Sandy owned the house next door. Sandy wasn’t what us kids called him, but it was his “real” nickname. He used to be a nice, friendly guy when we were little kids, but he grew mean and nasty as we grew older, and he’d keep our balls if they Accidentally went in his yard, or yell at us if we Accidentally stepped on his grass, and stuff like that. I think maybe the bad blood started one Spring when he convinced my brother to bury a bunch of cigarette butts in our garden. My brother was sorely disappointed when the promised Cigarette Tree failed to sprout, and decided to even the score by intentionally irritating Sandy in various ways. At least that’s my belief and best recall of events, but my brother swore it was all an Accident. Whatever, it eventually led to a backyard shouting match between Sandy and my dad, where Sandy challenged my dad to step out in the alley and see what a real man looked like, and my dad asked, “Why? Who’s going to be there?” We thought that was hilarious.
After that things went downhill.
By the time we brought a puppy home from my uncle’s farm in Simms, Sandy hated us roundly, and we hated him squarely, and one school of thought held that naming the puppy Sandy would be capital fun. Sadly, or perhaps sagely, a more senior class thought different, and a call went out for alternatives. In a master stroke of twelve-year-old subtlety and genius, the dog was christened Ziegfried, a sort of roundabout, stealthy way of mocking Sandy, who had a German war bride wife. No one but my brother and I ever knew why the dog had that name. Least of all the dog.
Up the street, however, there were no such compunctions regarding dogs named for neighbors, and Roland the dog frolicked and gamboled in the full light of recognition, directly across the street from his namesake, Roland B. Roland the dog lived at my friend’s house, but he actually belonged to my friend’s big brother, who had named him for the guy across the street. The brother, however, was away at college in Missoula, so my friend was responsible for the dog’s care. Roland was a pretty fierce watchdog and a classic neighborhood dog back when neighborhoods had free-roaming classic neighborhood dogs with names like Duke and Bingo and Zeus, and he growled at anyone who came to the door, unless he knew you and liked you, but sometimes Roland growled at my friend, too, and he knew me but he almost always growled at me anyhow. But Roland was a big dog, mostly German Shorthair, and since he was a big dog, he was always eating, too, and that was just the opening we needed. See, it was pretty common knowledge in those days that dogs liked you if you fed them, and dogs that liked you didn’t growl, so we fed Roland, a lot. He was always good for finishing off pizza crusts, or hot dogs that Accidentally fell on the patio, or the bottom part of ice cream cones that didn’t have any ice cream left in them, or sometimes even ABC gum for a joke (our joke, not his). Roland would eat anything, any time, anywhere, and Roland was world renowned for his eating abilities.
During that particular period in history I spent a lot of weekend nights over at my friend’s. Partly it was because the popularity of staying at my house had plummeted severely after my dad had sneaked downstairs one time to break up the traditional after dark sleepover sock fight, burst into the room, flipped on the light, and thundered “Hand over those confounded things!”, scaring us all half to death. (There’s a silver pig in every poke. Socks were known forever after as “confounded things”). Mostly, though, we stayed at my friend’s because his family had more of the amenities necessary for great sleepovers – cable TV, with a Salt Lake City channel that ran double Creature Features on weekend nights, a milkshake making machine, and a big covered patio out back to sleep on, or to sneak out from and run around the neighborhood in the middle of the night, or to have the girl from across the alley and her friend come over and make out on the lounge chairs. But best of all, at my friend’s house, there was always pizza on sleepover nights. When we were younger, my friend’s mom made it, but when we got older we did it ourselves, and took great pride in our originality, making liberal use of whatever looked good in the refrigerator. And my friend’s refrigerator always had interesting stuff.
One particular night had all the makings for a classic patio sleepover – a nice Summer night, plenty of ice cream for milkshakes, the green-boogie-spittin’ monster Reptilicus on the early Creature Feature, and “Wrestling Women vs. The Aztec Mummy” on the midnight show. We’d seen the monster before, and he did spit a nice stream of green boogies, but we’d never seen Wrestling Women, and we were psyched. And oh yeah – there was going to be pizza.
We rode our bikes up to Super Save for basic pizza ingredients, came back home and whipped up chocolate milkshakes, and began constructing the evening’s pizza. We were in hysterics, imagining what a movie with a title like “Wrestling Women vs. The Aztec Mummy” might possibly be about, one bizarre suggestion leading to another more bizarre, and lewd, and the pizza making got a little hysterical, too. We were pulling out all the stops this time, and everything we could find was going on top. We had to go for a taste worthy of Wrestling Women, and it was obvious pepperoni wouldn’t cut it alone. Every spice in the rack, on. Homeground red pepper flakes, on. Tabasco sauce, on. Jalapeno peppers, on. Cocktail onions, on. Plus all the more traditional topping type items we could find. We had ourselves a Creation. We put it in the oven to bake, and plopped down in front of the green-boogie-spitter movie, anticipating the taste sensation to come and, of course, crown jewel of the night, Wrestling Women.
The pizza was nominally done about 11:00 and we took it out to cool. We got our first taste about 11:15. We both felt it would probably be MUCH better the next day when it had cooled all the way down, so we put the pan in the refrigerator. Meanwhile, we had a big slice each to finish, and were still nibbling away when my friend’s mom came in at midnight and told us to go to bed. We begged and we whined, but she put her foot down. No Wrestling Women! We were totally dejected, our night was ruined, and whatever appeal the pizza still held evaporated in its entirety, even though the pizza slices themselves had not. Throwing out perfectly good pizza slices was, of course, out of the question, so naturally, there was only one thing left we could do.
Out on the patio we attempted to entice Roland into finishing our slices. He took a couple of sniffs, held his head funny, kind of walked around sideways, and laid down without touching the pizza. Laid down, what is more, about as far from the pizza as he could get. We looked at each other in astonishment, and burst into laughter. We had finally found something Roland Would Not Eat, and the night wasn’t a total loss after all. It was not, however, a particularly restful night for those who had actually eaten some of the pizza. Roland, however, slept soundly.
When we got up the next morning, the pizza was in the trash. Seems my friend’s dad had tried a piece and pronounced it inedible, so his mom had thrown it out.
Neither of us have ever forgiven my friend’s mom. They just don’t show Wrestling Women on TV all that often.
Author/Copyright: Tiger, of tigerwhip.com fame Date written: 05/05/1994