Pee Wee Herman

Pee Wee Herman

I love the movie Blow, one of my favorites.  I especially love that scene when it’s Johnny Depp, Bobcat Goldthwait and Pee Wee Herman gathered around testing the purity of Depp’s cocaine (“I can’t feel my face …”).  I heard a stand-up routine of Bobcat’s once where he’s talking about that scene and mused that there was no one in the scene not on probation. Depp was in trouble at the time for tearing up his hotel room and Bobcat was in hot water for setting fire to a chair when he was on The Tonight Show. And Pee Wee (a.k.a. Paul Rubens), well, I’ll let you Google that one for yourself. This is a family blog.

I chose to name this post that because I realized a while ago that you gotta name your blog something catchy to get people to want to visit it, thus increasing your stats for number of visitors. I mean hey,  you’re here aren’t you? But that concept of doing a rail of coke is really the theme of this post. Cuz Kilgore used to love snow. LOVED IT. And in Seattle where I got him, I’m not sure there had ever been snow before in Kilgore’s life. At least, not snow like we get in the Midwest. So the first time it really snowed in Kilgore’s life, he really didn’t have any idea what to do. I remember taking him out for a walk when we were living in Fort Collins, CO. There was this little nature preserve adjacent to the apartment complex where we lived. It was really handy because I could just walk out my door and walk the K-Man off-leash without changing out of my PJ’s. And the first time it snowed, really snowed, holy Mary mother of God did he flip. Just tore around the nature preserve full throttle, rejoicing in this new white stuff. But as any Colordoan will tell you, most snows there, at least in the front range, don’t last for long and by that evening it had melted. Didn’t matter. Kilgore had had his first taste and wanted MORE.

So the first time it snowed in Omaha, and I mean drifts, was when I took Kilgore for a walk at Memorial Park. Memorial is where I took K for walks off-leash for years and years before he died. You can read more about it here. There was what was called the “Dog Bowl” which was really the unofficial off-leash park in eastern Omaha (don’t tell the city fathers. I don’t want to be the one responsible for them shutting it down). We had the occasional truck from the Humane Society that would drive by but I never saw them give anyone a ticket, though I heard it had happened.  And one day, it had really dumped the night before, so I suited up in my winter attire and took Kilgore up to the park.

Having already seen snow, he wasn’t too shocked. But he had never seen this much snow. Ever. I swear, it was like watching a kid on Christmas morning the way he just thrust himself into a run through the field at least 50 yards and then turned on a dime and ran back to me.

“This. Is. Awesome! You never told me about this stuff!”

Border Collies originated in Ireland and Scotland as sheep herders. But I’m pretty sure those places don’t amass the same amount of snow you get in mid-January in Nebraska. The K-Man tore around the park several times, relishing it. Then, with God as my witness, he was running back to me and stuck his snout squarely into the foot or so of snow along his path and snorted deeply. When he came back to me, there was snow all up around and inside his nostrils and he was looking at me with that crazed Border Collie “eye” on his face. The one that signifies that this animal is no longer to be held accountable for his actions. On his next pass, he pulled a flat-out Scarface and buried his whole face in the snow. Giggling, I got down on my haunches and cleared the white stuff away from his eyes and snout. But it was no use. He was hooked.

That day and every day after that I could muster the energy, I would strap on my winter gear (snow pants, I found, came in especially handy when I had the day off and knew we would be going to Memorial for an extended outing) and we would head up to the park together. As I said, I’m pretty sure Kilgore never encountered snow like that before coming to Nebraska, but once he did, he was a certified junkie.