Walking With Dexter 3

Off My Rocker

Dexter and I have decided to add a little to our walk including a circumnavigation of Dodson Middle School which sits right in the middle of the Rolling Hills Riviera Tract mentioned in my previous post.

Dodson Middle School is encircled by a nice wide sidewalk with one side bordered by a concrete wall resembling massive earthtone stones. The beauty of the walkway is Dexter has few distractions, so he usually stays ahead of me walking in a semi-straight line. This eliminates the usual trip hazards. The circumference of this egg-shaped perimeter is about .8 miles per my truck’s odometer making around 1.8 miles total. The other .2 or so was the addition of another couple blocks of Rolling Hills Riviera.

Within this small section are three houses that I helped frame around 1958. As mentioned in that previous post, my dad was the superintendent on this large housing tract. He would often coerce subcontractors into taking me on as an apprentice. At one point in the summer before my freshman year I began working for the roofing contractor. Unfortunately for some forgotten reason the framers couldn’t frame three houses we were supposed to roof. The roofers, me included, became framers. It was fun except that I often hit my left thumb with the hammer as I tapped in the 16-penny framing nail. The older guys would start the nail with one hard tap and drive it in with two more. I was a bit more tentative and took a couple taps to start and three or more to finish. The framing/roofing crew included a black guy named Roosevelt McGee and at Mexican laborer named Jose. Roosevelt was lots of fun and later, while roofing, showed me how to start the smaller 10-penny nail by hitting it with the butt of the hammer and driving it in with one hard hit. He was like a machine and even sang a forgotten song as he did it. I got down to one butt hit followed by two more—no song. Jose once gave me an egg burrito his wife made for me. Over the years whenever I ordered a breakfast burrito, I remember my first one. I walked a little slower as I passed those houses. I thought it might be fun to tell one of owners my story, maybe another day.

Today’s walk included saying “hi” to two new neighbor kids whose names I have naturally forgotten. The other folks we met only gave the names of their dogs, one was an Indian lady with a dog named Prince and the other an Asian lady I couldn’t understand. She asked Dexter’s breed, and I said, “Mini Australian Sheep Dog.” She said hers was “just a Mutt.”.

PRINCE

To be honest nothing much occurs on these walks. I can now understand why Steinbeck felt the need to throw in a Shakespearean Expert he met on his trek through a largely unpopulated area of the Dakota’s in “Travels with Charley.”. Fictionalizing a travel account is not a good practice but Twain did it in both “Innocents Abroad” and “Roughing It.” My favorite travel writer is Paul Theroux who once jumped on a train in, I think, Chicago and ended up in Tiera Del Fuego. His book “The Great Patagonia Express” was a fun read with great stories and characters, hopefully all true.

I also met a brand-new neighbor named Mundar who is an Indian and said
“but you can call me M.J.” Remembering the famous Indian tennis player V.J. Agarwal and the writer V.S. Naipaul, who Theroux first met while traveling in Africa, I responded, “OK, but I like the sound of Mundar better.” He smiled. I wouldn’t think to suggest that foreigners call me M.W. It’s probably polite-- Michael might be hard for them to pronounce, but it is my name. Maybe the Brits weren’t as understanding under the Raj.

Dexter is Australian, Mundar is Indian, and Mike is a Mutt.