FANNY/Memoir interludes
By
Gerry Niskern
I remember going to my Grandma’s house on Saturday just in time to see some of my uncles piling into a car, with their hunting rifles. “Someone stole Fanny and they are going to get her back”, one of my cousins said. “They have an idea of a couple of places where she might be.”
I was around six or so, but I recall thinking, “If they are not going hunting, why do they need their guns?”
Fanny was a hunting hound. My Uncle Joe brought her home when she was a puppy, but little did he realize that she was a “scent” hound and would grow into a prize hunting dog. She wasn’t real big, probably part Beagle, with white, brown and black fur. Her ears were long and no matter how many times they were pulled by the babies in the family she never seemed to mind. She loved the kids, but everyone knew her heart belonged to Joe.
Joe and my other uncles took her hunting often and she was borrowed frequently by friends because of her keen sense of smell. She was fast and agile and a champion at flushing out game. Joe always bragged that she was the best hunting dog in Marshall County. Fanny had been stolen more than once, but the men always had an idea where to look. They always came back with her.
She was allowed to sleep in the house, which was unusual since my Grandma wasn’t crazy about animals in the house. Fanny stayed around the place except when she trotted down to the high school to wait for Joe after football practice. After Uncle Joe started working at the coal mine she was right there waiting to “bring” him home when his shift was over. Then when Joe joined the navy right after Pearl Harbor she began her long wait for him to come home.
Joe was a gunner on a destroyer. His ship was in the Atlantic campaign and without any leave home, the destroyer was diverted to the Pacific Theater. Joe was gone for over three years. Of course, Fanny went hunting with anyone who wanted her, but we knew she was waiting for Joe.
Then, one beautiful fall Sunday afternoon in l945, the war was finally over and our big family was down at Grandma’s sitting on the benches and swings under the grape arbor. Fanny was playing with one of the kids. The state highway ran past Grandma’s house and there was never much traffic but on that day a large Anheuser-Buschbeer truck sped by and Fanny shot out of the yard like a rocket and was in the arm’s of the hitch hiker before the trucker could barely get stopped two whole blocks away.
Joe came walking up with his sea bag on his shoulder and Fanny in his arms.