Pet Prose: Dallas

“He’d been born in the wrong decade. In fact, in the wrong century. Nothing would have pleased him more than hitching rides in box cars, sitting around smoky campfires with the hobos, eating beans from a tin cup.

These days, it was all SUVs and mini vans, earbuds firmly slammed into the ears of every rider, or the same movies they saw at home playing on a screen overlooking the back seats to anesthetize the droolers and the whiners.

Still, when no one was watching, he let his eyes go beyond the suburban streets with their sameness, the city blocks with their traffic and fumes, and imagined those other places. The wide open prairies. The rolling farmlands. The rugged terrain at the feet of mountains. That land was his land. Was it still there?”

Dallas, from his work in progress about a young lad seeking adventure in modern America.

I take photos. I write. My volunteer job is taking photos of rescued dogs and cats transported by the rescue group whose records I manage. Since working and volunteering don’t leave me a lot of time to write, I’m spending 2017 borrowing from what these dogs and cats are writing. They said it’s okay.