Dogs I have known: Chummy

The first dogs (in fact the first animals) that I knew were Chummy, my dad's "Alsatian" and Nessie, my granny Flossie's Maltese. I didn't really get to know Nessie as she was a fussy little dog who did not have much time for anyone but Flossie. Dad called his dog an Alsatian but Chummy was a bit of a mutt as I found out years later - after Chummy was already dead and buried and I was less naive. (The picture above is of me with Flossie, Chummy and Nessie.)

I was told by my mom and dad (repeatedly) that, when I was born, Chummy hated me because he was jealous. But I recall that by the time I was four or so (which is the age that I have my first memories of) Chummy loved me and I loved Chummy. In 1952, when I was five, Chummy saved our lives.

Dad and Mom were managing a hotel in Bloemfontein (where my mother and J.R.R.Tolkien were born) There were two wings to the hotel: there was a four story Victorian building with wrought-iron balconies, a foyer with potted palms and a grand but very creaky staircase; then there was a new, plain, utilitarian two story wing.

We lived on the top floor of the Victorian wing. My sister and I were not allowed onto the balcony because it sloped dangerously and might fall at any moment. This is where us kids had chicken-pox and had to lie in darkened rooms for weeks, itching and scratching, burning up with fever and feeling like death warmed up.

Soon after that, the Victorian wing was condemned as "unfit for human habitation" and we moved into a ground floor apartment in the new wing. The apartment had only one huge sunny living room and two bedrooms down a dark passage. The kitchen/living room was basically a large verandah enclosed with floor to ceiling glass windows which let in so much sun that I can remember being almost blinded whenever we had a late breakfast as we did on Sunday mornings.

Sunday breakfast at that kitchen table was heaven on earth for me. Dad would do the cooking. The sunny room was filled with the delicious smells of fried steak, lamb chops, pork chops with the kidneys still attached, more kidneys (my mouth is watering just thinking of them) and boerewors which is an Afrikaner sausage made of beef and lamb and seasoned with lots of pepper, mustard, coriander and cumin. (The last two spices were added to the staid Cape Dutch cuisine by the "Slamaaiers" - slaves from the Spice Islands who were usually domestic servants and cooks.) And of course there was always crispy bacon.

But breakfast was not only meat. Dad also fried eggplants and tomatoes and bananas and eggs in a mixture of real butter and peanut butter. And then there was the toast dipped in beaten eggs with cinnamon and deep fried. While dad was cooking, we ate our first course which was mielie-meal, a thick porridge made of maize, what Americans call "grits." Mielie-meal is the staple of the South African diet like rice is to the Chinese. It is served with nearly every meal - with gravy for dinner or with milk and sugar for breakfast.

Maybe that was when our family got into the habit of never using the sitting room - because we didn't have one - and always sitting around the kitchen table.

Dad always sat a the kitchen table - usually reading a newspaper or a cowboy book like Shane or a Raymond Chandler mystery or the horse racing "form." He seldom wore a shirt as we did not have air-conditioning and he sweated a lot and chain smoked and scratched himself and coughed and farted and was generally comfortable at the kitchen table.

Of course my mom would complain about my father's "filthy habits" but she was fairly tolerant of his coarse behavior probably because she was a farm girl used to a lot more than just farts. I guess the kitchen table was the center of our family life because we gathered around Dad who was the best cook in our USA - the Union of South Africa, as it was known in those days.

Oh, where was I? Right! We had been living in this apartment for a few days (or a few weeks - time is longer and slower for kids) when I was sent to the local government school for the first time. Soon after starting school, Chummy alerted my father one night by barking at his bedside. Dad awoke and smelled smoke. He got us out of the aparment just in time to see the Victorian wing being enveloped in flames.

Dad took us over to the house next door and asked the neighbors if mom and us kids could stay there. I used to play with the next door neighbors' kids but they made us sit on the back stoop wrapped in blankets, watching the balconies flare up and fall onto the new wing as the old building collapsed in on itself and flames roared and shot so high that I knew that the fire could kill us all whenever it wanted to. We found out later that hoboes and tramps had taken to drinking and sleeping in the condemned building and had made a fire beneath the grand staircase.

The next day I ran away from school soon after getting there and refused to ever go back to school again. I wanted to make sure that my family was okay in case another fire happened. Unfortunately I ended up going back to a school when my cousin offered to take me to his school - a private Catholic school run by the Christian Brothers.

But I never did take to school and always hated it till the day I matriculated 13 years later. I simply tolerated it as a necessary evil but I can't complain because it prepared me for even worse restrictions on my freedom in the workaday world later in life. School for me meant discipline. And the Catholics sure did discipline me - by beating me with a cane. They said it was to break my ego but it actually just made me more determined to eventually have my own way.

Where was I? Oh, yes - Chummy. Chummy lived for another 5 or 6 years to the ripe old age of 13. He got cancerous lumps and used to lie down in the middle of the road hoping a car would kill him. Finally Dad realized what was up and put Chummy down. That's when I got a little wire-haired terrier called Punchy but I'll save that shaggy dog story for another time.

Here is a picture of my mom and dad with Chummy and another dog who died before I was born.