the hotel clerk gave this advice: "If you
see one coming, get out of your car and into a ditch right quick." Well,
since we didn't have a ditch with us, we could only hope. We did see a tornado in the rear view mirror, but it didn't catch up to us.
In Little Rock, the
dog park is acres and acres, and it's part of the nation's largest park, Burns
Park, with several 18-hole golf courses in it, a couple of lakes for boating,
miles of bike paths, an original log cabin smack in the center where it's been
for over a hundred years, a covered bridge just like the one in Madison County, and more recreation than you ever dreamed of.
And
who wouldn't love driving through towns named Bucksnort and Toad Suck?
Bucksnort,
Tennessee, got its name from William ("Buck") Pamplin, who loved
whiskey. He would get soused and roar and snort. People would say: "Just
listen to Buck snort." His snorting became so frequent and the comment made
so often, that the neighbors found themselves running the last two words
together into Bucksnort. As for Toad Suck, Arkansas, long ago, steamboats
traveled the Arkansas River and tied up to wait where the Toad Suck Lock and
Dam now spans the river. While they waited for the water to rise, they
refreshed themselves at the local tavern, to the dismay of the folks living
nearby, who complained: “They suck on the bottle ’til they swell up like
toads.” The name Toad Suck stuck.
In Brentwood TN, on the outskirts of Nashville, there's
another gorgeous, large dog park and, one day, a beautiful blonde woman came
over and asked me about my little terrier. "Is he a Wheaton?" she
inquired. We got to talking about dogs and she asked if I'd come over to meet
her husband. "Sure," said I, and we walked to a shady area where a
tall man in a black Stetson stood up from the bench to greet us. "How do,
Ma'am," he said, removing his hat. Well, it was none other than Clint
Black. I took another look at the beautiful blonde woman and she was Lisa
Hartman. They were just as nice and interested in dogs as I am. There's really
nothing like country people for down-to-earthiness.
Between Nashville and Asheville though, we ran into an intense hail
storm. The radio said they were as "big as golf balls" but they were
really only as big as moth balls. Apparently, weather predictors have even more
trouble with reality than I do. We were driving through, with the hail
crashing down and making a godawful noises as they hit the car. I noted people
stopped under every overpass, not even bothering to pull over. Believe me, I
had to do some fancy swerving to get through and out the other side. I thought
they were a bunch of yellow-bellied sapsuckers, until someone later told me
that I was the idiot, not the people who stopped and waited for the storm to
pass. Seems that the law of physics applies here: if you drive in a hail storm,
the intensity of your car as target for the hail stones is greatly
enhanced. So if any of you ever are in that spot, pull over.
We got safely back but driving west, we encountered high temperatures up
to 110 F and I had the A/C on high the whole way, because of the dogs. I had to
wear a sweat jacket and a down vest to keep from freezing, just to get the cold air through the
car for the pups. You should've seen the looks I got at traffic lights by
sweaty people in sleeveless shirts and convertibles staring at shivering me
with the windows up. It was only after we got gas in Albuquerque that a woman suggested I might consider shutting off the A/C in front by the
driver and just leaving it on in back. She was much smarter than I am but then, so's cottage cheese.
Anyway, it's a wonderful thing to talk to people in different places. In
a small Texas town named Groom stands the 2nd largest cross in the nation (190
feet) just off the I-40 at the old Mother Road, Route 66. It was near there I
met little girl of about 8 in a print dress, who was kicking sand while I was
filling up the Pupmobile's tank. I asked her what she did for fun, and she
shyly replied, "I run the dumper." When I asked what that meant, she
took me by the hand around to the back of the station where I saw a big blue
Dempsey Dumpster. She let go of my hand and ran toward it and right up onto
its side, doing a backflip at the top, with a perfect Olympic-type landing on
both feet. "That," she said proudly, "is running the
dumper."
America.
What a wonderful place to live.
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