CityView Magazine

6 | March 2020 M C F A D Y E N ' S M U S I N G S The Last Day d Summer BY BILL MCFADYEN I woke fairly early on that last day of Summer. It was the morning following the last of the flash- floodish rains from the two days prior. Our front yard was the catcher's mitt for the overflow from the little irrigation hole that sits in the lowest point between our and the neighbors' backyards. It was certainly warmer than someone would expect for the first week of February, at least anyone who grew up around here 50 years earlier when February was our best chance of being the snow month. ese rains had been substantial enough that the plastic gauge in the backyard over-weighted itself on its flimsy holder and tipped over, spilling its opportunity to convey to me the exact number of inches of rain. It was plenty though. Enough to not only flood the front yard, but to also overburden the culvert in the driveway such that the asphalt was fully under water. My first act of the morning for several months had been to start the coffee grinder and to then go to the garage where my sweet old setter dog would be sleeping on her store-bought bed. Years back, she would have heard the grinder li off in the kitchen and be waiting impatiently, even feverishly, on the other side of the door. Now though, fast approaching her 14th birthday, she would not even hear me open the door. It startled her when I would go all the way to her on that fluffy bed and reach down to wake her with a rub of the head. She could not hear me coming at all, and she could barely see me, and she felt that if I awakened her with my touch, then she had not done her job of anticipating my arrival the way she had for more than a dozen years. It embarrassed her. So, I invented this methodology for preserving her dignity, wherein I would open the back door into the garage and push the little doorbell that set the garage door motor in motion and cause the nine-foot door to start its ascent up the tracks. From the top step, I would watch across the hood of the car for the moment when she lied her head out of the uninterrupted sleep of the deaf. She would foggily look out into the driveway to see if I had come off the back porch, at which time I would allow her to catch my movement off the steps. When I came around the vehicle, she would be glancing back at me with a sheepish "Morning, Bud" look on her face, trying to convince me she had been waiting for me for the whole time. Her toilsome effort to stand and recirculate told a different tale. It had for months been speaking very plainly to me of the inevitable. Ninety-five in dog years. e sands were gathering in the bottom of the hourglass that was her life. You know, though, once she got going a little, her head rose up like in her proudest days. If I banged the stir stick on the aluminum food pan, she could really get that back end in gear. Funny how all her quail and grouse hunting life, she ate only what she had to. She was skinny as a result of her own self-discipline. In this 13th year, she had really developed an

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