A Farm in the Country

I was watching a television show last week and there was a reference to a dog being taken to live on a farm out in the country, where he would be able to run around all day with the other dogs. This, of course, was not true. The funny thing about this is, it is the exact story I was told when I was a kid about one of our dogs and I totally bought it, hook, line, and sinker.

I was just a little guy then, I couldn’t have been more than six or seven at the time. I don’t really even remember too much about our dog at the time, other than he was a Shetland Sheep dog, he was getting older, and his name was Tuffy. From what my older brothers told me, he was a great dog. Back then, there was a place called “the Pit” (short for sandpit), which was just outside the woods behind our house and was a bunch of sand piles and large rocks. My brothers would go out in the backyard and say, “To the Pit!” and Tuffy would take off and wait for them at the Pit. As you can imagine, dogs weren’t tied up or kept in the house all day when we were kids.

Somewhere along the line though, Tuffy turned into a dirty dog and started trying to do things with us kids he ought not to have been trying. To top it off, Tuffy tried taking a bite out of anyone that didn’t like his actions, and that was the end of the line. Fortunately, I don’t recall any of this happening. I do remember being told that he was getting the treat of a lifetime, that my parents were going to bring him to a country farm where he could run around and play all day with a bunch of other dogs. I saw that as Dog Heaven. They assured us “Three Little Ones” that Tuffy would be very happy there, that he would have room to run, and he’d have a bunch of dog friends.

I imagined it always being sunny and warm there, with fields of grass to run through from morning to night. I would think about it from time to time and smile to myself, thinking of Tuffy hanging with his new friends, and figuring he wouldn’t even miss us due to all the fun he was having. For years, I believed that Tuffy was just about the luckiest dog in the world. Well, along with the other dogs on the farm.

It wasn’t until I was in about eighth or ninth grade (into my teenage years for those who don’t want to do the math) that I learned that Tuffy had been put to sleep. I was shocked that my loving parents could do such a thing, I was horrified that my older brothers were okay with this, and I was totally embarrassed that I never figured out that there was no farm in the country where dogs go to live out their last years in complete and total bliss. I guess it was one of the last vestiges of childhood that was torn down, the last of my innocence. Old dogs don’t go out gracefully; they go out suddenly and permanently. Maybe this is why I never got a dog as I got older.

Ah, to be able to go back to those days when everything was right with the world. Santa came every Christmas, the Easter Bunny came every Easter, I was going to be a baseball player when I grew up, and old dogs went to live on a farm in the country with a bunch of other dogs. At least in their world it’s sunny and warm all year round.

It Says So in the Childcraft!

Another post in a series on Famous Family Sayings

In my family, when you made a definitive statement about something you had to be able to prove it. Mom and Dad taught us to question things, so if I said something like “The moon is made out of cheese” someone would ask where I had heard that and then tell me to prove it. Most families had some version of encyclopedias back then, including mine, even if they were a little out of date by the time I started using them. So I’d break out the encyclopedia that included an entry about the moon and then… realize my older brothers had just made a fool of me.

We also had another option that had entries on a whole bunch of topics, a book called Childcraft. It was basically an encyclopedia for kids, with simple language, pictures and illustrations. There were multiple books, but I think we only had one – How Things Work. I used to look up things in there all the time (OK, so I was a little nerdy as a kid), as did other members of my family. That book contained a lot of good information and I found it quite interesting.

One time, my sister had one of those definitive statement moments and when asked how she knew, her simple response was, “It says so in the Childcraft!” While what she said may have been true, my older brothers pounced all over that statement and made a joke out of it. In fact, they thought it was so funny, they started using that line all the time (which us younger ones picked up on and copied so we could be cool like them). That line got used so much it became a Famous Family Saying.

Here are some fictional examples of how this line may have been used:

One of us younger ones: “It’s getting cloudy outside, I think it’s going to rain.”

One of the older ones: “It says so in the Childcraft!”

Me: “Anyone know what’s for dinner?”

Older brother: “Roast beef.”

Me: “Again? Are you sure?”

Older brother: “Yup. It says so in the Childcraft!”

Older brother: “Joey has a new girlfriend.”

Me: “I DO NOT! Who told you that?”

Older brother: “It says so in the Childcraft!”

Older brothers: “Don’t tell Mom what we’re doing. You wanna know why?”

One of us younger ones: “Why?”

Older brothers: “Because if you do…” (fist punching other hand) “You wanna know why?”

One of us younger ones: “Why?”

Older brothers: “It says so in the Childcraft!”

One of us younger ones: “You’re in TROUBLE!”

One of the older ones: “What?!?! I didn’t do anything. How do you know?”

One of us younger ones: “It says so in the Childcraft!”

This last example would have been followed by a mad dash to get away before we got a noogie…or worse.

If you made any kind of statement that sounded smart, there was a good chance it would be followed by “It says so in the Childcraft!” It was funny at times, not so funny at other times. When you were just being a know-it-all, it was funny for everyone. When you were trying to be serious about something and got mocked with that line, it could be very frustrating. Now that I think about it, it was always funny for everyone except the person at whom “It says so in the Childcraft!” was aimed.

We used that phrase so often that the publishers should have been paying us royalties. For years, there wasn’t a week that went by that “It says so in the Childcraft!” didn’t get uttered by at least one of us. The strange thing is, I don’t remember Mom or Dad ever getting involved with this and having to stop it like they did with so many other things. I can’t say no one ever got hurt (at least emotionally), but I guess it never got out of hand. Eventually, as we got older, it died out.

Kids today wouldn’t know an encyclopedia from a cyclorama. Instead of researching something using an encyclopedia, they do their research using the internet. You could make a strong case that their “It says so on the internet” is our “It says so in the Childcraft!” With one exception that is; everything in Childcraft was true. I don’t know if the Childcraft books are still published, but if they were, you could probably look up “internet” and it would say that you can’t believe everything you read on the internet. That would be awesome, because when someone asked me how I knew, I could say “It says so in the Childcraft!”

Dream A Little Dream With Me

I’ve been reading a book called “The Book Thief” by Markus Zusak, and one of the main characters has a bad dream every night. The story is set in Germany during the rise of Adolph Hitler and the poor little girl, named Liesel, saw her brother die while on a train going to live with a foster family. They are then forced off the train at the next stop where the boy is unceremoniously buried. Liesel understandably does not want to leave her Mom, the only family she has left. Every night she dreams of her older brother dying in their mother’s arms.

I can relate to Liesel having nightmares. When I was a kid there was a time where I had a nightmare almost every night. I think part of the reason I did was because I had such a vivid imagination. The things I dreamed about sometimes were a whole lot scarier than anything that was on TV back then, and at that age I had never seen a horror movie. OK, I have to admit that up to about age 12, when Miss Gulch turned into the wicked witch in “The Wizard of Oz”, I was a little freaked out. I think it was because she reminded me of someone I knew, maybe a teacher.

The main nightmare I used to have started when I was about nine years old. A man, whose face I could never see, with a black leather hat and a black leather jacket with a high collar, would come out of the closet holding a big, sharp knife in his right hand and he was coming to get me. I could tell that knife was really sharp, just by the way the little bit of light in the room twinkled on the edge of it. And even though I couldn’t see his face I knew he had an evil grin on that shadowy face. The funny thing is, I never thought that the evil man was coming after my younger brother who shared the bedroom with me. Nope, he was just after me.

It also didn’t matter if we left the closet door open or closed, I still had the same vision of the guy coming after me. If it was open, he just slowly appeared; first his shadowy face, then his leather clad arm and then that big sharp knife as he stepped out of the closet. If the door was closed, the door would slowly and almost noiselessly open, and then the guy would slowly appear as when the door was open. I did the only thing a kid could do against a closet creeper – I screamed and then I ran. In the blink of an eye, I was out of bed, out of my bedroom and up the hallway, running to safety. Usually, one of my parents caught me before I got far up the hallway.

However, there were a few times, they weren’t quick enough. As added detail, let me tell you that we had a dog back then and we put a board across the divide between the living room and the dining room to keep him in the dining room at night. On one occasion, I ran up the hallway into the living room, jumped over the board, jumped over the dog and went out the door into the back half of the garage where there was a door to the back yard. My three older brothers (the "three middle ones") had a bedroom in the front half of the garage and caught me before I went out of the house into the yard. Where I was going, I have no idea, but I’m glad they stopped me before I got out.

My poor parents had no idea what to do with me. They asked me if someone at school was picking on me (Of course not, I got along with everybody). They asked me if someone in the neighborhood was hurting me (No, nobody touched me because of my older brothers). Unless you counted my own brothers, nobody laid a hand on me or threatened me. Besides, they didn’t really hurt me, at least not enough to rat them out at this time. I think my parents really thought there was something wrong with me, that maybe I needed some professional help.

I also feel bad for my younger brother who shared the room with me. My yelling and screaming startled him out of some peaceful, happy dreams and there were a few times he even decided to run with me. One particular night probably scarred him for life. He was sound asleep, all nice and snuggly in his bed when the knife appeared out of the closet, followed by the faceless man in his leather ensemble. I started my usual nighttime routine and, woken up by my screaming, he started to follow. However, on this night his feet got caught in the blankets and he couldn’t get out. I looked back and saw him thrashing around to get loose and yelling helplessly – he was trapped! It was every boy for himself, and I was out of that room and starting up the hallway. I don’t know who was louder, me or him.

Those nightmares stopped after a while, I don’t really know how long it was, and there was a little more peace at night. Over the years I’ve had people tell me to “follow your dreams”, but in this case I just have to say, “Thanks, but no. I think I’d rather live.” Disney may be able to make your dreams come true, but I think I’d much rather leave them behind. The dreams I had as a young boy, like Liesel’s in the book, are just not worth pursuing.