This story takes place in Rockingham in the early to mid 1950’s.  It was a
cold, rainy Monday night in mid-October.  If you will pardon the cliché, it
was “raining cats and dogs.”  That expression goes back to England during
the middle ages.  Many of the poor people lived in crowded shanties very
close to each other.  They used thatch for their roofs.  These shanties were
unorganized.  You could walk on the thatched roofs from one to another.  
Many dogs and cats did just that - mainly looking for rats.  Some of the
animals died up there, and people just left them there since this was before
the time of sanitation.  Only a huge “gully washer” would flush out the dead
animals.  Thus, a heavy rain was associated with raining cats and dogs.

My section of the world was from the old depot and up the hill on what was
then called Sandhill Road, but today is called Caroline Avenue, all the way
to highway US 1 near the old Howard Johnson’s.  My area went east all the
way to the US 1 overpass, and west all the way over to what is now highway
220 (but was just wooded area then).  Falling Creek was dammed at that
time to form a good-sized pond, and was known as the Great Falls Mill
Pond.  Near the top of the hill (Caroline Avenue) on the right going south
was the house of Mr. and Mrs. Norris, both in their mid to late fifties. They
didn’t know my mother at first, but she found a nice comfortable abode
underneath their second outbuilding back behind their house near their
garden.  Mrs. Norris was also known as Flossy. And from what I could tell
Mr. Norris was known as Norris.  That might have been his name (Norris
Norris), but I’m not too sure about that.  Mrs. Flossy dipped snuff and was
constantly spitting it out.  We had to do some fast moving sometimes.  She
would get rid of her excess right in the middle of a sentence when you were
least expecting it.  One time she got my one of my older sisters right on the
back of her neck.  Boy, did that stink for about the next two weeks.            

It was about eleven o’clock on that wet Monday night when I was born.  
There were eight of us.  I had four older brothers and three older sisters.  
We didn’t know for sure who our father was, but the best I could figure he
was a Sheppard-mix that lived on up the road well past the intersection of
what is now Midway Road.  It was that huge house just before Howard
Johnson’s.  He came to see us one time while we were still at Mrs. Flossy’s.  
My mother was a Border Collie-mix.  Both my mother and father were at
best average-sized dogs.  All eight of us were healthy.  I heard a veterinarian
say once that most mixed breed or mongrel dogs were usually very healthy.  
He said that all those fancy thoroughbred dogs had all sorts of health
problems due to the inbreeding while they were trying to establish the
breed.  There’s a lot to be said about old fashion random breeding just the
way God intended.  It took about a week before Mrs. Flossy found us.  She
heard some of us crying.  Our mother had been feeding us for over a week,
and it was time for her to go out and find more nourishment for herself.  
Mama came back just as Mrs. Flossy was admiring us.  I remember hearing
Mrs. Flossy saying: “Goodness, mercy.  We can’t keep all these dogs.”  She
turned to my mother and said: “You sure got a nice brood here.”

After about three or four weeks, Mrs. Flossy started bringing us some of her
table scraps.  Then she talked Mr. Norris into buying us some dog food.  
Later, he said to his wife: “John, one of the men who works with us – drives
a truck for us – is coming by tomorrow to see if he wants one of these
puppies.”  The following afternoon on schedule Mr. John, his wife, and two
young boys came to visit us.  The two boys were mostly playing with my
older brothers and sisters.  They weren’t paying any attention to me.  I was
sitting with my front legs up over in a corner all by myself.  Then Mr. John
looked over at me and said: “Hey, how about ole ‘Hercules’ over there?”  
The boys looked at me briefly.  Mr. John’s wife then replied: “We don’t want
him; he’s the runt of the litter.”  I sunk down on all fours, and put my head
down between my front paws.  I kept looking up at them, but somehow I
knew they didn’t want me.  As I was looking up from my head on the
ground, one of the boys said: “Look, you can see the white of his eyes.  That’
s the first time I every saw anything like that.  I didn’t know dogs had a
white part to their eyes.”  Mr. John and his family took two of my older
brothers and left.  I never saw any of them again, but the name stuck.  After
that I was known as Hercules.

Unbeknownst to me, the Norrises were planning to move to another town.  
If they had told me, I would have been there, but they didn’t.  Three more
of my siblings were adopted out.  All that was left of our family were two of
my sisters, my mother, and me.  The three of us puppies enjoyed playing
together.  My sisters were not as rough as my brothers were.  They both
were a little bit bigger and heavier than I was.  It was about the end of
January, and I was starting to get out and explore the neighborhood a little.
      
My sisters would come with me occasionally, but they preferred the
security of staying home close to Mama.  I liked to go all over the immediate
area, even staying overnight sometimes.  Then one morning when I
returned, there was no one there.  The Norrises were gone and the house
looked empty.  My mother and my two sisters were gone.  As it turned out I
never saw any of them again.  I just sat there in the yard for the rest of that
day and throughout the night.  They had left a small amount of dry dog food
for me, but it was soon gone.  I was lucky some other dog hadn’t found it
before I did.  As darkness came on the second night, it dawned on me that
they were never coming back.  It also dawned on me that I was getting
hungry, and there was none of that dry dog food left.  I didn’t have any
extra weight to help me in bad times like my other siblings had.

So on the third day, I started out on my own to look for food and maybe a
new home.  It sure is nice to have a human master to supply you with food,
a nice warm bed, and some reassuring petting on the head.  It was March
now as I headed west down Midway Road toward where highway 220 is
today.  There was an old farmhouse over to the left in a field.  I headed over
that way when this really big dog started running and barking at me.  You
can tell when a dog is aggressive (mad or upset at you) – he has his tail in
the air.  If a dog doesn’t have aggressive intentions, he will have his tail
down.  If a dog is submissive, he will have his tail between his legs.  This big
dog probably weighed a hundred pounds, which is about four or five times
my weight.  There wasn’t much I could do.  I certainly couldn’t fight him
and hope to survive.  And I don’t think I could have outrun him either; his
legs were twice as long as mine.  So I just kowtowed as the expression goes.  
I lay on the ground with my belly exposed to this big monster.  As this huge
dog approached me, he growled a little, and then he started smelling me.  
Then he just sat down near where I was lying.  After about two or three
minutes, I figured it was okay for me to get up.  Then he smelled me some
more.  Then we both started walking back toward the farmhouse.  Later I
discovered his name was Socrates.  I’d seen this house before, but I had
never seen this behemoth up this close before.   I saw some food in a dog
dish near his doghouse. He growled at me to tell me to leave his food alone.  
His human wasn’t at home.  After awhile, he went over near the main house
and lay down.  The weather was starting to get a little bit warmer now, but it
was still chilly at night even with this fur coat I’m wearing.  I inched my way
over to his food dish.  He didn’t seem to care this time; so, I started eating
his food as quickly as I could just in case he was to suddenly change his
mind.  Wow, did that taste good.  He probably was fed table scraps, which
were a whole lot better than this dry dog food.  But, it sure did taste good to
me anyhow.  I later found out about wet canned dog food, which was made
mostly of meat (pure protein that is).  Now that’s the proper diet for a
growing puppy.  But you have to take what you can get.  Beggars can’t be
choosy.                   

Time marched right along, as I made as many friends as I could, and as few
enemies as possible.  The next situation to tell you about was with a young
boy named Frank who lived across the road from the Norrises.  (By the way,
some new people moved into the old Norris house, but they were gone or
inside most of the time.  They didn’t pay much attention to me if I
wandered by.  They certainly didn’t offer to feed me).  Anyhow, getting back
to young Frank.  He was friendly and would feed me whenever I came to
their house.  He knew my name from when I was still with the Norrises.  
(He used to do errands for Mrs. Flossy).  He would get a frankfurter (I don’t
like calling them hot dogs) from their refrigerator for me.  It didn’t take long
for me to devour it.  Unfortunately, his mother saw him feeding me, and she
told him not to feed me any more.  One of his older brothers had a dog
named Abraham (so named because it looked so sad).  His mother said they
couldn’t afford two dogs; so I would have to go.  She told Frank that if he
fed me, I would hang around.  The only way to get that new dog (me) to
leave would be to stop feeding him (me).  Well she was right about that.  I
do have to eat; so I have to keep searching until I find food.  Later, he would
occasionally leave table scraps out for me.  This was a nice treat if some
other dog didn’t beat me to it.  Not many frankfurters.  He was probably
concerned that his mother might notice that.  He was really kind to me, and
we were friends.

The next place I want to tell you about is over on what was then called
Midway Road right across from the new VFW (which wasn’t there back
then).  It’s no longer called Midway Road.  In fact it is now just a small,
short dead-end road.  The dog here was named “FiFi.”  She was a white
French Poodle.  Really made my tan and black coloring look…well, I didn’t
look that bad for a boy dog that is.  Her humans kept her in a fence almost
all the time.  They would occasionally allow her in the house, but she had to
stay in her fence during the day while they were at work and sometimes at
night.  She was very friendly to me.  I wondered if she really liked me or if
she was just lonely for canine companionship.  The fence was a rectangular
wire fence.  Now folks let me tell you; it didn’t take me long to climb that
fence.  I mastered the square wire fence quickly, but I never could climb any
other type fence, especially not chicken wire fence.  You know, I don’t see
how humans ever reproduce themselves.  You don’t ever see them going
around smelling each other.  Anyhow, FiFi sure did smell good.  I still go
back to see her when I can, but her humans rarely leave food out for her,
and food is usually my top priority.  

There was a house behind FiFi’s house that faced Sandhill Road (now called
Caroline Avenue).  There was a widow lady here called Mrs. Carrie.  She
lived in this big old house that had never been painted.  She had a chocolate
brown dog named “Teddy”.  He wasn’t much larger than me, but he had
short hair where mine was a little long like my mother’s.  Now Teddy was
easy to get along with, but Mrs. Carrie never fed him outside; so there was
no leftover dog food for me.  She was nice to me, but she rarely fed me
anything.  Teddy was unusual in that he would go out near the road and
bring the newspaper back to his mistress (and without damaging the
newspaper).  That’s difficult for a dog to do, especially the part about not
damaging the newspaper.  A rolled-up newspaper is a nice toy if you have
time for that sort of thing.  

In the second house up from Mrs. Carrie’s, there lived a man known to
almost everybody as “Pop” Bradley.  He was an elderly man who lived by
himself except for his dog named “Buster,” who was almost fifteen years
old.  That’s over 100 in human years.  Pop Bradley’s house had a steep hill
in his front yard.  His house was setting fifty feet back from the road in
front, but high up about thirty feet above the road level.  He had some extra
land in his back yard, where he had maintained a large garden over the
years.  He also had a hog pen in his back yard.  He had a rectangular wire
fence.  The fence kept everyone out except me, which as you already know,
I was a master at climbing.  I always liked to go visit with Buster.  Pop never
let Buster into the house except in extremely cold weather, and only in the
last several years since Buster was so old.  Occasionally, Buster would leave
some food in his plate, which I would help myself to when I could.  
However, Pop would usually feed what Buster didn’t eat to the hogs.  
Whenever Pop found me inside his fence, he would yell at me and chase me
back over the fence.  I don’t know why he didn’t like me back then, as I
certainly wasn’t hurting anything.  I guess it was the same as Frank’s
mother.  He just didn’t want two dogs to feed.

It was about three months after that in late summer when I was making my
rounds looking for food.  I thought it would be nice to drop in to see old
Buster.  Poor old Buster was just lying there sleeping.  He didn’t wake up
when I helped myself to his food dish.  Then I saw a man over near the back
steps of the house who looked to be sleeping.  After I finished my lunch, I
started thinking to myself how strange that was.  Humans normally don’t
sleep on the ground especially in the middle of the day.  So I moseyed on
over to see him.  It was Pop Bradley.  I had never gotten this close to Mr.
Bradley before.  I thought it might be a good idea to wake him up.  So I
started licking his face.  He grunted a couple of times, but he never did
wake up.  He seemed a little cold, but I could tell he wasn’t dead, at least
not yet.

I sat there a little while trying to think what to do.  There wasn’t much I
could do to help him, but maybe some other human could.  So, I circled
around to the front of the house near the front fence and started barking.  
Most people riding by in cars seemed to ignore me, as if they couldn’t hear
me.  I just kept on barking.   Finally a man came walking up the road.  He
heard me barking, but kept on going anyhow.  I left briefly to go back and
check on Mr. Bradley.  He was still lying there; so I started licking his face
again.  He grunted a little, but still didn’t wake up.  I decided I should go
back out front again and try to get a human to come help Mr. Bradley.  I
barked for what seemed like an eternity.  My throat was getting sore.  Then
a young man came meandering down the road.  I intensified my barking.  It
was my friend Frank.  He saw me and started whistling to me.  I just
continued barking and wagging my tail as briskly as I could.  Finally he
came up the hill to the fence.  He petted me through the fence.  I kept
barking and wagging my tail.  I started heading toward the back of the
house.  I needed Frank to follow me.  It took at least five minutes, but
finally Frank climbed the fence and followed me back to where Mr. Bradley
was.  Frank tried to wake Mr. Bradley, but had no more luck than I had.  
Then Frank ran back to the front fence and scaled it in about three seconds
flat.  Not to be outdone, I climbed the fence and followed him, but it took
me about fifteen seconds to scale it.  Frank was running as fast as he could
to the bottom of the hill.  I quickly caught up with him.  (Humans really can’
t run very fast you know).  He went into the store building at the bottom of
the hill.  After a few minutes, the nice lady there (Miss Hattie) came out.  As
she was talking to Frank, she started petting me.  That was pleasant.  I’d
seen her before, but she’d never petted me before.  Later, I figured out that
she must have been Mr. Bradley’s daughter.

Then Miss Hattie and Frank started walking back up the hill as fast as the
poor lady could walk.  She was not very fast even compared to Frank, and
certainly not when compared to me.  At about the time they got back to Pop
Bradley’s house, this really long looking car came rushing up.  It was
making a horrible sound, much like a cat growling, but extremely loud.  
Miss Hattie opened the fence, and they all went back to where Mr. Bradley
was lying.  None of these people were able to get Mr. Bradley to wake up.  
Finally, they took a bed out of the back of this long car, and they put Mr.
Bradley in it.  Then they carried him back to this long car.  As the long car
left, it started caterwauling again.  Miss Hattie went with them.  I still don’t
see how all that noise was going to help Mr. Bradley.

Frank and I stayed there for a little while.  Frank was petting me and telling
me how I was such a good dog.  Then, Frank took me home with him.  That
was nice, but what about his mother who didn’t want a second dog?  They
did let me stay for about a week, and they fed me fairly well.  Mostly table
scraps.  Then one morning Frank took me back down to Pop Bradley’s
house.  Miss Hattie answered the door.  She wanted me to come into the
house.  We went into a room where Pop Bradley was lying up in a bed.  He
called me over and started petting me.  Then Miss Hattie came in with a
nice bowl of dog food.  She said that I was to be their dog from now on. That
sounded good to me.  That’s all any dog wants…a good home, regular
meals, and a loving master.