Rover. Barry Blackstone

the breath of all mankind.” (Job 12:7, 9-10)

      In my boyhood I never looked to Rover to teach me anything, if anything I tried to teach him a few dog tricks. Despite the fact my father pointed out this precept in Job in my youth, it has not been until adulthood that I have applied this principle to Eddie, my cat. It is now time to ask Rover again what instruction he was trying to share with me in the encounters and experiences we share in the boyhood of my youth!

      BLACK

      It is a dark, black day on the coast of Maine. It is Friday, a writing day for me. As a late fall storm blackens the sky outside my office at the Emmanuel Baptist Church of Ellsworth, Maine, I am pondering again my boyhood of the 1950’s and 1960’s. I’ve written in the past of my favorite color (green), and though black is not one of my favorites or so I thought; it is a color that brings back many a fond memory. I would like to share a few of the ‘black’ imagines I still have in the color corner of my cranial!

      Black (his “ . . . visage is blacker than a coal . . . ”—Lamentations 4:8) was the color of my favorite dog. Rover was his name. A mixture of collie and German/shepherd, Rover was a midnight black. I have written of him often in my memories (I have compiled nearly 900 boyhood memories in a collection I call “Blackstone Homestead Memories”), but have thought of him more often in the last month than for a long time. My wife and I have been dog sitting a black cocker spaniel of some friends of ours as they have been vacationing in Florida. ‘Nicky’ is a nice dog, but she is no Rover. Rover was an once-in-a-lifetime dog. Maybe, it was because he was my first and only boyhood dog worth remembering, so over the years Rover has been exalted into the Dog’s Hall of Fame, at least in my mind. We were walking ‘Nicky’ the other night and I said to my wife, Coleen, “Rover never had a leash.” Rover was a free spirit, and so was I. As I ponder Rover this morning with my cat Eddie sleeping on a bookshelf in front of my desk it hit me; that the reason Eddie is so dear to me is the fact he has the spirit of Rover: loyal and free and he even has a little of Rover’s black on his back!

      Black was the color of the cows on the farm. We had a pure Holstein herd and the dominate colors of these creatures are black/white. I can still see in my mind’s eye between thirty and forty black and white cows grazing in a pasture of spring green. The black color of these animals caused them to stand out whether in the brown of fall or the white of winter just like Rover. The cows were a lot of work, but ever since the farm shut down its dairy, I have missed seeing this Blackstone black in the meadows with Rover.

      Black was my father’s favorite color, or so I thought. In my early childhood I don’t remember we ever having a car that wasn’t black. Most of the pictures of my sister Sylvia and me as infants were taken near a black car. Whether or not black was Dad’s favorite color, you’ll have to ask him in heaven for he passed into glory during the writing of this book, as for me I only remember black as his color. What I also seemingly remember is the time the color of our car changed. It was the mid-sixties and it was time for a new car. I think Dad wanted another black car, but mother insisted on a red car. How strange it seemed to me then, when the car dealer drove into the potato field behind the tool shed and said, “Here is your new car!” It was red on the outside, but if my memory serves me correctly it was black on the inside, the color of Rover!

      Black was also the color of the letters on the potato barrels. Each fall the Blackstone homestead would erupt in a fury of activity. The annual potato harvest was upon us, and there was much preparation. One of the things I remember doing was stenciling the letters B-L-A-C-K-S-T-O-N-E on the sides of all our barrels. Some only had to be redone, but the new barrels all had to have those letters painted on their side. For me, those black letters were a source of pride. And as I can see from this article, black was really and still is a favorite color of mine, a Blackstone black as seen in the fur of a dog! Jesus is recorded as saying in His famous sermon: “Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black.” (Matthew 5:36)

      YESTERMORN

      A ten-year old boy stood silently gazing out a second story window to the road that ran through the Sugar Woods (the forest that separates the two halves of the Blackstone homestead). A herd of black and white cows were grazing lazily in the pasture just cross the barnyard. But neither the path nor the pasture caught the boy’s eye that particular morning; he merely stood and stared ahead, seeing with his mind rather than his eye the stream that lay on the other side of the ridge. He had climbed the flight of stairs in the middle of the rambling farmhouse to his corner bedroom to change his cloths for hiking. As he stared out the window in introspection, his mind returned to the stream that ran through his hometown of Perham, Maine, especially the section which flowed through Bragdon’s (next door neighbors of the Blackstones since 1861) back field. It was a favorite place, even though it was a two mile walk one way that is if he stayed to the main road. If he cut across the back field and through the woods, it was a lot shorter. It was a beautiful day for a hike, and with his barn chores done, he would go!

      He stood and stared a few more moments, then turned and left his room. He quietly descended the stairs until he reached the main floor of the old house his grandfather had bought for his parents in the late 1940’s. The boy left the house through the front door that opened to a huge porch that ran the entire length of the home. Climbing down the porch steps, the wanderer headed down the grassy incline that lead to the path which would take him to the Russell Place (a series of fields bought with the house and barn from a family called Russell). By the time he made the pasture his favorite boyhood friend, a dog called Rover joined him. Even as they left the yard, he could hear the distant sounds of the forest that lay between him and his special brook. As they neared the woods behind his father’s cow barn, the sounds of nature grew louder and louder. On many a day he had played with his Blackstone cousins and the McDougal boys (neighbors) in the same forest lane, but today he wanted to be alone with his dog on this adventure to Salmon Brook. For on this day of contemplation, the lad wanted only the voices of field and forest, stream and sparrow and his best friend to interrupt his thoughts.

      Twenty minutes later the boy and dog were crossing the lower end of the pasture just below the milking shed (where the Blackstone milked their cows in the summer). They made their way up the small hill to an orchard he had often hunted partridge in, just behind the Dickinson Homestead. He and his cousins had often taken the same route checking the fence line, or cutting the tall grass that often shorted out the electric fence that keep the Holstein herd in the pasture. But today, they bypassed the pasture and orchard in favor of the beckoning brook on the other side of the woods. Turning right, they walked the length of a hay field owned by the Bragdon’s, before once again entering the woods by way of a field road that lead down to the stream. It seemed whenever his mind turned serious; Rover would focus him back to the sound of the stream before him.

      With the pleasant memory of a stream and a dog still fresh in my mind, I end these thoughts of a yestermorn with this Biblical challenge: “The memory of the just is blessed . . . ” (Proverbs 10:7) Is there a more precious asset than a good memory? As I compile this series of articles in which my boyhood dog Rover is at the heart of each chapter, I am battling the reality that my father has lost most of his mind with dementia. As he nears 93, his mind is just about gone (and his life left him on February 7, 2017), but it amazes me just how many memories he had left. That is why I write, lest I forget these precious memories with my dog Rover.

      WONDER

      In the advancements of mankind, we have lost something irreplaceable: the wonder of life. With the urbanization of the city swallowing up the utopia of the country, we have lost the simple awe and quiet inspiration that comes from walking along a brook with a dog, working in a barnyard beside a Rover, and whistling with a bird as your ‘best friend’ barks in unison. With our over dependence on technology, we have lost the excitement that comes from living on a farm and in a field, on a hill and in a hollow (my boyhood home was located in a hollow). Today most people are surrounded with traffic not trees, streets not streams. Their only stimulation comes from the manipulative media who glorifies the glitter and glamour of urban life verses country life. Malls have replaced meadows, neon lights have replaced night lights, and the telescope has been replaced by the television. Unless