PearlsB4Dogs

Kate Bates and her husband, Prof. Ben “Seymour” Bottoms were having supper at Buddy Mutts Café, having borrowed Franklin and Eleanor, Jake and Jenny Newland’s potbellied pigs, since the brothers Jim, who own and run Buddy Mutts, will not serve you unless you are accompanied by a dog, and Jake has convinced them that Franklin and Eleanor are a special breed of the Wassafoosie family of canines, when the usually glamorous but now frazzled Danielle Boone came in with four teen-aged girls and a litter of Golden Doodles.

“Can you take these GD dogs back to The Pansy Hill Puppy Farm out on Copperattlemoccasin Road when we’re through eating?” she gasped at Kate, who is known to be a soft touch for any distasteful task that might produce a good story despite its inveiglelies, which is how she became church treasurer.

“I don’t know if I can,” said Kate. “Ben is in mourning because of the death of Sparky Anderson, and I’m afraid to leave him alone. He might try to join the Marines again.”

“If he keeps eating those deep-fried fat fritters he’ll be big enough to qualify as a few good men,” said Bessie Bandervilt from the next table, who is 95 and skinny and not known for social skills. [Bessie, not the table. The table is only 35 and is usually quite polite.] “I’ll take the GD dogs back to Pansy Hill for you. I’ve been meaning to get one for myself. It’ll give me a chance to choose the one that matches my personality. I’ve already picked out a name—Impregnable. But why can’t you take them back yourself?”

“Oh, I promised the girls I’d take them to the concert by that new band they all like so much. I thought it would be over at the university in Hope’s Promise, but it turns out it’s way up in Capitul City. We’re really on short time.”

“I’m surprised, Danielle,” sniffed Bessie. “I’m not sure ‘Pearls Before ‘Dogs” is age-appropriate for you.”

“Good grief, Ms. Bandervilt. YOU know about ‘Pearls Before Dogs?’”

“Of course. The band playing tonight in Capitul City is the enormously famous, at least for the moment, “Pearls B4 Dogs,” from Jackson, TN. It gets its name from its home city, which boasts the National Birddog Museum and the only fresh water pearl nursery in North America. I listen to them on my pPod.”

“Thank you, thank you,” gasped Danielle, pushing the box with the litter of Golden Doodles into Bessie’s arms.

“In a long line of strange places to which you have subjected me, this has to be one of the strangest,” Kate said to Ben.

“Sparky would have known what to do,” he replied.