On the road...

...as it were, with apologies to Jack Kerouac, Willie Nelson. Charles Kuralt and anyone else who has ever used that phrase professionally. Sitting here at my sister's computer in beautiful downtown Maylene AL. I flew down here for my mother's birthday and for Mother's Day. My mother is 88 today. My niece has the strangest little dog, Barney by name. He kind of looks and acts like a Jack Russel terrier and is absolutely manic but cute at the same time. (Maniacal cuteness...a concept which deserves more thought but probably won't get it.) Barney looks like one of those TV dogs, the crushingly cute but scruffy ones of indeterminate ancestry that always seemed to pop up on television shows or in Disney movies and redeem themselves by saving some poor kids from a burning house when they bark at some stranger who happens to speak 'dog'. Lassie used to do that every week but all she could say was that Timmy was trapped in a cave. (Never did figure out why the dumb ass kid kept going back to that cave full of 10 foot rattle snakes anyway) Barney is much smarter than Lassie but in a street smarts kind of way so I am confident that if he gets the chance to rescue or sound the alarm he will be able to tell the dog talking stranger about a much wider menu of pending disasters. Barney is also much less vain about his appearance than Lassie. I wonder if Lassie's vanity comes as a result of being trained and owned by someone with a name like Rudd Weatherwax....that has to be a Hollywood thing. Barney is also a better dog than Lassie because he has expressions on his face. Lassie never showed much more than a blank stare...kind of a Brittany Spears look. Actually since Lassie has gone to the dog park in the sky to be with those people who she wasn't around to save I am beginning to wonder if there isn't something to be said for this re-incarnation business and Lassie has come back as Brittany...it could happen!!! Barney's canine housemate is Shelby who is much older than Barney and seems quite tolerant of this frenetic little rescuer in training. So that's the scoop (no, not that kind of scoop) on my sister's family dogs...I knew you wanted that information. That's my story from Maylene, Alabama and I am stickin' to it...