Donut Dog

  
When my dad was keeper on Green Island seems to me we had a lot of company. In the winters it would be duck hunters, at least that’s the guise they traveled under; looking back I think probably the main attraction was my sisters and my moms cooking but not necessarily in that order. One of the duck hunters was successful in that he courted and won the hand of my eldest sister, Irene who became the mother of our most excellent writer of prose and verse; Jimmy Doug.

In the summers we had company from all over. You just never knew would show up next. A lot of girl cousins visiting with my sisters, + Susie L., Phyllis M., Erma F., the list could go on and on. Aunts and uncles and sometimes self-invited guests from who knew where. All were welcome at the light and at the groaning board that was the kitchen table and sat in the southern end of the lighthouse kitchen; I’m here to tell you that there were some fabulous meals served up on that old table! 

In order to exist on the lights in that era, the families on the lights (as all rural families hack then ) depended a lot on what they could garner from the land and sea. Enter the duck dog. He didn’t necessarily need to be a pedigree retriever, all that was required was that he “ bring ducks “ After he took over the light from Tremaine Cooke, my dad went through a gamut of duck dogs that didn’t measure up to his standards. He finally struck pay dirt with Rex, a Newfoundland/German Shepherd cross, acquired from his friend and fellow lightkeeper, Theodore O’Hara, who was keeper on Port Bickerton. For all you genealogy  buffs, this gentleman would be Sadie B’s maternal grandfather….but I digress.

Rex was a dog imbued with almost human intelligence. He was four years old when Theodore made father a present of this 120 lb. K9. Aside from his many attributes, Rex had an insatiable appetite for sweets. When mom would bake he would become so fixated on the operation that nothing could entice him to leave the scene of these pleasant smells, and he would sit and cry until all hope was gone of wresting one more cookie from the baker.

One day the mail arrive with a letter announcing the imminent arrival of my aunt Ethel who lived in the Boston States, and her two sons, then there was another missive announcing a soon to arrive group, from some other locale, so mom decided that she had better get with it and whomp up ‘ some sweet stuff ‘
When the day was done she had fried 10 dozen donuts; half sugared, half plain, about the same number of cinnamon rolls, half of which were glazed and half plain. Two large cans of filled cookies, one each of sugar and chocolate. The sugar cookies had chocolate filling while the chocolate cookies had mint filling.
Rex was beside himself; he watched all these goodies come out of the oven to be sugared, glazed or filled, with hardly a crumb coming his way, and it really broke him up to see the cookies go in their cans and the cinnamon rolls and donuts placed on large platters and put in the cupboard under the sideboard to cool down before being stored the next day.

As I stated earlier Rex was tres intelligent. He proved this the following night by opening the cupboard doors, which were fitted with sliding catches and zeroing in on the donut platter, which held the five dozen, that were sugared. The first thing to greet my parents the next morning was the yawning cupboard door and an almost empty sugared donut platter…..He had managed to eat fifty-nine of the sixty. Then he drank his water pan dry and went to sleep on his mat behind the kitchen stove.

How d’ ya like me now !?! Dad said to mom “ It’ s no use to hand out any punishment after the fact, because he couldn’t connect the scolding with the theft.” So dad took the last donut and tied it with a piece of ribbon round the dog’s neck. Rex wanted out then and after he attended to the necessities he went and laid down in the shade of the ‘ old ‘ lighthouse wall and drifted off to sleep.