Grandma read me an excerpt of one of her father's poems today, and I liked it a lot. The whole poem is called "George Dog," but I liked the last third the best. We call it "A Hopeless Place to Pee" after its most memorable line:

...
He likes to bark in the roaring wind
when the snow filled fury of March storm swells
but better, he likes a bacon rind
and the savory blend of the kitchen smells

...

He likes a jaunt in a drifted grove,
But better, he likes it here by the stove.

George and I too. But I have to go
and chambermaid the stock,
And he has to circle out in the snow,
and tilt his leg at a rock.

A futile fate, for cows don't pay
when milk is a penny a pound,
And the rock he enriches day by day
Will never sprout from the ground.

Now we don't know, and more and more,
It's a puzzle to George and me,
A futile fate, a useless chore,
and a hopeless place to pee.

But it makes me feel way down within,
My dog and I are somewhat akin.


* * *

Great-grandfather Bill McCaffery was what his wife fondly called a "no-good farmer," meaning he wasn't well suited to it. He preferred to write poetry under the pen name Coyote Bill, and to ramble in the woods with his dogs or on his own.

When the cowshed burned down, they had to milk the cows outdoors twice a day, until a new shed could be built. It wasn't as hard as it sounds, since most of the herd were family pets at one time or another. They got rid of the worst ill-tempered cows, no matter how much milk they gave, because nobody would volunteer to milk them.

When he finally built that shed again, it was only three feet from the next building. You never saw such a mess as a herd of cows makes going through three feet of space in single file.
(Ernie points out that once they've entered through that narrow space, though, they're much more willing to be penned up in stalls. Sort of sets the mood.)

I wouldn't be surprised if it was the junkpile, though. Grandma says their mother used to complain bitterly when the kids played in the junkpile. When Dad built the new shed in the new location, it neatly blocked the view of the junk pile from the kitchen window.

He was a no-good farmer, perhaps. Much more interested in the patterns of things than in the day-to-day ambitions of them.

But he wasn't, as his wife would have said, good-for-nothing. Good-for-nothing was the worst dismissal, reserved for tramps who disappeared after dinner when the chores were to be done, or useless scraps of leather too short to tie into a shoelace. Good-for-nothing was just what it says, useless.

No-good just meant you were out of your element on that one.

I think the closest relative we have today to Coyote Bill is probably our cousin Kieth, who stayed with Grandma and Grandpa a few years while he put himself through college. He got himself a job (Forestry?) that he liked so much, he kept on doing it for free after he retired.

That's a man I'd like to meet, while he's still living.

* * *

You can find the rest of George Dog, and other poems by 'Coyote Bill,' in a self-published booklet called "Heart of the Wildwood Beating" after one of his more famous poems. He was published in Colliers, and the Stanley Republican, and possibly also the Ladies' Home Journal. Grandma would dearly love to get a copy of any of those magazines with his work in print.