Poor Dog

I hitch-hiked home from Dillon, Montana to Anaheim, California. It was during my Christmas vacation from college in 1947 when I was eighteen. I had planned to stay on campus and work for the school as a gardener, but watching all my buddies leave for their homes made me homesick. I put on a scarf and a long overcoat and took off for California in the afternoon. After midnight I was standing on ice in the street entering a small town in Idaho. My feet seemed freezing cold. I tried rubbing the soles of my leather dress shoes on the icy street hoping the friction would warm my feet. It didn't help. There were no cars going by. The road was too slippery for cars, and it was getting colder and colder as I skipped along the dark road. I finally lost hope that anyone was going to come along and give me a ride. I came to an old farm house with a small barn out back. The door was open so I walked in and was greeted by a skinny little dog who seemed to be freezing to death herself. There were two small piles of snow in the barn where large holes in the roof allowed snow to come in. The dog had been curled up on a blanket by the door. I covered myself with the blanket and made friends with the dog. The trouble was, the body odor from the dog was so bad I couldn't stand it. I felt sorry for the poor dog and would have enjoyed keeping her warm, but the smell of her and her blanket was too much for me. There were some old tires on the dirt floor so I used them to make a bed. After an hour of misery trying to go to sleep, I got out of there.

Walking through the town I was drawn toward the sound of a train engine working to move freight cars at the station yard. I walked along next to the steam engine with my hands reaching toward the heat.

Finally the sun came up and melted the ice on the road, and I snaked a ride toward sunny California. Two days later I was riding waves at Huntington Beach getting a sunburn. My baby brother, Ronny was living at home with my mother. We visited for several days.

The last night of Christmas Vacation I was stranded again on an icy road in Idaho heading north. I watched the movie theater people go home to bed before midnight and expected to stand in the street all night freezing. The road going north led up a steep hill and ice would not permit traffic.

The sheriff drove through the small town in a police marked car. He saw me, found out I was on my way back to Montana college and decided to help me. He said he would have to lock me up in jail until morning. He locked me in a wooden unpainted jail cell with a bare dirty mattress on the floor. He threw me an old blanket. I asked him if he would please leave the jail door open. He said, "I will unlock the door in the morning and let you out."

I said, "Please wake me. I don't want to be late for school."

The sheriff said in a friendly tone, "You look tired. You better sleep 'till you wake up by yourself."

He left a bare 100 watt light bulb burning on the wood ceiling so I was flooded with light for the rest of the night. I looked in the lining of the dirty mattress and found bed bugs. It didn't matter. I was too tired to care about bed bug bites. I fell asleep, and the warm sun woke me late in the morning. The door was unlocked when I sneaked out of there hoping nobody would see me. It was my first time being in jail. I had only a few bug bites. I hitch-hiked a ride in a truck that took me to my school in Dillon, Montana. The jail bed was a far sight better than the one in the barn with the poor dog.