All of us were yelling, “Don’t run, don’t run, Craig.”
We knew running from a threatening dog only encourages the dog. Craig heard us, stopped and turned to fight. He had a stick in his hand but Big Red outweighed Craig. There Craig was, standing his ground, Big Red growling and charging. When he had just about gotten to Craig he jumped resembling a lion pouncing on a gazelle. It was a truly vicious scene, Big Red was in flight and coming down on Craig. While this was going on, Smoky had been watching from around the side of Uncle Bub’s garage, but Big Red hadn’t noticed Smoky. Smoky however had been watching Big Red the whole time. While Big Red was charging Craig, Smoky was charging Big Red. Just at the point that Big Red was in flight over Craig, Smoky hit Big Red with his teeth right at the rib cage just behind Big Red’s right front leg. Man alive, what a fight! Big Red was one startled dog. It didn’t last very long, Smoky cleaned his clock, kicked his rear end proper. Big Red took off towards his home, yippen’ and cryin’, with Smoky hot on his tail all the way.
Smoky came back to us and as you would guess the five of us tackled that dog, hug’n him and telling him, “Thanks Smoky, good dog Smoky!”
Smoky was beaming with pride. We loved that dog, everyone did. |
Did you come to tell me you quit?
He took the cigarette from his mouth and looked at me and said, “Did you come to tell me you quit?” This question surprised me and I replied, “No Sir.” He then said, “When you come to tell me you quit, then that’s when I’ll be ashamed of you!”
Football
We were practicing his extra point kick when he said, “It’s not enough to have talent. You have to work at it. If you want to be really good you have to show up an hour early to start your practice, and then stay an hour after the others have gone home to work on fundamentals, run and push yourself. That’s how you get to be good!”
He wasn’t trying to be better than anyone else. He was trying to be better than himself.
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