Christy Chavies Tripp posted something on Facebook tonight that made me think of this.... Waaay back in the day, maybe 1976ish(?), we had a female beagle named Penny. I don't remember where she came from, probably a neighbor. She was mostly white with black spots. Well, as those "female dogs" will do, Penny got knocked up. One night she went up under the shed behind the well house (which is right behind the house) and had eight puppies - eight!
With eight puppies running around, you couldn't hardly step out the door without stepping into a "pile". I mean, it was like trying to cross the Korea DMZ without stepping on a land mine. Mom even tried putting sandwich bags over our little shoes to keep us from getting poo ground into our shoe soles and tracking it into the house.
We had a real problem on our hands. We had the only dog we needed. We we certainly didn't need eight more beagles. We gave every neighbor a puppy who would take one, but we still had a bunch that needed homes.
At that time, John Green still ran the little store up at the intersection of what is now Egypt Road and Hampton Mountain Road. There were three or four boys who would walk by our house every couple of days, on their way to Green's store. They lived somewhere on HWY 179, over a mile from the store, but back then, you could (and would) still walk that far to the store to buy a coke and some peanuts to put in it. Every time they came by our house on their way home, they'd come up in our yard and pet the puppies, and they'd end up taking at least one home. I think they ended up with at least five beagle pups.
When they took the last pup, Mom convinced them to take Penny too (because she was a walking time bomb of beagle puppies). She even drove them home, because we had no use for leashes and didn't have one, and Penny was too heavy to carry all that way.
That didn't last. A few days later, Penny came running up into the yard. I still don't know if those boys' parents brought her back and dropped her off close to the house (It's like hot potato, the one that owns the bomb when it goes off owns the pups), or if she found her way home.
Christy's Facebook thing was about kids of the 50's - 80's and how our childhoods were decidedly different from the modern kids. I think this story is a perfect example. Here we have kids walking well over a mile, alone, just to go to the store (just to go); people giving dogs away (check out a pet store today and price a beagle pup), and without some kind of application, background check, and home visit; kids walking up into a strangers yard (and strangers letting them) without fear of a lawsuit for some reason; and kids getting into cars with strangers, and yet we all lived and are none the worse for wear.
I have no idea who those boys were, or what they are doing now, but I can only imagine that they are like me, trying to raise their own kids, the best we can, the realities of modern life not withstanding.
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