Grandma’s Puppy Pal
One of a series of “Stories for My Great-Grandchildren”
Excerpt from “An Oklahoma Story – Growing Up on Polecat Hill”
By Ruby Beard Tuggle
Edited by Greg Bennette
Illustrated by Carol Bennette
© 2006
[Fall 1931] About a year and a half after we were married, Paul came home from town, popped into the kitchen where I was working, and said, “We have our baby!” I clasped my hands over my bulging pregnant waistline and said, “What on earth are you talking about?”
He opened the door again and in bounced the friskiest pup I’d ever seen. We both laughed at once. He tilted his head at an angle which seemed to say, “Come on! Let’s have a little fun!” His name was Pal.
Grandma was a very proper lady barely five feet tall with tiny hands and feet and a slender waist. I doubt that she ever weighed much more than a hundred pounds. She was always properly groomed from the soles of her well-shod feet to the crown of her perfectly arranged hair. She used to say, “Cleanliness isn’t next to Godliness. Cleanliness is the more important!”
Personal Recollections of the Journey to Oregon in 1852, by Mrs. J. T. Gowdy (Anne Eliza Kemp) of McMinnville.