The story of my life as seen through me. (part one)

Dogs are honest and faithful to those they love but they tend to worry too much and find fault with others. They make ideal secret agents or business people.

According to the Chinese calendar I was born in the year of the Dog, as was the buxom and talented Dolly Parton, despite the fact that to my knowledge we’ve never formally been introduced. I was to be the second of three children born into my small but sturdy family. My parents had immigrated into Missouri from that great Lone Star state which is Texas, leaving behind the small dusty farm where they both spent their early youth as sharecroppers picking cotton for the Man. But being of an adventurous mind, my father urged his child bride and former high school queen to follow him north to the big city, because he felt a calling that he couldn’t resist; a calling to forgo pitch and fork and to find a better way of life for his growing brood.

So they loaded up the wagon and using the stars as his only guide, off they set to make the long arduous journey. It wasn’t too long after they arrived that I, yes I, came screaming into the world. Now as family legend goes, when I came forth into the world after being delivered by my mother in the custom of her people, which consisted of her spending a fortnight in the woods by the river, accompanied only by the old birthing witch woman and a pack of dogs. I was red as a beet which perplexed my father to no end, because he started fearing the worse, being that the old farm sat on the edge of the local reservation. And he feared that my mother had beset herself upon one of the local Indian populace and I was the end result of that union. But luckily after a few days my father regained his sanity due no small part to my natural color coming in.

Ah, those were wondrous years, living on the east side in that small second floor walkup, never having enough to eat but happy never the less. It was during this period that I started dancing for nickels on the corner to help support the family whilst my older brother worked the whores that frequented my parents fruit stand on a daily basis. I would dance barefoot on that dusty corner for what seemed like hours, accompanied only by the sounds of the street and a jaunty whistle from my lips. Then I’d take my nickels and run to the butcher down the block where I would purchase a few scraps of meat for my mother’s stew that night. After the dinner table was cleared my mother would read to my brother and I from the Bible whilst my father would sit in his old rocker by the fire, warming his feet and smiling at us as we gently admonished my mother on her pronunciation. What simpler and happy times those were, even though we had it rough our love and happiness knew no limits. But as the good book says, all good things must come to an end, because with the birth of my baby sister my father had some tough decisions to make.

(to be continued)