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2010: Ashes to ashes

When Xena died last summer, I didn’t really write about it. I couldn’t. It was one of those rare times when words fluttered away from me like a flock of frenetic finches.

Tonight, as 2010 gasps its last and the Knoxville Years draw to a close, I decided to scatter the big dog’s ashes in Lake Loudon. There were tears. But I also paused to remember what she meant to me. I thought about a time almost 12 years ago to the night, when I looked up from the couch to see a Newf puppy charging at me in wide-eyed terror, a string of twinkle lights wrapped around her hind legs and a 12 foot Christmas tree tumbling behind her. Christmas ended early that year. But it was OK.

I thought about the time 11 years ago when Xena and I drove back from the Knoxville News Sentinel after delivering a batch of pretty awesome black-eyed peas to the staff there. The Mingus Big Band played on the radio as the clock struck 12 and the year 2000 kicked into gear. The world kept turning, despite prophesies of computer-assisted doom. I swear I could see Xena grinning in the rearview mirror.

Maybe that’s why a tear came to my eye when the Mingus Big Band came on tonight while Lara and I drove back form an early New Year’s Eve dinner at RouxBarb, our favorite Knoxville restaurant. I knew it was time to scatter Xena’s ashes. To bring closure to the Knoxville Years.

The lake was fizzing with reflected fireworks. Partying people laughed in the distance. A blue heron squawked through the darkness like a blind man tapping his way across a busy intersection. Gray ashes filtered down from the dock, into the black water and back from whence they came.

Lara and I leave Knoxville fondly. This place has been wonderful to us and we’ll never forget it. I enter 2011 confident that there will be more dogs, more love and more Mingus down the line.

Happy New Year, y’all.

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Gilligan’s Wake

Gilligan“Riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.”

It’s finally time. Time to hold a wake worthy of the sound and fury that was Gilligan, the black-and-tan coonhound from hell. We’re going to commemorate the noble beast at our house on Saturday, July 31. There will be swimming. There will be music. There will be rituals that will have James Joyce spinning in his grave.

If you’d like to join us, please send me a note and I’ll respond with details. Out of town guests are welcome, of course. The more the merrier.

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Godspeed, Mr. Gilligan

gilligan2.jpg

He was a good dog.

Well, no. Not really.

Half the time he was a good dog. A SuperDog. Worthy of Polly Purebred.

But the other half, he was a whiney, headstrong itch that constantly demanded scratching.

And I loved him. I’m proud that my last day with Gilligan was at Frozen Head State Park, switch-backing up to the lookout tower, driven by his and Ozzy‘s panting pace. He pissed me off a few times. He amazed me a few more. And when we met a group of backpackers who were about to ascend the mountain to spend the night, he managed to slip his collar and insert himself next to their husky in a photo I was trying to snap for them.

That was Gilligan. Half the time I loved him; half the time I wanted to slap him upside the head. Sometimes, regrettably, I did.

I never realized how hard I would take his death.

He started whining when we hit Oak Ridge on the way back from Frozen Head. I figured he needed to pee. I consoled him. Only a few more minutes. He put his black-and-tan muzzle on my right shoulder, looking me in the eye through the rearview mirror from the back seat of my truck. When we pulled into the driveway, I let him and Ozzy out. They’d been bolting at every opportunity, but I didn’t think they would now.

Not after a 3 1/2 hour, 7 mile hike up Frozen Head.

Not when I was dangling dinner in their earholes.

But they leaped out of the truck, pissed on the nearest shrubbery and bolted up the driveway to freedom. Lara, who was taking Xena on her after-dinner walk up on the street, shouted as the hounds flew past. They kept going, fueled by the thrill of rubbing their freedom in the face of every fenced dog they passed. I was pissed. Really pissed. But there wasn’t much to be done. I showered. Lara and I went off to meet friends for dinner, confident that the hounds would be home when we returned.

They weren’t. Lara went to bed around 1 a.m. When she awoke at 4, Ozzy was in the garage, grateful to be let in the house. Gilligan was nowhere to be seen.

He still wasn’t here when I awoke around 8. I put a note on Facebook. On my blog. On the animal shelter’s site. Ozzy and I walked the road looking for Gilligan. Lara called the emergency vet clinic. There was no sign of him. We decided to grab lunch and run errands. And that’s when Lara spotted him. Lying on the side of the road. Already stiff. I think he died instantly, but that wasn’t much consolation. I spent the rest of the afternoon bathed in vodka and tears, wishing that asshole were whining at my feet, begging to go down to the dock for a swim in the frigid cove.

So  now I’m sitting here smoking a cigar, listening to Hayes Carll, thinking about all the dock diving our black-and-tan dumpster diver got to do before he met his maker.

Godpeed, Mr. Gilligan. You were a good dog …

Photos of the Frozen Head Hike

Photos of Gilligan

Gilligan joins the pack