I’ve finally done it. I’ve gone over the fence. Now I know how Dandy felt all those years ago.
Dandy was our Brittany spaniel when we lived in Schaumburg, back in the ‘70s and ‘80s. She was as well-trained as a dog could be, so when we left her in the yard, we knew that she would stay put.
Oh, the three-foot-tall chain link fence was no physical barrier to her. Not really. As a young, healthy hunting dog, she could have leaped it or scaled it with ease.
But through hours of patient work, we taught her that the fence was to be respected, if not as a physical limitation, then as a mental one. She was so well-mannered that she would lie down at the open gate with her feet at the entrance, whining to come out and join the kids on the other side. Only a magic word of summons from a human could break the power of the fence, and she would bound through the gate’s gap, all a-wiggle with glee.
But until the word was intoned, she would heed the powerful magic of the fence.
And then one winter the snow fell, and it kept falling. The wind blew it into great drifts until, in the southwest corner of the yard, the fence was buried utterly for a span of maybe twenty feet.
Because Dandy loved to play in the snow, we often turned her loose into the blanketed yard by herself, and this day was no exception. But when I looked out the window awhile later, she was nowhere to be seen.
Nothing but snow — and a stitch of footprints over the drift where the fence was buried.
She was easy enough to find at the end of the block by tracking her prints, and when I ordered her back home, she galloped willingly back to the yard. But when she got there, she circled the property until she came back to the very spot where she had left, even though she could have stepped over the fence at any other point where it rose mere inches above the top of the snow.
And the magic of the fence died for her on that day.
From that day forth, even when the snow had melted and the yard was green with grass, that 20-foot section of fence had lost its mojo for her. If you left the gate yawning wide open and she wanted to come out and join you, she would race to the back corner of the yard and scramble over the chain links at that spot. If you ordered her back into the yard, she would dash past the open gate to get to that rear corner of the yard, and she would climb back in.
Her training was ruined utterly. It was never fully restored, to the very end of her life.
And now, as I said at the outset, I too have gone over the fence. And I know how she felt.
You see, I have long been an avid reader of books, newspapers, and magazines. My training is deep — I am in heaven with my ink-stained fingers wrapped around a clump of papers awash with words.
Long ago, most of the world made the jump to electronic information, but not me. I refuse to watch the day’s news on TV or the Internet, or to tune in on the radio. Instead, I wade through two daily newspapers, two weekly magazines, and a couple of monthlies.
It’s the same with books. Never mind that the rest of the world has been comfortably Kindled and Nooked. I want the feel of paper in my hands, preferably with a hard-bound jacket holding it all together.
More than a year ago, somebody actually gave my wife and me a Nook as a gift. I went through the registration process and got it all set up to order whatever we wanted to read.
And then I put it on a shelf and forgot about it. Not on a bookshelf with all our real books — that would have been weird. It was on a dusty shelf all by itself, able but empty.
And then, late last night, I ambled through the house looking for something to read. The library was closed, the local bricks-and-mortar bookstore had long gone out of business, and I had already read every book in the house at least once.
A restless depression set in.
And then I seemed to hear a magic word of summons coming from a dusty shelf, calling me to come over the fence.
I picked up the Nook and typed in the name of Christopher Buckley, one of my favorite authors. I have read everything he has written — well, everything that the local library has on the shelves. I haven’t gone so far as to order one of his books from Amazon, because I never know what I’ll feel like reading next week when the package finally arrives.
But there on the screen it was — Buckley’s hilariously irreverent novel, “They Eat Puppies, Don’t They?” I pushed a button, and within minutes, with my legs draped over the arm of my favorite reading chair, I was off and away into Buckley’s latest new world.
I haven’t finished the book yet, but I can feel that the magic of the electronic fence is dead to me now. Oh, I’ll still get my paper-and-ink newspapers and magazines—that part of the fence is still strong. But a twenty-foot section of barrier in the southwest corner of my brain, the part that has stood between me and instant books, is drifted over and gone.
A year from now, you will be able to pick up my Nook, punch the “My Library” button, and follow my tracks to all the wonderful worlds I have scampered.
And in the meantime, I am all a-wiggle with glee.
Author, musician and storyteller TR Kerth is a retired teacher who has lived in Sun City Huntley since 2003. Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com. Can’t wait for your next visit to Planet Kerth? Then get TR’s book, “Revenge of the Sardines,” available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online book distributors.
