Woofing It.

About six years ago as Covid descended upon New York and the rest of the world, my wife, worried, came to me as I sat in our New York City apartment and said, "Dr. Cohen says we have to get out. No one knows how bad this is going to be and the respirators and hospital beds will all be given over to the investment bankers."

Malthus, in the 21st Century, works for Goldman Sachs.

"Out?" I said with my usual perspicacity.

"Out," L answered. "I booked an air b and b on Cape Cod."

"Fine," I said, "Only Cape Cod has but one hospital and just one road on and off. If this is the cataclysm you think it is..."

"Then you find a place," L akimbo'd. With that she left our apartment and me with an assignment.

We had been taking out eight-year-old golden retriever, Whiskey, to the beach on weekend, in Connecticut. In the cold of winter no one minded and dogs would congregate and play in the surf while their humans surlied and drank sugar'd coffee at seven bucks a pop.

Online, I found a map of the Connecticut coast. With Yale as my dividing line between "commuting Connecticut," and "WTF Connecticut," I found a town that sounded white-steepled and cute at the junction of the Long Island Sound and the Connecticut River. Old Saybrook. I figured north of Yale I was safe from the greedy grasping of suburban Connecticut and if I was stricken with the plague I could get into a Yale-affiliated horse-spittal.

I found a house for rent along the sea for a price Ward Cleaver might have paid in the 1960s. I didn't do much research or reconnaissance because I thought this whole Covid thing was, like 99-percent of all news that hits my stapes, blown completely out of proportion. What's more, though I'd been fired from Ogilvy, I was working for my ex-boss Steve Simpson at PayPal and making more money than I had ever made before, except for when I was freelancing for two agencies at the same time and being paid by each. 

One of them I worked for between 7AM and 1PM, the other between 1PM and 7PM. I very much liked having two jobs. If one sucked, there was always the other to suck even worse. If that sounds like an argument for polygamy, that's big a' me.

Lothar adjusting the revolving pixelator on my 1966 Simca 1500.

We piled two pairs of socks and some scanties and our dog supplies into our 1966 Simca 1500, brought a blanket to throw over our legs since Lothar, my Croatian mechanic, and reputedly the best Simca repairman in North America was, despite his reputation, unable to get my heater working. 

Story of my life.

We made it up to the Gingham Coast in under two hours. There was no traffic during those gloomy days and Lothar had replaced the Simca's original four-banger with a two point eight liter BMW straight-six that powered the thing so it moved as fast as mashed potatoes at a boarding-house dinner-table.

We passed a beach on the way to our rental. The tide was out and the beach was half a mile wide, dotted with shallow tide pools and empty of nearly everything but creaky old people like myself and their dogs.

The creaky old people like myself plodded along while our dogs ran on the packed sand, galloped through the surf and fetched whatever I was able to, like Thor or Zeus, hurl.

L and I went to the same beach yesterday, in the spitting rain, with Sparkle our 22-month-old golden retreiver. She played with Diego, Zeke and Daisy. We were there today, at 7AM, in the torpid air, with the same cotillion of pups, and also Benny, a five-year-old golden whose mom drove him over all the way from Guilford.

After two hours, the dumb-creatures (the humans) looked at our time-pieces and told ourselves we had to go. The dogs looked, well, hang-dog, but agreed. L took our ancient golf-cart home with Sparkle sharing the front-seat. I took an additional hour and walked about the littoral, clocking another three miles like Extraordinary Little Cough, all in an effort to allay the aggressive adipose that is gaining ground on my ass.

Sparkle is all in, now. As tired as a you-know.

L is conference-calling already.

I am finishing up this piece.

And soon will be typing away for pay.

It's a dog's life.