There was once a little terrier named Benny. You might say he was mine but it was just for a moment. I was visiting at a friends house in Santa Maria and the back yard neighbor, Jeffrey Fitzgerald was trying to pawn off a litter of pups. He browbeat me until I took one. I named him Ben, but he soon became Benny because of his size, I think. He seemed to be the kind of dog who would have a less than serious name. He was all black; a sleek fuzzy mutt about the size of a ten pound sack of flour. He was a good little boy, quickly housebroken and spent most of his time eating and sleeping in my house on Muir street in Ocean Beach. He was friendly and a popular little guy.

Not too long after I got him, I had to catch a ship and  was forced to leave the dog behind with my parents at their farm. They always had dogs but for the most part they were outside dogs. They didn’t come in the house. The back porch was about the best they could do. They mostly slept in the packing sheds or the cabs of the trucks,  or wherever  looked comfy to them. We even had a dog named Paco a medium sized brown mutt who never had much to say who just slept wherever he pleased. He was known to sleep in the mud when it rained. My dad was against another dog but mom turned the trick as usual. I had promised to come and get him when I returned but, as it turned out, he wormed his way into her heart and that was that. He had found a soulmate in my mother and he wasn’t going to leave her.

Benny won my dad over too, he was out the door with him in the morning and at his heels wherever he went. The farm was like heaven for a dog. There were pickups to ride in, fields of celery and lettuce where he could run up and down the rows, sniffing and looking for something to chase, tractors he could bark at and acres and acres of ground, perfect for digging, with all kinds of good smelly stuff to roll in. Irrigation ditches always had an ample supply of sticky mud. Even the hired hands got into the act and would give him parts of the their lunches and perhaps a little pat to boot. He had a yen for tamales. He was happy to get a bit of a white bread and baloney sandwich too. Remember, this was in the days when dogs never saw a vet or ate Pedigree dog food. It was cheap dog food from the Loomis Mill, table scraps and the occasional gopher. Benny didn’t have the speed to catch a Jack Rabbit, though it didn’t stop him from trying.

My mother adored him. She would hold him in her lap like a baby and feed him from a spoon. He liked to curl up with her on the couch at night while she knitted and watched TV, as contented as a little dog could be.

His mostest favorite thing though, was to hop in the pickup truck with my dad and go for a ride. If dad only went ten feet he was there.He went to the loading dock at the Arroyo Grande Trucking company every day to supervise the unloading of my dads vegetables being shipped to market. If Tim Spears or Dick dock got too close to the truck they would get a bark and a growl. He sometimes ran into the office to give Juandel a quick doggie kiss too. He went to the box company in Oceano to inspect the new pine boxes as they were loaded and he rode shotgun every morning as my dad drove into town to get the morning paper and a candy bar at Kirk’s liquor store on Branch street. The best part of the trip though, was sticking his head out the passenger side window and barking at the willow branches along Tar Springs Crick where Branch Mill Road makes the right turn after crossing the bridge between Hiyashi’s and DeLeons farms. You know the place, it’s where people used to dump their old mattresses and washing machines because they were too cheap to go to the dump. It is an old county road with no shoulders and the willows reach out with their branches just to torment a little black dog. No one trims the trees and the brush there. Just the passage of farm trucks and tractors keeps it back, so if you drive close enough they slap against the side of the pickup as you go by. This tormented little Benny and he would bark furiously, enraged by the willows trying to get in the windows. Jumping and lunging, making a terrible racket, he tried every day to drive those pesky trees away. Now, my dad, being a man of great fun, aided and abetted this activity by driving as close as he could get without going off into the creek. He enjoyed the hilarious little dog and his incandescent fuming: little dog loved it too.

Of course, one fine day the inevitable happened, one second Benny was putting on his act, growling and snapping at the branches like a miniature chainsaw and just like that, in a snap of the fingers he was gone, snatched out the window by a willow branch he managed to sink his teeth into. It took a few feet to bring the truck to a screeching, sliding stop, dad leaping out the door into the dust cloud made by the locked up tires. Thinking to see the broken pieces of the his dog, he saw instead, Benny standing, dazed and dusty dirty on the roadside, fur full of dirt and foxtails. He had some willow leaves sticking out of his mouth, not quite sure what he should do now that he had fulfilled his quest of killing a willow branch. Dad bundled him up, drove him home where mom  brushed out his fur, fed him some warm milk and cuddled him while he calmed down. The Holy Grail quest was  fulfilled. A pretty good day for a little dog, don’t you think?

When the neighbor farmers came in for coffee the next morning and heard my dad tell the story they laughed so hard that coffee came out of Manuel Silvas nose. I kid you not.

Benny soon recovered his aplomb. He still hated the willows but dad was careful to drive just a little farther away from them. Gotta be careful with a good dog. He was a tough little bugger, but why take a chance.


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