Playing in the dirt, and a drive home on memory lane

Yesterday was a "help your family day." Mom called on Thursday and asked if I might come over to help move some perennials around, as this is a bit difficult for her with her (second) hip replacement.

Her garden doesn't look much right now with everything starting to poke out of the ground, but man, you should see it in July and the rest of the summer. Gorgeous. She lives in a mobile home park and probably should get an award for "nicest yard." It's incredible what she's done with the postage-stamp lot she's on. So I dug, and I amended soil, and I split plants, and we had a nice time talking.

One neighbor came by with her sweet and pudgy pug, and another neighbor walked by with her young black lab mix who was just spayed today (yeah! No more ubiquitous black puppies!). 


Mom has two cats, Charlie and Oliver (whom she rescued on her own...that's the only reason I don't rag on her for not adopting from me). They are quite sweet and have stayed here with me when mom was recuperating in the hospital. 


On the way home I meandered through Norwich since it was such a beautiful day. I used to walk two miles to school on these railroad tracks (through the snow, uphill! --joke)

I also got grabbed by the throat and thrown down an embankment on these tracks by a male jogger. Apparently tossing women twenty feet into a ditch was his idea of fun, as he kept on jogging. Lucky for me. I think I was about seventeen at the time.  

This used to be Four Winds Animal Hospital. I was hired here after I just turned eighteen. It was a live-in position as a vet assistant. For $25 a week. A week after I began, another staff member left and I got more responsibilities and a raise to $60 a week. The little efficiency apartment had HBO (a major luxury back in 1980) and of course the was a washer and dryer, plus things like paper towels, etc. that I never needed to purchase, so it actually was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a girl who loved animals and wanted to get out on her own.

I handled Saturday and Sunday clinic work, cleaned the facility daily, kept things stocked, set up meds, monitored critical patients, and covered emergencies and assisted in surgery at night. Dr. Briggs thought I was headed to vet school and so he grilled me regularly. I learned an incredible amount from him, and it was because of this job that I was hired after college as an animal control officer. His family was wonderful and I used to go out to their farm and ride their son Tim's horse Jojo.

Although I had already graduated from high school--and disappointed everyone by not going to college right away--I discovered that a kid could continue to attend high school post-grad until they were 21. Now that's not a thing they advertise, is it? So I continued to go to school full time for another year, since I did not work during the day.

Dr. Briggs was pretty perturbed when he discovered I was going to Ithaca College---not Cornell---for philosophy. Later in life, during my "police dispatcher" stage, when I came to visit he used to tell clients that "Here is my best worker, and look--now she's the Director of Traffic." When I started doing cat rescue, he provided me with any legal meds I needed, and I often drove my harder cases all the way to Norwich for his second opinion.

He was a fairly gruff, tell-it-like-it-is, person. And that is pretty much an understatement. Yet it was exactly because he was blunt and expected the best work out of everybody, and was willing to share what he knew and explain things clearly, that the job was so valuable.

My last day here I sat on the hill behind the hospital and cried. Those trees weren't even as tall as I was, back then.

Dr. Briggs passed away recently. The clinic was sold and is now Compassionate Care. My mother uses the new vet, and so did the lady with the newly fixed black pup. They are obviously taking great care of the place. From what I understand, my apartment is now gone and is being used for other things.