Rufus Rastus Johnson Brown

When I was growing up in Thayer, our family went to the dentist in West Plains, a mere 30 miles and 45 minutes of bad road away. One particular summer, which one I can't remember, my sister and I had to get lots of fillings or suffer some other such dental torture, and so my mother decided that we should just get it out of the way all at once. So, during one particular week, again, I can't remember which one, we drove to and from West Plains every day, going there dreading, and coming home grumpy and in pain.

On Monday, as we rounded one big curve in the road, we noticed a black dog standing by a fence. He was not inside the fence, but instead just standing beside it, about 15 feet or so from the road. We noticed him and made some kind of comment about how we hoped he wouldn't dart out onto the highway. On the way back, we saw that he was still there, and we were happy that he hadn't been killed by some inattentive driver.

On Tuesday, we rounded the same curve on the way to West Plains, and saw that the dog was still standing by the fence. It looked as if he hadn't moved a muscle from his stance the day before. My mother, my sister, and I kind of made uncomfortable noises, because we knew then that something wasn't right with either the dog or his master. When we saw the dog on the way back, we began to conjecture about what had happened and why the dog was still there. My mother told my dad about the dog when we got home, and he, too, was puzzled.

The next day, when we again saw the dog, we concluded that someone had dropped him off and he was waiting for his master to return - which, by this time, we knew was not going to happen. I can't really remember whether we bought some food in West Plains, or waited until we went back on Thursday to take some food to the dog - because we couldn't let him starve - but the important part of the story is that we put food in the car, pulled the car off the side of the road, and took it to him. He was grateful and ate it.

On Friday, the last day of our marathon dentist visit, we left the house with my father saying to my mother, "Do not bring that dog home." We already had Hildegarde von Clover, the meanest dachshund on the face of the earth (but that is another story), and my father knew the possibility that my mother would stop, pick up the dog, and add him to the family. He thought it best to remind her that doing so would not be such a good idea.

However, when we rolled in, about four hours later, with the dog in the back seat of our four-door sedan, my smart dad had already put out a water bowl and a full food bowl, and had made a bed for him under the car port. He knew that my mother would not be able to leave Rufus Rastus Johnson Brown on the side of the road, and figured "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em." The dog's name came from an old blues/old time country song that wailed, "Rufus Rastus Johnson Brown, what will you do when the rent comes 'round?" Rufus, bless his heart, wasn't ever going to have to worry about rent again.

Rufus became a beloved part of our family for many, many years, giving us much to smile about and bringing with him an early understanding of brain damage - his first visit to Elmer Shaw, DVM, gave us the information that he had survived a puppy illness that had left him somewhat slow. He was gentle - I never heard him growl or even bark - and he did things such as walk into small trees and get lost in the back yard, so he became a house dog who house-trained himself.

The same visit to the vet was for surgery rendering him unable to sire puppies (!), and when we picked him up, Dr. Shaw told us that he had not urinated for the two days that he had been recovering in the kennel. It should have been no surprise to us that on our way home, in the same four-door sedan with black carpet and black interior, Rufus finally felt safe enough to let loose with all the bodily fluid he had stored uncomfortably for the past two days. I heard a noise, and an unfamiliar odor wafted through the car, and I realized that Rufus knew he was with people who loved him, so he could go to the bathroom wherever he needed to. I don't know if we ever got rid of the odor that permeated the car's carpet, especially in southern Missouri's hot summers. I think we eventually got rid of the car!

I wrote poetry about Rufus - Haiku, really - that garnered a good grade in my creative writing class at William Jewell. And when my parents divorced, many years later, Rufus went to live with a friend of my mother's, out on a farm, roaming the countryside, and probably, in his brain haze, forgetting all about the people who cared for him enough to pick him up off the side of the road.

Mother called me when she found out that he had died, at a ripe old age, and I cried. He was the sweetest dog ever.