Dog and Goose

So Happy Birthday to Wayne MYERS '62'.

Grew up with him there around the Perkins/Van Geisen neighborhood. He was three grades ahead of me at Jason Lee-- which is a lot of grades, according to the odd algebra that usually governs childhood friendships--but he was the kind active, good-natured older kid that becomes a natural leader among the swarms of other neighborhood boys.

I mean, he was the pitcher for our Cub Scout softball team, if that gives you any idea. And he was never a bully, which was most important of all.

His family lived right there on the corner of Perkins and Van Geisen, in one of the big old original farm houses that were there from before the prefabs and the grade school were built up around it. There wasn't even a fence between their front yard and the school playground. Wayne's dad used to stand in their yard and hit fly balls to us out there in front of the school building.

The trees around the yard were old cherry trees left over from when the neighborhood was a cherry orchard. There were old cherry trees spotted here and there all up and down Perkins Street.

Wayne had an old spotted white dog and a large white goose that were inseparable. They never left the yard, but they didn't need a fence with that dog and that goose patrolling the boundaries, the goose right alongside the dog. Always, almost forever, it seemed like, that dog and that goose standing there side by side in Wayne MYERS's front yard.

Thanks for the memories, Wayne. And Happy Birthday.

TDK '65'

• Last Time Around
  
• Charlie Nevins
  
• Young Men And Fire
  
• Austin Healy
  
• Cathy
  
• David River's Birthday
  
• Han's Pavilion
  
• Muscles, Our Neighbor
  
• John Browne, Learning to Dance
  
• Your Brother Mark Browne
  
• Buster
  
• Celluloid Lies
  
• Nuked
  
• Learning to Box
  
• Dog and Goose
  
• Buses and Such
  
• Stealing
  
• Hookybobbing
  
• Stiles Old Upstairs Apartment
  
• Sign Of The Time
  
• Learning to Drive