My story about Billy begins with his arrival on our farm in 1947. Billy was a city dog, from Long Beach CA. When our cousins’ alcoholic father abandoned them for the final time Aunt Elizabeth and their five children had to accept public aid and move to a public housing project in Long Beach, which meant surrendering Billy. Grandpa Raftery decided that he and Billy would make the trek from Long Beach to Pittsfield, our hometown by way of the Greyhound Bus Company. I don’t know how they pulled this off but after 3 days and 2 nights they tumbled off the bus in Pittsfield.
When Wayland Willard recognized Grandpa Raftery he took off work a little early from the gas station and transported Grandpa and Billy the last seven miles to our farm. We had a general idea when they were to show but suddenly here they were - Grandpa triumphant and tired; Billy alert and restless. When Grandpa opened the cage, Billy did not leap into our welcoming arms; he took off like a bat out of hell down the road in the general direction of California! His arrival became an immediate departure. But he did return before dark; Billy was no fool.
Billy’s breed was predominately Chow, with his rust-colored coat, a dark tongue, and a tail that curled up over his back. He was independent and solitary. In human terms his personality was feisty, snappy, and belligerent. He didn’t want attention or petting; somewhat cat-like in his aloofness and reserved demeanor around strangers. With a scowling no-nonsense air, he usually seemed slightly angry. In human equivalents he was a Jack Nicholson, not a Tom Hanks or a Tom Cruise. There was one exception; he was friendly to my sister Margaret. Perhaps because she reminded Billy of our cousin Terry who was about Margaret’s age when Billy lived with his original family in Long Beach. I have a picture of Margaret with Billy at her feet, looking up at her.
Billy immediately let our other two dogs, Lassie and Jackie, know that he was not interested in becoming “let’s smell each other” buddies. His rebuff to their advances was to snarl and walk away. He picked a fight with them once and lost - two against one with larger foes was the lesson learned by Billy. They became a team inasmuch as Billy could pick a fight with any other dog that came around with the knowledge that Jackie and Lassie would have his back. Billy loved a good fight but didn’t always win; he would return from his lone excursions battered and beaten, from another dog or a racoon or possum. Sometimes he would return sporting the perfume from a skunk for a couple of days. The barnyard of animals really avoided him then, including the chickens. I didn’t think about chickens having the sense of smell until I noticed them shying away from Billy the skunk! His favorite enemies were rats; he always won those ugly contests.
Billy did not age gracefully. One morning after disappearing for several days, he came limping in the lane missing his right hind leg from below the knee. It had to have been one of those instances that you read about where some wild animal escapes from a trap by chewing off its leg. That happened to Billy, although we didn’t think it was a trap; it was probably a piece of barbed wire fencing that he couldn’t escape from any other way. He limped through life after that staying closer to home, settling for his favorite new pastime of chasing cars. Despite his three-leg handicap, he never lost enthusiasm for chasing every car that went by.
Billy would lie in the middle of the road so he could hear a car coming in time to be poised for the race. Drivers were often distracted by Billy, who would race for several hundred yards, depending on the speed of the car. But chasing cars was also Billy’s undoing. His old age infirmity became a hearing loss, that caused Billy to finally not hear a car, causing his demise. That kind of death probably suited Billy just fine. He suffered no indignity in finally losing to a car.
My brother buried Billy beside that same road that he ran down on his first arrival, the road that he limped home on from many adventures; the road where he finally caught a car.
Rest in peace Billy.