White Trash at Flat Rock

Start at the beginning of the story if you’re new to the scene. Just scroll down to CH.1

“Karen! Grab a tree. Dolly’s coming.” Goodnaturedly she grabbed hold of a convenient trunk with one hand and braced herself by the cane in her other hand. We waited for the hellion to streak by. I swear I could feel the vibrations set up by her thudding paws.

“Do you carry a cell phone or something?” I asked her. She would not be able to escape if she were threatened. Being alone in the woods can be risky. There are plenty of nutcases in our fair city, and the Flat Rock area is very accessible to the downtown area. Fitchburg is home to many of the disenfranchised. Like I told Peter, just because someone’s a whack job doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.

“Oh, no,” she said, “I have a gun. I know how to use it.”

“Well, that’ll do the trick.” I might have blinked.

“Karen’s a master marksman,” Wendy told me. “She has awards.”

“Yeah, I have a license to carry,” Karen said. “You don’t have to worry about me.

“I was up here alone one day with Lulu and this guy came by and kicked her for no reason. She rolled down the hill and I couldn’t go down and get her.

“It was awful. I could hear her crying and she couldn’t get up the hill. It took her about 45 minutes before she made it. I carried her to the car. We went right to the vets. I had to call Chuck.

“That was really bad.” Karen shook her head.

“Call your dog!” we heard an imperious voice demand from further down the path.

“Oh, shit. DOLLY! DOLLY!” I took off at a run. “Dolly, come on. Don’t be a pill.”

Dolly and a large pale dog were barking and exchanging spit. I grabbed her by the collar and yanked her up and off her feet, away from the other dog.

“There are too many dogs up here,” the woman with the pale dog said to her friend who was similarly accompanied by her own large dog. “Let’s go. This used to be a nice place to go.”

She walked off in a huff.

I looked at Wendy. She knows all. “Huh?”

 “Oh, don’t worry about her. She just can’t control her dog,” Wendy reassured me.

More adventures of Bubba and Dolly coming your way next week!

 “E-what?” Leo Rousseau, a film maker in Gardner joked. It seems people are much more aware of ecology than they were in the late 1960’s when Earth Day got its name.

Rousseau was in Los Angeles working as an educational film maker on hot new topics like composting and organic gardening. Los Angeles was the last stop for a earth awareness march down the California coast. Participants held meetings in towns they passed through, hoping to spread the word on how the world’s systems interact. As Rousseau puts it, “basically, ecology.”

Although the end of the march was publicized, fewer people attended the meeting held in Los Angeles than in any of the smaller cities and towns along the route. However, the meeting had repercussions that still ring today. 

Realizing the earth did not have a birthday, the marchers and organizers designated April 22 as its birthday, now known as Earth Day. 

From this small beginning of what Rousseau referred to as farmers and hippies, environmental awareness has entered the mainstream. Venerable institutions like the Grange, founded in the mid 1800s, are now involved in Earth Day events.

I didn’t do my homework and no post for this week. Dolly, Fitchburg’s most photogenic pit bull, is a little under the weather. She skipped her breakfast this morning and has wicked bad gas. Yuck.

But a friend emailed this to me and I found it pretty cute. What European Dogs Do

Enjoy.

The path around the reservoir is mostly flat with good footing. Walkers and runners enter through a service road the water department maintains. A berm separates the water from the road for the first several hundred yards. It’s lined with aged pine trees that look like they were planted when the pond was dammed. There are only a few holes denoting fallen trees. 

A few paths lead to the water. These are favored spots for the dogs who run down to drink or swim on hot days. Unfortunately, since it is so near the parking area, it’s also a magnet for the offenders leaving poopy diapers. 

After passing the beach on the right hand side, the chicken wire fence on the other side of the road disappears. More than one unwary dog has gotten caught behind this fence while in pursuit of small game. They always figure out a way around the blockade and come back no worse for the wear. An old civil defense structure with a horn lurks behind a chain link fence a little further on. Dogs have been known to run around this enclosure and roll in nasty things behind it. Not Doll though. 

The reservoir is long and narrow, no longer used as a water supply. The north side is short, basically an earthen dam. A brick pump house sits in the water about 20 feet from shore. During the warm summer ropes hang from the opening, placed there by illicit swimmers. Henry lurks, waiting to catch the scofflaws. 

The dam is a canine hot spot. Swimmers rush to the water, antsy individuals race up and down the hill on the back side. Here the grass grows high, reaching over a foot tall; some dogs graze their way through in the never-ending search for the roughage not found in the obscenely expensive food we all buy. 

The most magical dog spot appears where the maintained roadway turns into a footpath, entering the woods up a slight incline. Dogs go nuts just before making the right turn. They run in circles, they run back and forth, leap around like psycho-dogs and generally let their hair down. 

“Look at Dolly!” “Star!” “Watch out Lulu!”

Lulu, Karen’s dog, is frequently knocked over by the larger dogs. She is small and round, yet fierce. Fortunately she rolls well. “Good thing Lulu’s not a pit bull,” Peter said one day as she fended Dolly off with a determined grrr.

Karen falls frequently on the walks too. She carries a cane but a misplaced foot or a good nudge from a careening dog is enough to drop her.