I don't even have to look at the picture to bring Mascot into view: Medium large, mostly black with touches of tan and a large splash of white at the throat.
He was our family dog and his care and feeding were principally my responsibility, with a touch of supervision from my older brother, Walt.
He was well named; he really was the mascot for all the kid activities of our Rainier Valley neighborhood. He would follow Rae and Patty and June as readily as he would follow Walt or me, or he just might run off for a game of tag with Duane or Frank. Mascot lived with us in the mid-'30s, the Depression, but our activities were many and so were his.
Our home was on a dead-end street (well, fashion would surely term it a cul-de-sac) bounded on one side by an expansive field and on another by a tangle of trees, our "woods." Where we went in this terrific playground-terrific before planned playgrounds were the rule-Mascot went, too. Football, baseball, kick the can-you name it, we played it-and Mascot was right there. The weather didn't affect our play, nor his. If we got wet, he got wet, and because we were growing up in Seattle, we got wet a lot. Maybe that's why one of my favorite memories from childhood is of wet dog, and maybe that's also why that's still one of my favorite smells, although I've learned, when on my best behavior, to say "odors."
Gentle, playful, loving, friendly-that was Mascot. Just ask any of those kids.
When my brother sent me a picture of mascot a few years ago (he'd found it, apparently, in a box of odds and ends), I felt a tug at my heart. But there were words on the back of that picture that really shook me. I'd forgotten having written those words but it was clear that I had. It's also clear that I've lost the ability I had then of saying things succinctly. In a few lines I summed up this marvelous creature: "1. Birthday, May 7. 2. 4 weeks old when we got him. 3. We had him 3 years. 4. We sent him to 'Dog Pound' because of snotty neighbors. This was on June 16, 1936. 5. He was sent to Everret (sic) June 17."
I was able to understand one important truth from those notes: Accepted history can depend on who gets the information recorded and disseminated first. More than 60 years ago I declared-with nobody to quarrel with me-that Mascot had to go to the "Dog Pound" because of "snotty neighbors."
But I must confess another side of that history, one that was omitted from the brief account pencilled on the back of that old photo: Our splendid Mascot seemed to hold a special grudge against one particular man who daily walked through our neighborhood. Bark at that man, Mascot certainly did, without any mercy and without fear of a few rocks lobbed in his direction.
Call him off, did we? No, we didn't realize the seriousness of the events as they happened. We laughed at the man, and one of the kids (not me, surely) nicknamed the intruder Mr. Bow Wow. This man was frequently met with, er, a canine version of cat calls as he headed down across our neighborhood to his bus stop on Empire Way.
But the laughter stopped the day Mr. Bow Wow appeared on our porch, banging on the door and pointing to a spot on his leg where, he alleged, our Mascot, our perfect model for all dogs to follow, had torn his flesh.
There's a merciful curtain drawn over the events of the following few days. There must have been some visits from the Humane Society, possibly even threats of lawsuits, although those were less litigious days. The outcome though, is clear: Mascot had been sent away, where he would live with a farm family out by Everett, rather than being put to death for his "crime."
More recently, I took a careful look at the picture and my notes on the back. Clearly my sloppy handwriting today is an outgrowth of my 12-year-old scrawl and not just a recent aberration. That's all right; I never took much pride in my penmanship. I was startled to realize, though, that I had misspelled the name of that suburban city to the north as Everret rather than Everett. I was always a bit of a grind and spelling was my strong point. I'll blame my lapse on the stress of the occasion.
And one more thing: It has finally occurred to me that maybe my mother had gotten there first with her version of history, and just possibly Mascot never got to see the green, green fields of Everett, no matter how it's spelled.
Tod Johnson grew up in Rainier Valley. He graduated from Franklin High School in 1942, served in the U.S. Army during World War II and earned bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Washington. He now resides in Jacksonville, Fla.
