Just A Woman

LUCIFER THE DOG

Our next-door neighbors were old friends of my parents, particularly my mother. Miss Lydia (not her real name) would come by daily just to chitchat with Mamma and lived with her boyfriend Clyde (not his real name). They were an interesting couple, as she was tall and thin, and he was average height and of a stocky build. Big-hearted and the life of the party, those two were known to be the first in the neighborhood to celebrate just about anything.

One day, Clyde and Lydia came home with a small tan Lab mix puppy. In Georgia, the country folk had a name for a dog that had unknown breeding….Sooner. A Sooner was a dog like a mutt because you knew he was a mix but a mix of what was the question. It was cool that our neighbors got a good dog to keep an eye on the yard, but the name was something to worry about.

Psychologists nowadays say that the name you give an animal shapes their self-esteem and promotes certain behaviors. Too bad these therapists weren’t around when Clyde and Lydia named the dog Lucifer (his real name), and a devil he was.

Lucifer barked at everything that moved, constantly escaped from the yard, stole newspapers from people’s yards, and threw fits whenever he pleased. He just flat out did not care about anything. He didn’t follow simple commands and would scare the bejesus out of the children who walked past our neighbors’ house on the way to school. One day, he had scared a child so bad that he ran out into the main street out of our area into oncoming traffic. I do not recollect what happened afterward.

But even the Devil has a weak spot, and in Lucifer’s case, it was scrap food. He would eat anything that Clyde or Lydia would put out for him…until one 4th of July. Mamma decided that it would be nice to fix a couple of dishes and combine our food with the meat that Lydia and Clyde had bought to celebrate the holiday. They had bought a slab of ribs and placed it on the grill while Mama and I prepared potato salad and other side dishes in our house.

When Lydia came over that morning, I remember Mama specifically asking her if they were going to put the ribs on at that time and Lydia confirmed. Lydia also mentioned that Clyde had bought some liquor for the grownups. Mama teased Lydia by telling her to make sure that they cooked the ribs FIRST before they had any alcohol.

You guessed it…Lydia and Clyde had more than their fair share of alcohol while a slab of ribs steadily cooked on the grill. Sometime later, I told Mama that it was getting cloudy outside, and she looked in the back yard and said that it was smoke. We had quite a mess on our hands, and Lucifer was no help with his howling. After the mess was cleaned up, we still had a decent holiday because we were able to grill some hot dogs and hamburgers.

I mentioned that Lucifer liked scrap food, so instead of disposing to the charred rib scraps, Clyde and Lydia tried to give them to Lucifer. He let out a big yelp that could be heard for miles. It’s a good thing that the PETA members were not around for this one or the two of them would have been in a lot of trouble.

I don’t recall happened to old Lucifer, but I am very sure he has already met his namesake by now.