A steamin' shovel full

When I was a kid
we had this neighbor
named Mr. Delaney.
He and his wife
were trunk slammers.
Cottage people
who came up on
weekends to the lake
to relax.

For some reason,
Mr. Delaney
a. hated my dad
and
b. hated our dog more

We had a dog named
Jessica (after the Allman Brothers song)
She was a mild mannered
gentle dog.
An Irish setter/black lab mix,
black like a lab, Irish like a setter.

Although we were in a
lake neighborhood and pretty
much everyone around had
dogs, he had this notion that
our dog was the only one
in the universe that pooped in
his yard.

So, every weekend he would get
to the cottage,
get his luggage out of the
trunk, slam the lid and
proceed to do anything but relax.
More like find reasons to hate
all of the neighbors that lived there.

No doubt once every weekend
he would come into the yard,
red faced with his white brillo-pad hair
flapping in the breeze
and bitch at my
dad about dog poop.

Get a grip, guy.

This one particular Sunday,
my mom had made a pot roast
with all of the fixings and we
had my grandparents over for dinner.

We were all sitting down to eat, when
someone saw Mr. Delaney come into the
yard. My dad got up to go to the door facing
the lake to see what he wanted.

When dad opened the door, there was
a huge pile of dog shit that Mr. Delaney had
collected from around his yard and
dumped with a shovel onto our steps.

My dad went trucking across the yard
to confront him about this problem and
remind him that there was more than one
dog in the neighborhood -
and a shouting match ensued.
Needless to say -
He didn't do that again.

I didn't like that guy...
But, none of us ever wished
him any ill will.
(Even though he was just rotten.)

A couple of years later,
some kids broke into his cottage and
completely trashed it.
I thought, man karma works in mysterious ways.