Summertime is the ideal time to live in rural Alcorn County, Mississippi. The good country folks around
here love their gardens, and the old timers can be seen early mornings tending their gardens with their
'maters and 'taters and okry and squash. There are purple-hulled peas and corn, radishes and lettuce and
butterbeans. In addition to our apple trees and fig trees, pear trees are a cottage industry in Alcorn County.
Poke salad grows wild, and chickens, goats, cows and pigs proliferate.
I have tried my hand a time or two at gardening. I’m not bad, but proper vegetable gardening requires time,
and time is something I do not have a lot of. So, I usually buy my stuff at the local farmer’s market where
one can find all manner of local fruits and vegetables, or I may resort to my favorite method: stop and chat
with some of the local farmers and hope that they offer me some of their harvest for free. I have learned
one thing, and that is that country folk are proud of their garden vegetables and fruit trees and are only too
willing to share. So, I take advantage. Lots of folks around here are very willing to give of their harvest,
and it is considered rude not to accept.
With my schedule I can only go to town once or twice a month to run errands. There are several routes to
town, and each time I go I try to take a different way. It was on one of these errand runs that I first saw the
white dog. She was about the size of a large Labrador retriever, but she was not a retriever. I don't know
what she was, but I saw her walking along a country road, head hanging low, looking lost and forlorn,
homeless and abandoned. I rescue animals, so of course, I had to stop. She came to me warily but with tail
wagging. She had a collar but no tag. I knew I couldn't leave her so I prepared to load her into my car. I
would take her to the Corinth Alcorn County Human Society animal shelter, and there she would be properly
looked after.
"That's my grandson's dog!" I looked around and there in an adjacent yard was an elderly lady working in
her garden. I walked over and after a short conversation assured myself that she knew the dog. I wasn't
going to leave the poor thing abandoned, but if she belonged to someone nearby then I would be on my
way. "Yea, that's my grandson's dog. He lives just up the road a piece."
"Nice garden you have. Do you work it by yourself?" I asked. Yes, she responded, then she asked if I'd like
to take home some 'maters or okry. "Well, I don't know, I'm sure you could use all you have there."
Oh, shoot," she said. "I got more'n I could ever eat. We give it all away, or it will all spoil. Go ahead and
take what you want."
"Well, I guess I'll take a couple tomatoes." She helped me load up a plastic shopping bag of ‘maters and
okry, and I was on my way.
A couple weeks later I went to town a different route. Along the road I noticed a dog, and, what's this? The
same dog? I was on a different road, and pulled beside the dog to have a look. It was the same dog, all
right. I got out of my car and checked out the collar. Same dog for sure. Then I looked around. There was
a farmer and his wife working their garden nearby and I yelled out to them, "Do ya'll know this dog?"
"Eh? What's that? Oh, yea. That's our niece's dog." I walked over to where they were. We talked for a
while, and they assured me that the dog belonged to their niece who lived just down the road. Funny, I
thought. That's the same dog, but their story is different from the old lady's. Before I left I had some nice
squash and some good ears of corn.
A month later I was down another road when I saw the same dog! It is hard to believe, but I was seeing the
same dog as the two times before. Of course, none of the locations were more than a couple miles from
each other, but they were all either on different roads or different sections of the same road. The story was
similar in this case, only the dog belonged to someone's sister who lived farther down the original road
than the spot where the first old lady had said her grandson lived. Satisfied that the dog did actually
belong to someone, I left the dog alone. This time I left with some pears and some peaches.
I continued to see the white dog occasionally while on my excursions away from home. There was another
time that I was traveling down the same road as the first time when I saw the white dog, and this time I was
driving at the opposite end of where I had first seen her. A little girl was playing in the front yard of a house
nearby, and I stopped and asked if she knew the dog. She said she did and that the dog belonged to her
neighbor. The little girl's mother exited the house and I asked again about the dog. "Belongs to the man
next door, but we feed her sometimes, so I guess she sorta belongs to both of us." I noticed that they had
a nice garden. I told her I was just concerned about the dog, and oh by the way, that's a nice garden you
have there.
Again I heard those magical words: "Would you like some peas? We got corn and tomatoes, too." I was
glad to receive the fruit and vegetables.
As I left the lady and her little girl I wondered to myself about the white dog. The thought finally settled
itself into my mind: All that white dog did was wander these rural roads near where I live, mooching off of
people, none of whom actually owned the dog, but all of whom felt a proprietary interest in her. What a
scalawag that dog is! I said to myself. She is nothing but a deadbeat -- a regular vagabond! I shook my
head, amazed that a dog had figured out if she wandered up and down the old country roads she could
always rely on "mooching" a free meal here and there among these honest, hard-working country farmers.
What a freeloader!
Then as I was driving along with my bounty, proud of myself at being slick enough to have figured out how
to get free food from the bountiful harvest of others, the thought occurred to me that that old cur, the old
vagabond mutt ..., that old freeloading mooch just might be thinking the very same thing about me.
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