The Growl

Short Autobiographical Vignette

 

The Big Growl

   I am not from Brooklyn. I’m really not even from NY City, though there are some who would dispute that. Yes, I was born in New York Hospital in Manhattan, and yes, I lived in two different apartments in Queens until I was four, but I’m a Long Islander, having lived there from four till college. As urban as it is now, growing up I never lived in or spent time in a “bad” neighborhood. Things were safe as far as I knew, not even a stray dog let alone a stray bullet. Sure, we had our bicycles stolen from our garage twice when the garage door was open and once or twice some teenagers broke the side view mirrors of the cars parked down our entire street, but I and my two younger brothers never lived in fear. The last time I got into a fight with a bully was in second grade. I never even had to run away from one after fifth grade. Some would call Plainview boring, and the name certainly was, probably with the idea that we had a view of the Hempstead Plains, which had then been gobbled up by Levitt houses. We always found something to do, though, baseball, bikes, movies, Fribbles or ice cream at Friendly’s, cheese cake at the On Parade Diner.

   In my house we always had tropical fish and mostly had dogs. Pitchie, a black mutt who came for my eighth birthday was the first. He was part-Lab but smaller, and smart as anything according to my mother. He'd sometimes wander the neighborhood, but if you whistled he would come instantly from blocks away. The trouble was that he did not like to be disturbed, chomping on a couple of toes that got too close when he was sleeping. My mom gave him back to Bid-a-wee, the pet adoption place, when I was out of the house not long before my youngest brother was born. I guess she thought Pitchie might chomp more than a toe when it came to babies. We resumed having dogs not long after Jay was born, but I was not one to forget that my dog was sent packing over my protests.

   Fourteen years later I was living in Massachusetts, getting ready to return to New York for graduate school. I adopted my own dog from a vet in Chicopee to replace my long gone mutt. He was an out of work Border Collie, about a year old, with sad brown eyes that did not let go of your gaze. His name was Whimper. Don’t ask. It really was a good name for him, though I hadn’t named him. The vet's staff had done that. He earned his moniker because – you guessed it – he always whimpered. It was just his way of talking. Whimper was black and white, with incredibly thick, coarse, straight fur that shed like he was molting in April and October. Sometimes I would just sit with him and pick out loose fur clumps. The pooch howled at sirens, totally stopping whatever else he was doing, including sleeping, sang the same way when I played the tenor sax, would gently pick up a little kitten by the scruff of its neck if it was mewing, and developed a keen taste for pizza when we moved to the city.

   I moved to Brooklyn in 1981 at twenty-four to go to graduate school, finding an apartment share in the then up-and-gentrifying neighborhood of Park Slope, so named because it slopes downward from the west side of Prospect Park. It was about a 40 minute subway ride on the D or the F train to the university. Two apartments, an engagement, a marriage, and less than two years later I was living on 16th Street off of 7th Avenue. If you asked any in our neighborhood where we lived each of us would tell you Park Slope, but the dark and mostly non-renovated part, with smoky red boarded up buildings squatting alongside functional tenements and a handful of power-washed renovated tenements and row homes. If you actually were a bit obsessive and checked a map you’d find we really lived in Sunset Park, but it just did not have the same cachet: different park, different crime pattern, less genteel. On our corner, next door to the second Brooklyn apartment I shared when still single, was a boarded up bar that the locals had called The OK Corral due to numerous fights and calls to 911. I was living with my new bride two buildings up from the corner in a second floor apartment that we had shared since about two months before our Roslyn Country Club wedding.

   Our block was sunny, meaning on sunny days there was a lot of light because all the large trees had died or been chopped down or both. We felt comfortable enough walking around our block and down into the main part of The Slope or toward Prospect Park, but there must have been a slight air of menace to the place that somehow we didn’t notice, ignorant as we were in our newlywed bliss, or just used to city life. I say this because my brother once visited with his fiancée and as I was walking him to his car, he asked if I’d be safe walking the fifty feet back to my building. Suburbanites!

   It wasn’t that nothing ever happened on our block. Cars seemed to get broken into with regularity. Car stereos and trunk items had a way of disappearing. It was annoying. Once someone broke into the trunk of my little old blue Toyota Corolla and stole the sky blue plastic tool box I’d had since I was eight, along with a hammer, wrench and the couple of screwdrivers it held. My neighbor Mike, a Hispanic man in his early thirties I think, offered to make me one of his homemade car theft deterrents. He would take a wooden board, hammer a lot of nails through the board, sit it on the driver’s seat pointy side up, and put a thin blanket over it. I thanked him for the offer but declined, not sure if the system would deter a thief or just make them mad enough to smash up the car.

   One block over from my two bedroom walk-up was the 15th Street Armory, an enormous red brick building that I had never seen anyone enter or exit from. It seemed only to have one door, in the middle of the block, but there probably were some hidden ones I knew nothing about. It took up the entire north side of that block, while the south side had some two or three story row homes, one or two abandoned lots, and rarely many people.

   Fearless or perhaps unaccustomed to danger as I was, I liked to walk my dog up my block, turning left at the corner, and then walking back down past the armory. On this particular dusky evening Whimper was about three; the weather was warm; and I needed only a light jacket. He and I were out making our early evening rounds. His lush black and white tail was curled up and stretched out behind him as it always was when he was happy. We had gone up our block, made the turn onto Eighth Avenue and had just turned left toward the Armory. The street was completely deserted. Not a soul was sitting on a stoop of any of the asbestos-shingled row homes. I should say more properly that it was deserted of people. More than halfway up the block trotting aggressively toward us was a ninety-pound German Shepherd all by himself.

   My stomach tightened in fear and my breathing quickened. Whimper, despite his name, was not a dog who backed down, but he was only fifty pounds. I held onto his leash, blood rushing into my shoulder muscles, my jaw set, gripping the green canvas loop tightly in my right hand. Then the strangest thing happened. The brawny police dog had gotten within about fifteen feet, menace written in the pulling back of his lips, when out of my throat came the deepest, loudest, most menacing growl a skinny, five foot seven Jewish guy from Long Island could muster. Even stranger, the German Shepherd stopped its approach. His eyes staring at his target, he seemed to assess his chances, perhaps confused by a growling human, turned, and trotted rapidly away from us, leaving us alone.

   Even remembering this incident twenty-five years later my stomach tightens and my heart quickens. I still want to know where that growl come from. I know it came out of my chest and throat. I know I had never had a confrontation up to that point in my life in which I had growled or done anything that feral, that primitive. I had not even known that I was capable of any such thing. Was it the effect of Brooklyn, secretly toughening me up? Were all those wins at arm wrestling in junior high really some indication of untapped inner fortitude? What I usually think is that it was courage roaring it’s way out of me, and giving me hope that it’s there if I ever need to find it again.

Reviews

[Tessa]

I agree with the other comments, first paragrah can be scrapped, and with some more descriptive prose this could be a really engaging piece. Also introduce your dog a little earlier in a sentence of two so we can empathise with him a little more. Maybe shorter sentence with the scene of the german shepered to heighten the tension. Overall I found this a very interesting story. :)

[Gandré]

David, I was enjoying this story very much. I love New York City and your story brought it near to me.....Offering a genuine declaration without confines, you are a fantastic narrator. thank you for sending this to me.

[Otto L.n. Pipgras]

natural instinct, reserved courage, something I think most of us can probably still muster...great great story, David...the writing was crisp and moving. The detail was encapsulating and not overdone. In fact just when I was saying to myself, what happened to the dog, there you are walking him....really carries you right through your old neighborhood. enjoyed this one.

and Whimper looks to be about ready to say something in the picture....thanks for sharing

[Cari Lynn Vaughn]

Your descriptions are dead on and full of detail. Very vivid and interesting piece.

[[untitled]]

This is exactly what I mean by standing up and saying "NO"- having that instinct to protect yourself without a moments notice! Isn't it strange how we manage to conjure the strength within us when we least expect it?? I loved your story- sorry about being a little late with the review...

[Shannon K.]

I liked this story. A growling human, eh? I liked it. A very original piece, which I think everyone, in a sense, can relate to. I think pretty much everyone has had a "where did that come from?" moment.
Great job, and the descriptions were excellent.
S.k.

[Ebby]

This is a refreshing piece to read, so different from what I was expecting. It kept me guessing, expecting a faithful dog-hero character to appear.
I once lifted the back of a mini so my sister could get her foot out from under the wheel. I was eight! Strength from desperation, it's animal, as you were in this piece.
Thank you for posting it for us to read, David. Kind regards.

[Kevin Connolly]

"Not even a stray dog let alone a stray bullet"

This is a story that was simply waiting to be written, David.
To an outsider like me, New York always sounds like the sort of place you go to get stabbed, shot, mugged or gang-raped. I suspected that a great many people must sail through life without ever being accosted in any way (the way I did in Belfast while my neighbours were shooting one another every night, and I slept like a log). All it took was one growl and the danger was averted... it's a dog's life.
Excellent writing style, David.

[C. Harter Amos]

The descriptions are vivid and its interesting that you build up from this nice child who never had a threatening thing happen to him worse than his dog taken away, to the bad neighborhood, and then the confrontation with the German Shepherd. The growl coming from YOU was delightfully unexpected...The music made it an experience not just a read. Love the picture of Whimper as well. - Mimi.

[Randall Richard]

first paragraph is much, much better. love the details
Fearless or perhaps unaccustomed to danger as I was, I liked to walk my dog up my block, turning left at the corner, then walking back down past the armory. He was black and white, with incredibly thick, coarse, straight fur that shed like he was molting in April and October. This particular dusky evening he was three; the weather was warm; and I needed only a light jacket. His name was Whimper. Don�t ask. It really was a good name for him, though I hadn�t named him. The vet in Chicopee, whose name I don�t remember, had named him. He earned his moniker because � you guessed it � he always whimpered. It was just his way of talking.

you may want to move the description of wimper in this paragraph to the earlier description, the paragraph hwere you get the dog. this slows the story down just when it is picking up speed . i like the changes. this is really coming along nicely

[Barry S. Maltese]

I'm guessing no one will ever nickname you whimper. Nice going!
History has documented people giving more than they thought they could in the past. Ripping open car doors to save loved ones. Breaking down doors in burning buildings . . . growling savagely to save a dog named Whimper!
Great story. I like how it flowed. Although you spent too much time explain how you were not from Brooklyn - I am from Brooklyn, and it doesn't matter THAT much. LoL
Keep up the great work, my friend!