Ol Rounder wuz, as most dogs were in those distant once upon a time daze, of mixed ’n ambiguous ancestry…much like the American boys who partnered them….back then, nobody much cared about your antecedents, what mattered most wuz the willingness to fight back, the ability to climb a tree or swim the river or to crawl, mostly blind, into the unknown ’n unbelieveable darkness of a hillside cave….
It wuz the forties ’n America wuz at war on two fronts, the Japs in the Pacific, a mostly unknown seascape of islands, palm trees ’n coconuts as seen in the movies of the day….’n, of course, the Germans who we had beat up in the first World War ’n now had t’do it ag’in…
The Beattyville boyz fought the war thru the streets (alleyways, actually) of Beattyville, on the riverbank ’n in the green, honey-suckled hills…we used rubberband guns (when we c’d get the rubber bands) ’n imagination which fortunately wuz in great supply at that time as ever’body I knew wuz really short on money….
What it wuz that brought all this remembering on is the pic posted by Joe Hannah of the ice truck ('At's my Dad sprawled insouciantly{lookitup, Sophie} on the front fender)…I recall, ’n I’m thinkin’ it wuz the summer of ’42, that my Dad, Manuel Smith, delivered ice for a few months in South Portsmouth…’n me ’n most all the Beattyville boyz’d grab a few chunks off the back…y’got to remember than in those longago daze, there wuz still a lot of people that still used ice boxes (my Aunt Billie kept hers on her back porch)...
“Ain’t nuthin’ more responsible for the good old days than a bad mem’ry!”
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