Just a Dog: Honky Tramp
For the previous installment, click here.
Like me, I’d like to think that my father’s love of dogs came from his father. Unfortunately, I can never be sure. I never knew my grandpa Shaw. He passed away when I was three, so any bit of knowledge about him has come from my father, aunts, and uncles, siblings, or cousins. That isn’t to say I don’t have memories of him. I remember an old hunched-over man with a kind smile and a traumatizing sense of humor.
The last bit is specific to me: my grandparents had a set of long-horn bull horns mounted over their dining room table in their small little house. Hanging from those horns was a coconut with a face painted on it. As a toddler, this coconut terrified me, something that delighted my grandfather. He’d pull it down now and then when I was there with my father or my parents and laughed and laughed as I ran from the room screaming or ran to my father, who was also laughing. This small bit of cruelty would quickly go away as my grand-dad would hang the coconut back up, and I’d go to him for a hug, eying the cursed thing all the while. I don’t know what happened to either the horns or the coconut, but the table now sits in my dining room.
But I digress. I know my grandma liked dogs, she had two while I was growing up, and both she seemed to have forever, though as a child, the years feel like a lifetime. She had them at the same time. One was a small white terrier that grew shaggy in the winter and shaved like a sheep in spring and summer. His name was Honky Tramp, which I’ll acknowledge has issues in our modern-day, but at the time, I didn’t understand the mild racial epithet.
He was a cute little dog, and my grandma seemed to adore him. She wasn’t prone to spoil him like I do our dogs, but she let him sleep inside in the winter month and gave him frequent treats. However, the latter may have been a lot of my dad’s doing too. If memory serves, she’d even let him up on her lap to pet now and then, though I’d need confirmation of this from one of my siblings.
My memories of Honky Tramp were of him chasing me around the yard and biting me when I tried to pick him up. He did not like being picked up. I learned this lesson several times while my grandma had him. My parents would warn me repeatedly, “Don’t pick him up. He will bite you.” From the time my grandma had him until the day he died, I would periodically try and pick up the dog. I’ve gotten better about respecting dog’s personal space, especially if they have a lip quivering and low audible growls emitting from their throat, but it took a long time to learn that lesson.
Despite it all, Honky Tramp liked me, and I liked him. He never broke my skin, his bite was a warning, and it’s one I heeded until my dim memory and urge to hold him prevailed, and I tried again. My sister had a dog that recently passed away that reminded me a lot of Honky Tramp, including the way he’d run out and bark when vehicles would pull into the yard.
Like some of the earlier entries, I’m not sure where my grandma found him or his story. He always seemed to be there, though honestly, I don’t remember him when my grandpa was alive. At least he never factors into those traumatizing memories, Yet a the same time, I can’t say he wasn’t there. I’m sure by the time I was between six and seven, my grandma had him, though, and he was with her until I was in my early teens.
I was sad when Honky Tramp died. He’d been a part of my grandma’s house growing up, and his sudden absence was jarring. No more barking at the screen door or running out onto the carport when my father and I pulled in for a visit, something my dad did several times a day. Once he was gone, my grandmother’s house remained quiet, no more pattering of doggy feet and the warning bark of a dog that thought he was bigger than anything.
For the beginning of the series, click here.
