Being a boy's dog is among the loftiest of canine callings. Not
every dog has the resilience of sinew and ruggedness of spirit
required. For those who can cut the mustard, there are a number of
perks, as one might guess from the official title of the position
which is "Best Dog in the World." In Willie Morris' belated memoir
(recently re-issued in paperback) of his childhood in Mississippi,
the boy Willie's dog Skip seems entirely up to the task.
If there are not many dogs left in the world like Skip, perhaps
the reason is that there are not many boyhoods left like that of
Willie Morris. Skip's exploits take place in a very small
Mississippi town (Yazoo City, not named here), before and during
the Second World War. The dog's main claim to fame, among many, is
his ability to drive a car—but this feat, we discover, is a
ruse, and no doubt Morris missed his calling by going into the
literary end of things instead of into publicity. Skip, a purebred
English smooth-haired fox terrier ordered from a dog breeder in
Springfield, Missouri, has his tricks and his flashes of
brilliance—but the truth is, any dog that is the best dog in
the world can do these things. The critical question is
consistency. Hardly anything that Lassie had done would be
incredible if she had not done those things week after week.
Skip understands English, at least key words, and this should
come as no surprise to anyone who must spell out W-A-L-K or B-A-T-H
in the presence of an ever-wary pet. In his idyllic country-town
universe, Skip can wander around town as he pleases, can walk with
his master to school and meet him afterwards, as any best dog in
the world might be expected to do—except that today no city
dog nor many small town dogs could do these things for long before
they ran afoul of leash laws or traffic. Yet Skip's life is not
entirely free of danger: there are snakes and even malicious
poisoners in this otherwise too-perfect world for dog and boy.
Morris' memoir takes place long before the terrier talent for
Frisbee had been discovered, but Skip could also play football. Yet
Skip seems rather oblivious to some facts of local lore—in
particular the danger of the "writing spider," alleged to spell out
the name of its victim before administering its invariably fatal
bite. (I don't suppose this is lack of intelligence on Skip's part
concerning these large spiders, with bright green and yellow
markings that appear to have been painted on with high-gloss
enamel. Such spiders are very common in Bastrop County, yet their
literary abilities and lethality are unknown to me—and to
science. This certainly will suggest a new reading for
Charlotte's Web.
Skip also has a pronounced anti-clerical streak, evidenced by
his organizing a pack of dogs in protest of a Methodist service
which entailed some particularly high-pitched musical offerings. As
for master Willie, we are offered little in the way of evidence of
social awareness, beyond his wartime regimen of keeping a sharp eye
out for Nazi spies and sympathizers. Indeed, Willie and his friends
do turn up a blanket with a swastika on it, but not much comes of
this because, as it turns out, the symbol was once very common in
indigenous American art. I mention this only because the idyllic
scenes of boyhood—and of course any story of a boy's dog is
as much about the boy as about the dog—can be set in a small
Mississippi town of this period only if one looks away from certain
things and does not mention others.
As near as Morris comes to a reminder that there might be an
ugly reality beneath the nostalgia is the observation that a white
boy of twelve might express a barber-shop opinion in favor of the
Dodgers, or he might even own a Jackie Robinson bat. But if any
expression more specific than these on Mississippi social
arrangements might be ventured, Morris does say. Indeed, Morris
seems to have spent a childhood rather oblivious to social reality.
He recalls with amusement that Skip did not deign to eat anything
except bologna (which Skip would fetch for himself from the
shopkeeper, paying with money carried in a backpack). The humor of
Skip's refined palate is lost if one recalls that this was a time
that many Americans stood in long lines for thin soup, but neither
the boy Morris nor the author Morris seems to know of the
Depression. Although Morris supposes his own family was not well
off, they did have a car and seemed to have had money for gas,
although when the war came along rationing threatened to cut down
on Skip's driving.
If My Dog Skip were a little less charming, and the
picture of this life of boy and dog a little less pretty and
seductive, my reservations might not need to be expressed. But it
is charming and it is seductive, and it does need to be said that
if days such as these never come again it will be a good thing, not
a lamentable one.
It is perhaps a kindness to a young man, who hardly needs a
reminder of the end of life as he has just reached the beginning of
his—that so many boys' dogs fade gently after the boyhood
things are put away and the young man has gone away to college. So
it was with Laddie, my best dog in the world. And so it was with
Skip, Morris best dog in the world.
