I don't know yet what I'll call it, but I'm starting to outline a story about a couple of dogs - Biggie and Jake.  Since they belong to Uncle Percy B. Hand, he'll undoubtedly be writing about them on his new blog, but he's not quite ready to start writing just yet.  He's taking typing lessons from a widow woman down at Crab Apple Cove, and then there's the writing class he's taking at the juco.  According to the course description in the catalog, anyone taking the class should have a notebook, so Percy showed up the first day with a Big Chief notebook and a couple of pencils.  That got some chuckles, I'm sure.

Anyway, the teacher explained to Percy that he needed a laptop computer to enroll in the class, and then suggested he stop off at a store and get one before he came back to class.  Shopping for a computer opened up a whole new world to Percy, being as how he didn't even know how to work an old typewriter, much less a fancy gizmo.  But he went to Walmart and started looking at their small offering of laptops.  When he saw the price on them, he damn near passed out.  But he still had to have one, and so he went to his old pal Elmo Gibson and asked for help.  Elmo is about the closest thing you can find to a redneck digihead, at least around central Texas.

Well, Elmo gave Percy the bad news, which was - there is no such thing as a cheap computer that works.  He could find a junker, he said, but it wouldn't do what he needed for his writing class.  He said 300 bucks would be about the best he could do for a used one, so he encouraged him to go ahead and bite the bullet and buy a new one.  He'd go with him to San Antonio, and they'd get a computer . . . if that's what he wanted.  Percy didn't have a thousand bucks to spend on a computer, and his recent divorce from Nadine had put him in somewhat of a financial bind.  He got out of the marriage without having to pay alimony, but he had to start all over from scratch.  All he had was a couple of suitcases full of old clothes, a worn out recliner, and couple of shotguns that had belonged to his grandpa. 

Then Percy remembered a favor Dudley Frost owed him.  He went to the bank where Dudley was president and asked for a note to buy a computer.  Dudley nearly fell out of his fancy leather chair when Percy told him what he wanted the money for, but he couldn't refuse him.  The favor he owed Percy was that he'd got caught diddling Wanda Sue Fraley down at the Lone Oak Inn south of Leakey.  Percy went down to get some cypress wood and just happened to walk up on Dudley and Wanda Sue doing the big nasty in the woods behind the Inn.  And it wasn't so much that he'd caught a married man humping his secretary that made Percy's silence such a big favor; it was what he caught them doing.

Percy likes walking, and he'd parked his truck up near the highway and had started walking and giving Biggie a chance to run in the woods.  He'd seen some cypress trees in the distance, thought maybe he'd walk down to the river and take a closer look at them.  Dudley and Wanda Sue had been sitting around the Inn drinking wine and nipping cheese, then got the idea to take a blanket and go to the woods for some playful horsing around.  They took an extra bottle of wine along, and that was their undoing.  When Percy walked up on them, he found a blanket on the ground with several bottles scattered around . . . but no Dudley or Wanda Sue.  He stood there, looking around and wondering what was going on, and then he looked up.  There in the tree above him, he found the two lovers, partially naked but clad in each others clothes.  Yeah, Dudley had Wanda's underwear on, and she had his on, and they were up in a tree trying to carry on some hanky-panky.

Percy's a fairly broadminded guy, so he just shook it off as a case of two folks getting drunk and frisky.  And he promised not to say a word about it, and he kept his promise.  Well, he did tell me, but that was in confidence, and I seldom break a confidence . . . unless it's worth a good laugh.  Anyway, I changed names and places to make sure nobody is implicated in anything.  The point is, Percy got his loan, and at a really good interest rate too.

Anyway, Percy got his laptop (with some help from Elmo) and started his writing class.  He learned to peck out words on the thing, and he learned how to do some fundamental things with it.  In fact, he got to where he loved that laptop more than he did his old shotguns, and he was naturally highly disturbed when it malfunctioned the first time.  Well, maybe it was Percy who malfunctioned, but something went wrong and his computer ate his third writing assignment.  And he didn't have a backup.  Elmo had to lecture him then about losing material to a computer . . . a lesson almost everyone learns.

But finally, Percy got handy enough with his computer to get through the first course, and now he's almost finished with the second.  His note at the bank's all paid off, and he's starting to learn typing instead of pecking.  And so I asked him a while back what he planned to write about when he started his own blog, and he said he wanted to devote it to doing common sense things.  He said he might write about all the important things a man can do with baling wire and duck tape.  He allowed as how he doesn't have enough experience with tall tales writing to do justice to a dog story, so I'm taking up the slack.

Biggie is a mostly Chihuahua dog that weighs about 5 lbs.  He's trim and athletic as all get out, and he spends a lot of time riding on Percy's shoulder.  He prefers the left, but sometimes he goes to the right shoulder.  And then Percy went to an animal shelter and found this cross-bred hound named Jake.  It was love at first sight, and so now Percy has a pair, and they are quite the pair too.  The two dogs took to each other right off, and now they're pretty much constant companions.  About the only time you see them separated is when Percy goes inside a building where Jake can't go, and that's not too often.  In fact, Biggie is great at mooching a ride . . .so good at it that he rides on Jake's back a lot of the time.

Percy bought a little house about a block away from a trailer park.  He's got a fence around his back yard, but during the daytime Biggie and Jake run loose in Crab Apple Cove like most other animals do.  Watching animals has been a passtime of mine for a long time, and if you ever read my stuff you know that I'm always drawing comparisions between animal behavior and human behavior.  Not they are all this distinct, since we're all animals.  I'm just talking people versus critters here, that's all.  Anyway, I've taken an interest in Biggie and Jake, and most of the stories I know about them come from Percy.  You'll be seeing them from time to time in blogs, but the main adventures will go into a book.  Who knows, maybe I'll just call it The Adventures of Biggie and Jake.  Works for me.

C. Duhon, 11/09/07