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A rasher of visitors
Published: 4/7/2012 10:00 AM
Last Modified: 4/6/2012 5:35 PM


Bacon. Do we, really, need to say more?

Robert Frost once wrote, “Good fences make good neighbors.” Balderdash. You need bacon.

The first knock on the front door came at about 6:45, as I was about one-third of the way through making what is possibly my wife’s favorite dish.

I moved the pan off the heat and went to answer it. It was UPS delivery man, bearing us a small gift – which we had ordered and for which we had paid good money, but still we tend to think of any package that arrives on our doorstep as “a gift.”

“Man, you got it smelling good in there!” the fellow enthused, as I opened the door and allowed the scent of onions sweating in bacon fat to escape.

“Thanks,” I said, as I signed for the package.

“Been a long day,” he said, still holding on to the package, an expectant look in his eye.

“And it’s going to be a while before dinner’s done,” I said.

The man sighed, then handed over the box. “Sure does smell good,” he said. “You aren’t expecting any more parcels tonight, are you?”

Once the man in brown was back on his way, I returned to the kitchen and continued preparations.

When everything was ready, and my wife and I had started eating, we were interrupted again by a knock on the door. Well, not a knock, per se – more like a thump. Followed by a yip.

There on the porch was a small black dog, looking up expectantly at me, as if awaiting an invitation to dine.

“What does it want?” my wife asked.

“In, I think.”

The dog definitely wanted to come in the house, but it wasn’t too terribly certain it wanted to share the space with us. We hadn’t seen this dog around the neighborhood before, and it took us a few minutes to get it to trust us enough to allow us to check its tag. We learned that the dog’s name was Mandy, that she did indeed live in the neighborhood and there was a phone number to call in times such as these. Unfortunately, when we called, the response was an answering machine.

Mandy grew friendlier as the evening progressed. She would allow my wife to pick her up. She would let me pet her, but she seemed more interested in sniffing at the cuffs of my sleeves and the front of my shirt. Each time she did that, she would make for the front door and let a few earnest barks, as if commanding me to let her in.

“It’s the bacon,” my wife said. “She’s smelling the bacon on you.” She turned to Mandy. “Bacon?” Mandy responded with an enthusiastic bark.

My wife was well into plans as to making Mandy a more or less permanent houseguest – a topic of discussion that seem to interest Mandy greatly because it meant getting into the house – when we heard someone calling “Mandy! Mandy! Here, girl!”

That’s how we met Georgia, who lives around the corner, and learned about how Mandy wasn’t the type to get out, that she was a shelter dog Georgia had rescued nine years ago and was absolutely the best pet she’d ever had.

We happily oversaw their reunion, and went back inside to finish dinner. Fifteen minutes later, Mandy was back on our porch, barking and scratching at the door.

At least it wasn’t the UPS driver. I’m too used to cooking for two people for there to be leftovers.



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ARTS

James D. Watts Jr. has lived in Oklahoma for most his life, even though he still has people saying to him, "Don't sound like you're from around these parts." A University of Oklahoma Phi Beta Kappa graduate, Watts has received the Governor Arts Award, Harwelden Award and the National Conference of Christians and Jews Beth Macklin Award for his writing. Before coming to the Tulsa World, Watts worked for the Tulsa Tribune.

Contact him at (918) 581-8478.

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