A DOGGONE SHAME

 

I always enjoyed Gatlinburg, especially when we could make it there on the 4th of July. There were parades and other activities that were a little different from those in your hometown. My wife and daughter had gone into a shop that specialized in ‘Ugly Gifts for Your Friends at Home,’ so I decided to wait outside and watch a group of middle school kids marching past playing their version of the National Anthem. I was dressed in my usual vacation clothes; hiking boots, a pair of worn Livi jeans, and a T-shirt. There was a motorcycle club in town and they were sporting their ‘colors’ despite the fierce heat. I walked down the street a short distance to where a roof jutted over the sidewalk and offered a little shade. Two women came strolling past dressed in their Sunday best, looking elegant but slightly out of place among the casually dressed tourists. I wondered if they were going to the mid-week prayer service at one of the local churches. They stopped beside me and were looking through the window at the display. I had glanced at it when I first stopped and assumed it was a bearskin rug. They had leaned their foreheads against the glass for a closer look, when one of them came out with a loud oath that would have made the sailors in the 7th fleet blush. I turned and took a second look and found myself looking into the soulful eyes of a large brown dog. At this point, both women were cursing, throwing threats and epithets right and left. “I’m going to gut that sorry sonof . . . A fat kid in the marching band gave a loud toot on his tuba and I missed the rest of what she had started to say. “I’ll gut him, I swear I will gut him!” she shouted as both women ran through the door into the shop. I took one more look at the sad, brown eyes of the dogskin rug and scampered down the street to the shop where my wife and daughter were shopping. I leaned against the hot brick wall beside the door. It wasn’t nearly as hot there as I remembered.