A Distopia of Dogs

[godotwaits]

So I was standing in LaGuardia awaiting a flight, as usual. It was listed as "Landed." Which means it was idling patiently on the tarmac waiting to belly up to the bar. So to kill some time, I'm
personally 'idling' by the Hudson News surveying the magazines. I see the new issue of Rolling Stone. Bruce Springsteen on the cover, yada yada. I flip through the pages. And then I see it. With no mention on the cover. "City of Strays," by Mark Binelli. Detroit. I have youthful memories of Detroit. I spent the 9th grade and half of the tenth living in Grosse Pointe and went into the city a lot. Took the bus. I was a newspaperboy for the Detroit News. I already had 4 yrs delivering the Memphis Press Simitar on my flimsy resume.

My father was a corporate gypsy and had taken a position of marketing manger for original equipment for teh United States Rubber Company (aka Uniroyal) and I was on the high honor roll in school and was attempting to write an assigned paper called the "Career" paper. I was fortunate. My paper was to be on journalism. And I gained free access to an actual reporter on the Detroit News. I'd go down on Saturdays and this dude out of the kindness of his heart let me follow him around all day as he tried to teach me the finer points of journalism. I can't remember much of what he told me, beyond being a witness to his countless interactions within the paper. I remember the "Who, What, When, Where and How" that was supposed to be composed within the very first sentence. I got an A on the paper.

One of my favorite things to do with my hard won earnings was to take the bus into Detroit and go see the movies. Haha. I saw Lolita with James Mason and Sue Lyon on the sly. And the popcorn! You'd never buy popcorn at the theater. There was this wonderful shop that popped the corn right there in front of your eyes and he would then mist it with a very fine butter spray. It was the best popcorn in the entire world served up in a brown paper bag. Detroit was cool1

Mr Binelli's article tells the story of dogs. It seems that within the urban decay of what is left of our famous auto city there are estimated to be 20-50 thousand stray and feral dogs roaming the wreckage of this once proud city. Abandoned dogs by people who moved elsewhere seeking refuge from the burnt out economy. Feral dogs born in the delapidated housing stripped bare of all copper. The hollowed out industrial buildings.

Well, I'm a sucker for dogs. It touched my heart. I put 5 bucks down on the counter and got my penny change. I recommend the article and welcome any of you wily folks to post the YouTube thing on this. It's out there somewhere.

I'm a Vietnam veteran. I was stationed on a base camp in Dong Tam with the 9th division about 50 miles south of Saigon in the Delta right on the Mekong River. There were dogs everywhere. As you probably know, the Vietnamese eat dogs. So life wasn't easy. Dogs and monkeys had to keep their worry beads close at hand. The eating was good though for the dogs. There wasn't a single guy who wouldn't plop his leftovers when leaving the mess to the wash up building. The dogs were happy to see every one of us coming. And they thrived. Unfortuately they thrived too well. The were multidudes of them.

Now what a smart dog had to do was fall in love with the right guy, or have the right guy fall in love with you because then he would take you to the medics to get all your shots with a collar and a tag. The magical tag was a free pass plus a promise not to have rabies. And, of course, the Army was smart enough to know that to keep 'peace in the valley,' it was smart to let the slobbering fools have an outlet for their affections. And, of course the dogs knew the difference between the silhouette of black pajamas with a sampan hat and full blooded American dude in his jungle fatiques and booney hat.

But there were crowd of 'unadopted' dogs too. The Army decided they had to cull the herds. First they loaded all dogs without passes onto a convoy of 2 1/2 ton trucks and drove them 10-15 miles out of town. And like shards of displaced metal, they instantly returned to the magnet of Dong Tam.

Finally. They had to be taken over the berm and machine gunned to death. A hard story for them and a hard story for Detroit.

Gotta go. Another flight coming in...

[Deleted]

I for one am glad that you worked out how to post your own thread. I dare say I've munched on a bit of dog here and there in Vietnam. There were plenty of kennels in plenty of back streets.

There is some funky art, and some urban farming things going on in the ruins of urban Detroit these days.

You don't have popcorn making machines any more? I like that stuff too. We still have 'em in quite a lot of cinemas.

[Doug]

What I remember about dogs in VN. Poor villages had few or no dogs around. Better off villages had lots of dogs around.

[epaul]

That was an interesting read. Thanks.

Halfway through a bottle of whiskey with a good buddy who was in Vietnam, we started talking about the dogs. At first he thought they were all just scrawny, rat-tailed things that all looked alike. But, after a while, he started recognize certain ones. Then one day, he found that he had a buddy.

[Village Idiot]

That, Godotwaits, was an excellent post. Thanks so much for putting this up.

[Deleted]

I read that article.

I have an image of a dead, half-burned and partially buried corpse of a ubiquitous brown Iraqi dog seared into my subconscious, courtesy of 4th Infantry Division, the fuckers. Not rational to judge an entire division because of that, but there it is.

[RickW]

Excellent post, indeed.

[sekhmet]

oh god

[godotwaits]

I'm back. Thanks to all the kind comments.

Sehk, I'm sorry I upset you. May I add an additional story. One that is heart warming.

The Vietnamese would sell you anything. If your convoy slowed enough they would jump up on the runners with watches up and down their arms (with 3 more around their feet aka The Band "Life is a Carnival") they would sell you their sister, they would sell you Nr 1 marijauna, you name it. Well one of these enterprising grifters came up with a change of pace. He had a cat. A juvenile cat. And evidently he had a water color set and did an amazing job on the cats fur with the paint brush and presented it to this niave jamoke as a young "ocelot." And the dude bought for about 20,000 P (which would be roughly the equivalent of $20.

So the kid comes back to the basecamp to show off his latest acquisition. It only took a few moments before everyone was roaring Uproariously (If you will forgive a pun.) But he cried look at the spots!! And someone poured some water on the cat and ... of course the colors began to bleed. The poor guy became a well renowned fool who had paid $20 for a cat!!

So the guy dutifully kept his water colored stained, otherwise buff colored brown cat and soon realized that the reason for its exagerated profile had more to do with malnutrition that genetics.

Well then disaster struck. The usual late night mortar attack ensued and as all these lumbering guys made their anxious way to the bunker... one of them stepped on the cat. It was rendered a paraplegic. No one laughed.

A week or so later word circulated that the guy felt it necessary to wring the cat's neck and put it out of its misery. A bunch of us in Commo went straight to the hootch and demanded the cat. I think someone even handed the guy $20 in recompense. We took the cat back to the Commo center and held council. It didn't seem to be in pain although it had lost all use of its hind legs. Then we contemplated how the cat would do its duty. We weren't sure this adoption would include diaper duty.

We put the cat in the In Box on the desk in the Message Center. We named her Toulouse (as in lautrec) and let her set up shop. We soon learned that when she crawled out of the In Box, she needed a trip to a hole that led into the bowels on the bunker. And for the life of us... we couldn't smell anything. So she became a keeper in the In Box.

For humor I put a 3X5 card in front of the In Box which said...(ala Peanuts) "The Psychiatrist is In.... 5 cents cheap" It got some chuckles here and there.

And then, somewhat miraculously, guys in the Com Center would appear at the dutch doors on the Access List Message Center and would ask... if they could pet the cat. These guys were blue. They would sit at the desk and stroke its head and scritch its ears for 5-10 minutes and as they left they would put nickel in front of the In Box. And the cat would purr and purr and purr for the entire visit. And the guys left feeling better.

Pretty soon word got out to the whole unit and she had many many visitors and admirers. She brought some kind of forgiveness... and god knows she would earn her keep. We took her money to the PX and bought her cans of tuna fish and such. Anything we thought she might approve of. And no one ever complained about carry her to her hole to do her duty under the bunker.

Scout's Honor. It's the truth.

[mnhermit]

Two excellent tales, thanks Godot (worth the wait)

[theevan]

GREAT thread. Thanks for taking the time.

[millring]

Sometimes I wish I didn't care about dogs so deeply.

[epaul]

I just opened a can of tuna for my cat. I'll try pass on his purrs. Buueerrghh Burrrrgh, Buueerrghh Burrrgh, Buueerrghh Burrrgh ...

[Chesapeake]

Nice pieces of writing.

[Dan McLaughlin]

Thanks Kevin.

[omaha]

Best pair of posts in a long time. Thanks.

[Village Idiot]

Wonderful and wow. Absolutely fantastic stories, Gogotwaits.

[Tamarack]

Thanks for the posts Godotwaits. You described the Detroit I remember from my (suburban) childhood. The present Detroit is both hideous and fascinating, in regard to crumbling buildings, vast areas of vacant land that used to be neighborhoods, and glimpses of former grandeur. As well as feral dogs and cats, there are foxes, coyotes, and hawks preying on the rats and pigeons. Pheasants and even wild turkeys are appearing within the city limits.

[Cosmic Wonder]

Great story.

Mike