A Florida Bird Dog ~
REX
By Helen Digges Spivey
Copyright 2011 Helen Digges Spivey
Smashwords Edition
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Chapter 1
The Digges Kids from Lake Jenny Jewel
I remember the warm, and the fun-loving home I grew up in, with a father who loved to play tricks, like dropping the butter dish down so fast when he handed it to you at dinner, you’d think you were going to drop it on the floor.
It’s hard to remember the dates when things actually happened. Was I two or three or was it 1929 or 30 when this or that happened? Memories don’t actually go in chronological order either I found out, particularly when you’re my age of 83.
But I remember when my brother, Charlie, came home from the hospital in a wheel chair because he had been in a hospital bed for so long after they had removed his ruptured appendix; he’d forgotten how to walk. And Mom just knew he was going to fall out of that wheel chair getting it into our sunken living room.
Dad, in his own conniving way, decided to work on that fear and got Charlie and me aside. He showed us a stack of books he’d gathered. Then he helped my brother out of the wheel chair and put him on the floor, then turned the wheel chair over.
“Now when I drop these books on the floor,” he told us, “you both start screaming away!” We giggled as we got ready to yell.
Then he dropped the books --- we screamed --- my Mom and our cook Annie came flying out of the kitchen only to see us rolling on the floor with laughter. All except Dad. He was trying to look innocent of the entire thing. He almost let us take the full blame, but laughingly confessed when Mom and Annie really got hot. But my Mom stopped worrying about the wheel chair tipping over in the sunken living room.
When Charlie finally started walking again, Mom decided he was too awkward, so she carted us both off to the Ebsen School of Dance in Orlando. The lady who taught dance there was the sister of Buddy Ebsen, who became a movie star when I was growing up. She also had great patience.
Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle step. Over and over we learned those dance steps. Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle step. Then when Ebsen School of Dance held a recital we had to dance for it, and of course Mom and Dad came. I know for sure Dad was deliberately tapping his feet out of beat with the music. You just couldn’t hear his taps or see his movements and keep in step with the music. We shuffled and giggled and shuffled and giggled away. Mom and Miss Ebsen were very upset.
But I think the winning funny goes to my Mom, Jean Digges. She was struggling one morning to make us pancakes that didn’t leak when you stuck your fork in them, and all the while we were deliberately saying, “Hurry up, hurry up Mom” so fast she couldn’t let them cook through. It happened every time Annie, our cook, was off for the weekend. Mom had to cook breakfast, and we always demanded pancakes.
Mom finally brought the last stack of pancakes to the table, and with hands on her hips, flour and pancake batter all over her apron, even some on her nose, she glared at us and said, “I just know when I die you all will get me cremated and put me in an hour glass so I can keep right on working for you.”
We all roared and she finally did too!
My Dad, Charles Carroll Digges Sr., had taught my brother, Charlie, and me to sing a little ditty he had written for whenever company came to visit the Lake house. He would motion us to the center of the living room floor, and then he’d nod. I was to hold out my skirt and curtsey and my brother would bow, and then we’d sing,
“We are the Digges kids from Lake Jenny Jewel,
And we’re here to sing a song,
For you - and – you - and you.”
And smiling our best smiles, we pointed around at those in the audience when we sang the words, “You and you and you.”I always wanted the last “you” to say “youll” because it rhymed with Jewel, but wasn’t allowed to.
We lived in a beautiful log cabin built by our Dad on Lake Jenny Jewel just outside Orlando Florida. This log cabin had a fair sized sunken living room and out from that, toward the lake, was a big wide screen porch. The lake was big enough to have small sailboats using it on occasion.
There were lots of trees and some really big live oaks in the yard, forever green and decorated with long grey hanging columns of Spanish moss that swayed back and forth with the slightest breeze. And down by the lake a few tall cabbage palm trees stood like sentinels on the narrow white sandy beach.
On the north side of the big yard was a fenced in chicken yard with a hen house, a big dog yard with a small dog house we called “The Kennel”. And at the lake itself, a fenced in duck pen, half in --- half out of the water. The ducks also had a little house like the hen house. Toward the town road was a swampy area where gators that lived in the lake occasionally built a nest among the cypress trees and their strange knees. I was told they would mound the nest very high so the sun would always warm the top but it would never get totally covered with water.
On the other side of our yard was a big long dock out into Lake Jenny Jewel. There were only two houses on our side of the lake with a farm at far end, and more homes in the distance over on the other side. The farmer at the end of our dirt road planted crops of corn across the street from us where we kids would hide whenever we decided to venture away from home.
You entered the house from the driveway through a large front door carved from local wood, Dad had said, and into the sunken living room. It had a large walk in fireplace, and shelves and shelves of books, a big library table and chairs. A railing separated the sunken floor area with its two big couches and lots of comfy chairs about. There was a small nook near the kitchen where the radio was. My favorite place to listen to Saturday morning programs.
The log cabin had no furnace, but we had some electric lights and lots of lamps for storm times when the power went out. We didn’t have power enough for an electric stove or furnace or water heater, though Mom was to brag later how Dad paid $1,500 to the power company to bring in the heavy lines so she could have an electric stove. But I don’t think our cook, Annie, ever used it.
In the winter, if it got cold we’d build a fire in the fireplace, pull up the chairs and sit close and tell stories or sing or watch Mom and Dad play checkers. We had a wind up Victrola, and a record we played to tease my brother that was my favorite.
“Clap hands, Here comes Charlie.
Clap hands, Good time Charlie.
Clap hands here comes Charlie now.”
We’d always clap hands to the music while my brother usually pouted, but he finally got to enjoying it, and would get up and take a bow when the record ended.
Mom and Dad loved to play checkers and had some close contests going. But if Dad saw he was losing he would always give a big sneeze, upsetting the board with checkers flying all over the table and floor. My brother and I weren’t allowed to do that when we were losing, but it sure worked for Dad.
On cold nights Dad used the top of the wood stove in the kitchen for the remaining heat after supper was cooked to warm some red bricks. He’d wrap them in old cloths and put them in our beds. “No cold feet for the Digges kids,” he’d say. The hot water for baths was heated there a few nights a week too.
If it was really cold Dad would heat more bricks and wrap them in old sacks and carry them out to the kennel for his bird dogs. Kippy at first, and later on came a puppy named Rex. At first I had trouble saying Rex’s name, so I called him “Eckey” for awhile. And when I really loved what he was doing or was very proud of him I always called him, “Eckey Boy.”
There were lots of good memories as a Digges Kid from Lake Jenny Jewel but in really looking back I find most of all and foremost, my dearest memories were of Kippy and Rex.
Kippy was a beautiful English setter with almond eyes, and a long flowing coat of white, dotted with flecks of chocolate brown. She had a long tail like a streaming flag. Her “tail feathers,” that’s what we called her long silky tail, would stream out in the wind. She didn’t like me pulling on it either when I was first trying to walk I was told.
Rex was a German shorthaired pointer, mostly white with big liver colored spots like brown saddles over his back and down his sides and over his ears. He had a long white tail but unlike Kippy, his had short hair.
Both dogs had big ole floppy ears. When folks asked me what kind of dogs we had I would proudly tell them we had “Poinsettias.” They would laugh at the reference to the Christmas plants but what I was telling them was that we had a Pointer and a Setter. I didn’t really understand why it was funny at first, but if something got a laugh I kept on using it. A Digges tradition.
Once in awhile my brother and I would use the old perambulator my Mom had used for us as babies for Rex when he was a little pup. I’d dress him up in my baby clothes, tie on a lace trimmed bonnet, and we’d put him in it. We’d push him down the dirt road, which wasn’t easy, to the big road that went to Orlando. When any ladies walking by saw us they would come over, all smiles, to admire the baby doll they just knew I had in there.
They were always shocked to see Rex in baby clothes with a baby bonnet over his long, floppy ears. His big pink tongue would hang out one side of his mouth with a sort of jaunty air. And somewhere down in the perambulator you could hear the thump, thump, thump of his tail. He was happy even if the ladies weren’t.
Annie taught me how to cook. How much flour and sugar and salt and eggs and milk and whatever else it took to make what she was making. I learned to use a rolling pin and a measuring cup. And she patiently put whatever I made to bake in the oven alongside what she had made. And she always made me feel so proud because only Kippy and Rex were allowed to eat what I made. As I grew up I realized that was really for the family’s protection.
I remember once when Dad and his friend Parks came back from turkey hunting up in the Florida Panhandle with a giant turkey gobbler Dad had shot. Mom, Annie, Charlie and I spent hours plucking the feathers off that bird. Then Mom and Annie dressed it and filled it with pecan stuffing. When we finally found a pan it would fit in it was so heavy Dad had to help put it in the oven.
Well, it seemed not only was that gobbler big and heavy, he turned out to be the toughest old bird anyone ever tried to serve up. The knife wouldn’t carve into that beautifully browned breast. It got some of the skin off, but no turkey meat.
For a joke Dad went out and got his hatchet but that wouldn’t even make a dent in it. Neighbors and friends who had been invited to the turkey feast all made a try. Someone finally chipped a few chunks off and gave it to the dogs. They took it out in the back yard and lay chewing on it for the longest time, then finally buried the pieces as if they were treasured bones.
That old Turkey Gobbler quickly became a family legend. We’d talk about it every Thanksgiving. The tale grew and grew. Parks’ guesstimate was it weighed close to 50 pounds and was probably 50 years old. Dad always added it took Annie two days to cook it but she left it in an hour too long.
She would flip her long apron at him with a, “Shush that!”
All agreed that was the toughest turkey that ever was, and definitely the most memorable.
Chapter 2
Tragedy Comes
When hunting season started that fall, Rex wasn’t old enough to go hunting. He would whine and cry and look so sad as Dad drove off with Kippy. I’d take him down on the dock to sit. I’d talk and he’d listen sometimes, but more often he paid attention to the ducks flying by. Dad was training him to hunt but said until he could learn to back set Kippy, honoring her point, he was too young to go.
This particular day we were sitting on the dock, and weren’t expecting Dad back from hunting so early. It was like he came right back almost as soon as he left. Suddenly we knew something was wrong and ran to the car.
Kippy had been closing in on a covey of quail, Dad told us, and they had stopped running. She pointed, knowing they were getting ready to fly. Dad walked up to flush them, but the quail moved again closer to a bunch of palmettos. Kippy moved closer and pointed once again. Suddenly, Dad said, she let out a yelp and fell writhing on the ground. He said he ran to her just in time to see a big rattler slither back into the palmettos. Kippy had stopped moving, and as he examined her he saw blood on her neck.
He was carrying her to the car when she went totally limp. Kippy had died. The vet said later the rattler had gotten her in the jugular vein and she had died almost instantly.
It was such a sad time. Dad and Alec, our handy man/chauffer, dug a grave for Kippy on a small rise in the ground overlooking the lake. She was all wrapped up in a pretty flowered cloth but Rex knew it was her, and kept trying to go over to nudge her. I had to hold him back. I had snuck a bone in beside her where Rex couldn’t see it and I didn’t want him to take it from her.
We had a little ceremony, and just before sunset we tearfully buried our Kippy. Rex slept out there with her every night for days afterward.
It turned out to be a year of bad things. I went out one morning and called Rex to see if I could get him to come and play. He walked toward me wobbling, throwing up and then he collapsed. Mom called Dad on the phone and he rushed home followed by the vet. The vet shook his head. Rex had distemper.
There was no use trying to save him he told us all. Even if he did live the distemper would damage his sense of smell and he could never be used for hunting. I never wanted to see him go hunting after what had happened to Kippy anyway, and I said so. Charlie joined in. Suddenly there was Mom, Dad, Annie and Alec, all asking what we could do to save him or make him as comfortable as we could. The vet laid out what had to be done and gave us medicines, wished us luck and left.
A full week went by and Rex got sicker and sicker, but we kept getting warm milk in him and Annie’s chicken soup. One day he just slowly stood up, shook his coat and took a step forward, as if to get ready to live.
We all celebrated. He had stayed all this time on the front porch and we had washed all his bedding and spruced the porch up every day. Then someone would sit out there to be with him. But he had one more hurdle to go. He had lost control of his bladder and bowels and messed all over the front porch. Even after we walked him again and again outside, and left the porch door partially open so he could go out, it kept up. He would still mess all over the floor and the vet said it was too cold to let him sleep on the ground outside.
We fed him to give him strength but the food all hurried right through him --- into big, smelly piles. We yelled at him. We shamed him, but nothing worked. We had to keep him out in the yard every day while Alec or Dad hosed down the porch and let it dry.
Then one afternoon Dad came home early. He had called earlier and said not to clean up the piles that day. Strange, but we didn’t. He had some packages with him when he came in and gave the biggest one to Annie to put in the ice box, then unwrapped the other, taking out a big raw steak. Carefully he placed the steak right in between three big smelly piles, and told us to all stay inside the house.
We watched Rex on the porch through the glass panes in the door. At first he just sat there looking at that steak in a mess of poop. Then slowly he got up and carefully walked around it, like trying to pick the best path to getting that steak. His nose actually wrinkled up in the air as he tried not to smell those awful stools.
He would get close, then back away, shaking his head. Then he’d try a different approach. It would have been comical to watch if it wasn’t so sad. Finally he found a way to place his feet where they weren’t in danger of getting into the piles and braced himself and reached way over and successfully got the steak.
This routine went on for a few days, but there came a morning when there wasn’t a drop of fresh poop or pee on the porch. Rex had used the half open screen door and went in the yard and relieved himself. Dad brought him one more big steak from the butchers that day in celebration. But after that it was a big bowl of dog food twice a day and whatever snacks he could beg from Annie or me and a clean porch to sleep on.
Dad started training him again. “Even if he can’t hunt,” he’d said, “That dog can smell what’s a steak and what’s not a steak.”
We all laughed at that, but I was so afraid of a snake getting him when he was out hunting too, and often said so.
Chapter 3
Snake Proofing
About a month into the occasional training, and frequent family objections, Dad came home and ordered Rex to get in the car. I begged to go too just to find out what was going to happen. I really wanted to make certain he wasn’t going to take him into the woods to hunt.
“Sure,” Dad told Charlie and me, “get in!”
We drove a long way, turning off of several dirt roads when we finally pulled up in front of a ramshackle old squatter’s cabin sitting right in the middle of bunches of palmettos. A tall skinny man came down the rickety steps, and Dad went over and talked with him. They nodded like they agreed on something and Dad came to the car, opened the trunk and took out a jug and gave it to the man. He immediately took it in the cabin. Moments later he came out with a big brownish burlap sack, a rope and a long, thin board with another board attached some 6 inches down. He told us to put Rex in the sack.