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(this picture is of a similar dog to Boss)
Boss was a rescued dog... from a city shelter.
He was slated to be destroyed...
the day that Stephon and I went to the shelter
to get ourselves a country dog.
Stephon and I were living in an old abandoned farmhouse... miles out
from the city. It was a 3-room house... kitchen... bedroom... "front" room...
a small wood porch on front... and a "working-size"
maybe 6 foot by 12 foot... back porch.
No plumbing... we dug the outhouse... moved the shell over and placed
it on top of the hole. We hauled water from town...
in four 5-gallon buckets. Stephon was athletic and carried them to the
kitchen... a kitchen where I had a passable work station for preparing
food and washing dishes.
 We cooked on a camping stove until we got
a cast-iron wood stove for the front room.
It had 2 burner spaces. You could boil water for cowboy coffee
(pour boiling water on some coffee grounds in a cup and then shock
this with a dash of cold water to make the coffee grounds settle
on the bottom).
... you could boil water... and cook burrito stew at the same time.
I have to pause here to give honorable mention to the most
wonderful burrito I've ever had... that we bought from a street vendor in
Gallup... on our way back from living and working a few months in
Las Vegas,
(we were robots... Letica robots... we made buckets... Letica buckets)...
a few weeks camping in North Lake Tahoe where he worked as a roofer...
and a week in Sacramento where we camped in someone's back yard.
We had to head back home because of some legal thing
Stephon had to sign.
It was maybe 2,000 miles from Sacramento. The $300. that I had won
on a dime Keno slot machine was going to come in handy. Money
would be tight.
We detoured back through Las Vegas... just one more time... because
we had always won a jackpot or two playing nickel and dime machines.
We weren't going to stay but a few hours... so I thought I'd try BlackJack.
I spent (lost) the extra spending cash
we had... leaving barely enough to get us gas the rest of the way
home. The drive took us a week...!
We were going to be short of cash anyway.
So... we landed in Gallup, New Mexico...
and I was going to pawn my
portable TV... hell, I had everything I owned in my little yellow Pinto
station wagon. Stephon had his car, too. We had been moving to
another state.!
We found a little pawn shop in downtown Gallup.
The owner of the pawn shop made the deal. Great guy. He gave us
money, and a 5-pound bag of desert-grown pinto beans, and 4 burritos
from the street vendor... (an old Indian man with a small heated
food cart).
The pawn shop man spoke highly about that
old Indian man's home-made burritos.
We ate them driving through Texas.
It was the best burrito I've ever eaten... I still dream about it.
Potatoes, meat, beans, jalapenos, a little beef chili gravy.
Desert-grown pinto beans is the secret.
So... you could cook two things at a time on the wood stove.
I successfully copied the burrito stew filling... by the way.
We used camping lanterns and the homemade candles I had made out of
bags of old candles from the thrift store. (They turned out to be a
very pretty shade of pale purple). A feral cat even adopted us...!
The house cleaned up fairly well...!
It was almost heaven to me.
So... to finish this story... we paid rent by mowing the landlord's lawn and
cleaning his house. We went to town every Saturday to do this... maybe
two hours of work. Our landlord was a Math professor at the University
and I had known of this house in the country because I had known
someone else who had rented it this way... (my sister's ex-husband
who had returned from Haight-Ashbury after a year... with another
woman). My sister and I had visited him there. So... Stephon asked
the professor if we could pay rent with work... and he agreed.
We made our spending cash by cleaning the gutters and easements
of some long stretches of country road. We recycled aluminum and glass
that we cleaned the countryside with... even had "picking forks"
(a rake handle with a bent nail on it to lift such things up). We found
an aluminum door once...! good money...! Stephon knew his metals...!
Well... we were looking for ways to make an income...
and Stephon knew somebody who knew somebody...
and we were asked to run the kitchen in a bar
in a business close to the University... something small.
First... the kitchen had to be CLEANED... of some thick grease.
Hey... how did I get nominated to clean this mess...!
I set the kitchen up and Stephon was going to run it.
We gave it a shot... for about a month.
I don't remember ever buying or cooking food.
Stephon was in town late at night running it.
I stayed home... at the farmhouse... at night.
I think that's why we decided to get a dog.
The snack bar bombed out.
Stephon did what he had to do... he needed to get a job.
He shaved his beard, cut his hair, and bought some black slacks
at the thrift store... and applied for a job at a pizza place. It was
soon after this that we decided to go to the animal rescue shelter...
and pick out a dog... to be a watch dog for the farm.
Boss was down towards the end in the kennel... and we walked past
the other dogs... looking them over... until we saw him. He was a big
beautiful St. Bernard... and was going to be destroyed. How could
we leave that beautiful animal there...? He almost looked embarrassed
when we came to stand at his cage... to look him over. He was tame
and well-behaved... and very, very big.
I named him Boss.
At the farm, Boss had some space to run around outside, but mostly
he was in the house with us. One day we left him in the locked house
and went into town. While we were gone Boss tore the house up...
pulled down curtains... turned over a table and a chair... there was trash everywhere. When we came home he was laying in his corner on
top of a pizza box... facing the wall.
Yeah... I can picture taking a whip to an animal for doing that... but
Boss facing the wall... looked ashamed of what he'd done. Stephon
may have stepped up to kick that dog's heiny out the back door...
so I quickly knelt down and gave that big ole lug a big big hug...
and talked to him sweetly...
"I'm so sorry, Boss. I know you were worried. We're home now."
I don't want to recount memories I barely have nowadays...
but... the time came when Stephon decided to check out Alaska.
He took his car and he took Boss. I stayed back home.
Stephon drove to Seattle... where he sold his car to buy a ferry
ticket to Homer... for him and Boss. In Homer he ran into some
guy that gave him an old car without a front windshield. He fixed
it and got it running... and drove it all the way to Mt. Denali... in
upper Alaska. He told me that he had been a bit concerned about
bears when he stayed overnight in a State Park... having no windshield.
And the wind... while he drove down the highway... was likely very cold.
Stephon was a trained cook and had managed a restaurant at one time.
He got a job cooking breakfast in the staff dining room at the
resort at Mt. Denali... Boss still in tow. He met interesting people there.
A trapper who lived out in the bush came to the resort for supplies
or something... and saw Boss... and wanted to buy him.
Stephon traded Boss... for two weeks of training on how to live in the bush.
He quit his job and hiked out to the bush with this trapper... and learned
how to pan for gold... how to trap for food and fur... how to fish...
what plants to eat right off the land... and more. It was only later that I
learned that Stephon had an idea to get some of the last remaining
land designated for homesteading in Alaska...
and I didn't know how to can moose meat...!
At first, I pictured this back-woodsman trapper as living in a tent,
but I realize now... he surely had a cabin. Boss probably kept him
warm some chilly winter nights. I pictured Boss loving the hell
out of Alaska... like he had been made to be there. You can see
all the stars out there in the wilds... maybe Boss could look up and
see them, too.
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