OUR PETS
They come along,
and then they go.
They come along,
and then they go.
They come along,
and then you go.
For years I have loved driving through a “well to do” neighborhood. There are many nice, old homes and there are streets which travel along the edge of a small lake. On a single morning, I have seen a hundred ducks, most floating end to end in a crisp October morning. I have seen the lake, frozen over with snow on the ground. And, not too long afterwards, I have seen the lake almost completely drained, mostly mud, with just a very narrow channel of water flowing from it’s high end, and on down to the dam at the low end. There are two Little Community Libraries, but only one of them that I drive by quite often.
And then there was a large old home, two storied, that had a couple of full-sized dog statues standing out, in the front yard, next to the short, crescent shaped drive way. As I passed by, I could look past the house and see the lake, behind the home. For years, I drove by this house and looked at the two dog statues, one white and one black, standing faithfully in place. The statues had not been put out front at the same time, and so I had come to believe that each had been erected as a memorial to a long loved pet that had gone beyond the veil. And, after years, and years, one day I saw the statues had been removed, and the home began to look unlived in. Then the thought came to me. Our pets come into our lives. We love them, but eventually they die. At some point we usually acquire another pet, we love them in a different way, but they die also. Maybe we put up a reminder of this beloved pet. But, if we live long enough, it is us that die, and the pet lives on. At least for a while.
Our pets normally do not erect life-like likenesses of us, in our memory.
[NOTE 05/04/24]: I just started watching a movie, “The Judge,” and a lawyer’s mother has just died and he has returned to Carlinville, IN to attend her funeral. So, he is driving through town, and he’s turning to cross a small bridge across a small river, and I start to see a few things, like a footbridge, running “catty cornered” to the street & bridge. But, there is enough here for me to start asking myself if I have ever watched this movie before. I’m almost positive that I had not seen this movie, but that got me to Google Maps searching on Carlinville, IN. So, I pull up the map and almost immediately note that there is no river going through this small town. Then I google for filming locations for “The Judge,” and see that it was filmed in Shelburne Falls, MA. I don’t recall the name, but then I go to Google Maps for Shelburne Falls. And, there is the diagonal foot bridge crossing the river, and as I use Street View and cross the automobile bridge, I see familiar filming locations. I’ve looked at this town before, on Google Maps, but, not for this movie. I then google for other things that have been filmed in Shelburne Falls, MA. And surprisingly, to me, there are about eight different other movies or shows, one of them being Dexter. And, I watched several episodes of Dexter, and that is where I first became acquainted with Shelburne Falls. Without looking back at Dexter, I recall that there was a cafe, just across the bridge, that apparently was not an actual cafe.
This is one of the recent recognitions that I have come across where I’ve come to know a place through Google Maps / Street View and then later, recognize the place in some other realm. A Harry Bosch location from one of his novels, and then a video clip of an actual police chase where the person fleeing runs into a fountain in the middle of a traffic circle and damages it. Or, the Vincent Thomas Bridge near the Port of LA. I was watching a Dodge car commercial and recognized the bridge they were crossing. And, later in the commercial the cars are racing past a Port of Los Angeles Warehouse #1. I look and this warehouse is at the entrance of the Port.
And the first instance I recall is from Connelly’s description of the Hightower Apartments. I recalled seeing an old private detective movie from years ago, and the fictional detective lived at the Hightower Apartments, but I didn’t recall that name. What I did recall was the iconic elevator tower which was probably about 3 or 4 stories high, from ground (where there were rows of small garages on each side of the street). In Connelly’s book one of these small garages was used to house a victim’s, a young woman’s, car. *I went back and found the movie was “The Long Goodbye” from 1973, which originally was a Raymond Chandler novel about the fictional detective, Phillip Marlowe, and in the movie Marlowe is played by Elliott Gould. **There are many shots of the tower, elevator and the apartments both interior and exterior, and even a short clip of a car driving past some of the small garages, seen from above in Marlowe’s apartment. [end NOTE]
Bill Gibson, II 