Happy Birthday

June 11, every day is an anniversary of something for someone. In my mind, today marks the 108th anniversay of the birth of my father. His mother went to Pensacola for the birth, staying with relatives, returned to StAndrews via SS Tarpon soon thereafter. Tarpon of Tarpon Dock fame

http://www.museumsinthesea.com/tarpon/history.htm

My first memory of Tarpon Dock is stopping at the Standard Oil filling station there early evening July 24, 1942 to get Walt's present for his third birthday, a puppy we loved all our growing up years. Walt got to name him, and he named him Happy Birthday. Happy we called him, as in "here, Happy" when we wanted him home. We were told he was a mix of collie and german shepherd. He was a large dog and no three kids ever had a better, more faithful or protective friend than Happy. My storybook is filled with memories of him.

Sleeping in the back yard in the sun, with our cat asleep on his back. 

Taking him to the annual summer dog show at Cove School. Two or three years running he easily won the blue ribbon for "Largest" until the summer another kid brought a large white dog about the same size. Knowing our Happy had taken the blue ribbon last year and the year before, the judge thought in fairness to award the other dog the blue, and Happy the red ribbon. I wasn't letting Happy take second place to anybody's dog, and as a child, it was my first fierce argument with an adult. The other kid was not happy, but we went home again with the blue. 

Happy was a fixture at Cove School those years, and I remember our terror when the city dogcatcher's truck, pickup size with a wire cage enclosing the bed, would show up and circle the block round the schoolyard. Once, it would have been when I was in 5th grade, schoolyear 1945-46, we saw the dogcatcher out the classroom window, and Miss Martin sent me out to get Happy and bring him inside. Miss Martin was a terror herself, but I saw a heart in her that day.

T