Thoughts About the Old Boy

It costs $104 now to fly to Stiletto City, if you don't reserve 21 days in advance. How'dya like them apples? Looks like the ol' 6 hour drive is coming back into view. Flying only saves two hours, door to door, but it's so much easier on the body, especially when you've seen every sight there is to see from here to there and there back to here, ten times over.

Once you get off the Bay Bridge heading East and South there is only wasteland. Aside from the one decent fruit stand, near Avenal State Prison, there are no stops worth making, unless, of course, you have Mischief with you, who needs to be fed Junk Burger in the Box.

And Mischief isn't coming West any more, sorry to say. The boy just doesn't have his travel chops together anymore, to say nothing about all the hills he used to love running up and down but can't anymore, and the cats who have become arrogant in his absence, and the bones that get composted instead of buried somewhere (but he's not allowed to chew on bones anymore anyway), and the delightful deposits that needed to be made in the neighbor's yard.

Now, the neighbors have moved away and nobody cares for what used to be such a beautiful garden (that benefited from all that organic fertilizer). What's worse, poor old Mischief has become, dare we say it, old.

But think where he's lived! New Mexico, first, when The Great FiveHead found him abandoned with a "LOST DOG" sign around his puppy-neck, then Chicago, then New Orleans, then Stiletto City, with an occasional lengthy stay in Saint Plotniko, and now Brooklyn NewYawk. Those are some fine places to live, Mr. Hound!

Plotnik cleaned out his freezer the other day and found the sack of lamb chop bones he'd been saving for the Chief. How old were those?

Ehhh, rats. Without Mischief, that drive to S. City is a real bore. Mischief makes everything better. Good dog! Good dog!