Special Smashwords Edition
SMOKEY
THE TALKING DOG
and other tales from the land of loganberry
by
Jim Nolan
Smokey the Talking Dog and other tales from the land of loganberry
Special Smashwords Edition
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Copyright © 2011 by Jim Nolan. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, without the express written permission of the author. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.
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Cover Art: Copyright © 1939 by Charlene Smith
Dedication image by Charlene Smith
Niagara River Death Cruise image by James Nolan
Ghosts of Halloweens Past image by James Nolan
The Buffalo Central High Class of 1912 image by Pohle
1970s Teenage Human Shield image by Christa Nolan
Forged in Buffalo image by Matt Georger
Night of the Grizzly image by Jim Nolan
Family photo by Isabel Curry Nolan
Published and distributed by Smashwords.com
Digital design by: Telemachus Press, LLC
http://www.telemachuspress.com
Visit the author’s website at http://www.jimnolansblog.com/
ISBN: 978–1–935670–74–2 (eBook)
ISBN: 978–1–935670–75–9 (paperback)
Version 2011.06.10
About This Book
SHAG CARPETING, TALKING DOGS, grizzly bears and Emilio Pucci commercials. Jim Nolan has encountered them all and survived. These stories, most of which first aired on WBFO Public Radio in Buffalo, relate how his love for his hometown and family was able to overcome the obstacles they set in his way, for example, his father’s scrambled eggs and offer to reveal “the secret of math.” Warm–hearted and hilarious, Smokey captures a city and era full of eccentricities, hidden dangers and the best local food east of Kansas City.
Praise for This Book
“Smokey the Talking Dog can really tell a story.
Jim Nolan’s not so bad, either.”
Tom Bodett, Author, Humorist, Radio Anomaly
“A squeaky toy of a book—
pick it up and be entertained.”
Tom Higgins, Elmwood Pet Supplies
For my mother and father
To the Class of ’10, From the Class of ’12
The Right to Bear Beef–on–Weck
Your Windsong Stays on (What’s Left of) My Mind
Preface
I AM NOT lucky enough to live in Buffalo anymore; work has taken me elsewhere. But I live there psychologically to an extent that concerns my wife, even though she is also a displaced Buffalonian and should understand. Perhaps it’s her unease with my scarfing down wings like they were M&Ms. She thinks they’re unhealthy—forgetting that, like a car’s engine, your heart needs lubrication.
Buffalo has a tired reputation as a depressed Rust Belt city, but that’s just a front the Chamber of Commerce puts out to keep others away. The city is in many ways a paradise, and they don’t want it ruined. For one thing, Buffalo has such plentiful water that residents bathe every day there, a habit soon to disappear in the South and West. They live beside a now–pristine Lake Erie, and you’re not getting any of it—they just passed a law. All you people who moved away to warmer, more arid climes: you’ll just have to move back.
Besides, you never should have left in the first place. When Buffalonian Willis Carrier invented air conditioning, he did so for industrial uses, never imaging it would suck the city’s population away to previously uninhabitable places like Atlanta or Houston or Phoenix. Carrier now rests uneasily in Buffalo’s Forest Lawn, eternally regretting this turn of fate.
The good news is when you do move back, you’ll find 125–year–old handcrafted five–bedroom homes on broad, leafy avenues for sale for $12.99, just slightly more than the beef–on–weck sandwiches found only here. The Buffalo wings (which they simply call “wings,” like the French call French fries frites) are only tasty in the Queen City. I’m sorry, but this is true. Outside of Buffalo the technology simply doesn’t exist, and this time they’re keeping the patents to themselves. They’re not making the same mistake they made with air conditioning.
When Samuel Johnson famously thundered, “When a man is tired of Buffalo, he is tired of life,”1 he was right, as usual. I would move back in a second if I could, and one day I will. Until then, I’ll just have to write about how wonderful it was to grow up there, contentedly ensconced among the only people in America with the sense to understand the importance of a loganberry to a char–broiled hot.
Hastings–on–Hudson, NY
June 2011
P.S. Many of these stories first appeared as Listener Commentaries on the State University of New York at Buffalo’s public radio station, WBFO 88.7. I am grateful to it.
1 The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides and Western New York with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. James Boswell, 1786. “Dr. Johnson had for many years given me hopes that we should go together, and visit Buffalo.”