My little Arthur is the sweetest dog I've ever had...and I've had many if you count the dogs my parents owned.
We lived in the country for three years so my parents could run a small independent telephone company. It was the same type of service they had on the Mayberry TV show...you know where the phones were on the wall, and each was a crank phone. There were about four families on each line and each one had a certain number of rings, so everyone would pick up no matter who it was for. How else were they suppose to know what was happening in our own little community?
We lived there for three years and those years were some of the most memorable of my life. We went to a one room school house with a pot belly stove.
When the shareholders’ decided it was time to move into big city phone service, my father’s suggestion, the Grand Rapids Press came out and did a full page article on the Phone Company and our family. It was one of the last independently owned phone companies left in the state. Many of the people who lived out there almost cried when they had to say good bye for the last time to 23F3
Anyhow, the reason I started this long drawn out story was because I was discussing the dogs my parents owned or took care of…When we were in the country, everyone from GR who needed a dog sitter brought them to our house…One time we had this huge St Bernard named Bolivar…he loved the kids and chased us everywhere we went. He stayed with us one whole summer. We taught him to slide down the slide…did I mention we lived next door to the school and the play ground??? He was hysterical, this huge dog sliding down the slide sitting upright. When the owners took Bolivar home, they thought he was going to die of a broken heart…We missed him terribly too…That was just one of many, but perhaps one of the most memorable.
My parents were always taking in stray dogs and kids. Even when I was in college, I met this girl who wasn’t from GR but was there for the summer. She didn’t like her apartment, so I told her to move in with us. She did, and I left home shortly after, but Nancy stayed. Nancy’s family was very wealthy, but she was an only child and loved the noise and chaos in our small little house. My parents never blinked twice when then came home, and Nancy told them she lived there. All they said was so did they!
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It was an old phone similar to this one. I wish we still had a couple of them. |
