I Remember Buster Brown

 

I’ve been sick this past week and you know how you get when you’re sick. Old memories keep floating up and you try to remember names, places and dates. Weird out of the ordinary stuff. One of the subjects that came to mind recently was this dog that we had growing up. I emailed my brothers to ask about any memories they had regarding Buster. My youngest brother couldn’t remember a thing but my brother that is 3 years old than my youngest sibling (Les) did recall a few incidents. And so that is what I intend to write about today.

Les couldn’t remember where we got Buster but the more I thought about it, the more I was convinced we had him in the brown house we lived at on 22^nd street before my folks split up. Les and I were the two kids who first went to live with dad and grandpa while the other two came later.  I’m pretty sure that I remember Buster coming with us and how happy I was about that.

It's one of those subjects you don’t think to ask your folks about when they’re alive and then you realize, any memories that are going to surface will have to be with yourself and your brothers and sister. I only have two pictures of Buster and I’m lucky to have those. I wish I knew what kind of breed he was but I’ll never know for sure. I did go on google photos to look around and see what dogs I could find that kind of looked like him. I’ll attach those that came the closest along with the two photos I have. One shows my cousin Linda and a girlfriend sitting on the porch at the Kuhn St. house. Buster sits out front by the garbage can but you can’t see him that well. The other was taken one Sunday morning in my aunt and uncles’ front yard as the six of us waited for the Methodist Church bus to pick us up for Sunday school. The minister drove it now and again (I think) but I also recall Raleigh Haynes.

Two memories I have of Buster of the time he bit me. It was Halloween and I was dressed as a bum and had put coffee grinds on my face. I was going down the trail that connected my aunt and uncles house with grandpa’s house and Buster apparently didn’t recognize me as he took out after me and nipped me on the ankle.

We never did discipline him very well as I vaguely remember him taking out after the Fuller Brush Man once. We seldom got salesman at our house which was off the main street of 19^th but the Fuller Brush man did come. Perhaps my grandma or my aunts used to order from him in the early days.

I also remember the day he died. He came in all chewed up after being in a dog fight. Les told me it was the West brothers who often visited the Potterf house down by the barn on the swamp road. They had two large dogs and Dad told us that Buster always thought he was bigger than he was and he wasn’t surprised that he met his doom that way. He came limping in and went to lay behind the kitchen wood stove where he slept. Dad buried him out near the blackberry bushes in our backyard. And I wrote a poem about him. Wish I still had that poem.

Les also remembers how Buster would go up by Del’s Grocery each day to await Les coming home from school from the Lincoln Building. I never knew this but Les said he was pretty sure the dog just got lonely and figured out the time of day Les would arrive.  He also recalls that Uncle Jim was riding Jimmy’s bicycle down the sidewalk on the side of our house and that Buster bit his ankle.  Jim always kind of a hothead and he took out after Buster with a stick. Les got Buster into the house where he ran under a bed to escape. Les kept yelling at Jim telling him  “YOU RAN OVER HIS TAIL! THAT’S WHY HE BIT YOU!”  Thankfully, he never did find Buster’s hiding place.

Les also recalled the time Buster came home crying because he’d tangled with a skunk. Dad penned him up in the barn and got out this large tub to clean him up. Les said that Buster went everywhere with him when he was on his bike, even trailing along on his paper route.

We had two other dogs after Buster. A black mutt we called Rebel and a white dog named Mickey. Les doesn’t remember them as much as he was a teenager by then and doing his own thing. I found pictures of these two dogs so will attach here. I think we called him Buster Brown after a favorite Saturday kid’s show we loved although the dog on there was actually called Tige.

Google photos that sorta look like Buster.

The only two photos I have of my childhood pet......

 

Two dogs we had after Buster....  Les with Rebel and Dana and Les with Rebel near the Swamp Road. Now that I look at that dog with Les I'm thinking he might have been a neighbor's dog

Dana with Mickey when my oldest daughter was born in 1964