by Carl Reiner
When Rinnie was full grown, we built a run in our back yard that sported a custom-made doghouse with a front porch. He actually used it, but both Rinnie and the family preferred that he live and sleep in our house. When duty called, he would slip through the doggie door we had installed in the kitchen and relieve himself in our fenced-in back yard.
One summer morning, at about two or three o’clock, I awoke to the sound of very loud, insistent barking. I did not think it was Rinnie, as I had never heard him bark so loudly and continuously. But it was him, and he seemed to be in some sort of distress. I ran onto the back porch and saw Rinnie, yapping and pawing at the base of the fence between our property and my neighbor’s. It was not like Rinnie to get into a fight with another dog, but that is what he appeared to be doing. The other dog, however, was not barking but cowering and hissing.
I shouted for Rinnie to come, but he did not heed. To assess what the problem might be, I walked out into the yard, wearing boxer shorts and a T-shirt. As I got closer to the fray, I saw that Rinnie had not cornered a dog, but a black cat with a white tail. He had the poor cat pinned against the wire fence and kept nipping at it. I came to within fifteen feet of Rinnie and his hissing quarry, when I realized that his quarry was not a cat but a skunk—a frightened skunk dousing her enemy with a generous amount of her spray.
In my travels down country roads, I had smelled the pungent odor of a dead skunk, but nothing came close to the toe-curling stink that this live skunk was emitting.
I grabbed Rinnie by the collar and started to drag him away. For my rescue effort, the grateful skunk lifted its tail and gifted me with the last few squirts from her odious collection.
I dragged the stinking Rinnie onto our screened-in porch, shouted, “Stay! Sit!” and he summarily disobeyed both commands.
He just kept shaking his head as he paced back and forth, behaving as if he was aware that he stunk to high heaven.
Showering was my first priority, and when I dashed though the house on my way to the bathroom, my usually soft-spoken wife screamed, “Phhhheeeewwwww! Caaarlll, you’re stinking up the house!”
I showered three or four times, and after each soaping, scrubbing, and rinsing, I checked to find that the nauseating aroma of “Eau de Skunk” persisted. Never having met anyone who had been sprayed by a skunk, I had no idea what the antidote was or if there was one. I put on an expendable pair or boxers, wrapped my offending shorts in a plastic bag, tossed them into a garbage can, and then went about tending to Rinnie, who was behaving as if he was trying to get away from himself. I led the sad animal to the backyard, and after hosing him down and shampooing him with doggie soap, I worried that Rinnie and I might stink of skunk for the rest of our lives.
I phoned our vet, and he gave me the antidote. To fill the prescription, I drove to the to the Scarsdale supermarket and bought a dozen quart jars of Campbell’s tomato juice.
I worried what Rinnie’s reaction would be to having tomato juice poured all over him and was happy to find him totally acquiescent. He behaved as if he knew that a tomato juice bath was the accepted antidote for skunk stench.
After doing the best I could for Rinnie, I got into my tub and had my first and last tomato juice bath. I no longer smelled from skunk, but it was a day or more before Rinnie and I started to smell less like marinara sauce and more like ourselves.
I have two more memories of our gentle, loving Rinnie, and both of those occurred when our family moved to Los Angeles.
In 1959, when Rinnie was a playful four-year-old, I was hired to appear in The Gazebo, an MGM film that starred Glenn Ford and Debbie Reynolds. It was our family’s first trip to L.A., and my agent had rented us a comfortable, three-bedroom house on North Alta Drive in Beverly Hills—a house that I was particularly excited to inhabit, as it belonged to one of my favorite character actors, Akim Tamiroff. Before Mr. Tamiroff came to Hollywood, the Moscow Art Theater hailed him as a Most Honored Artist.
One of the cast members in The Gazebo was a pigeon who played the part of Herman. Herman is importantly involved in the denouement of the movie, and if you are curious about how he is involved, you can rent the film, but I must advise that it is not regarded as a “must-see film”—and I had an undistinguished supporting role.
Many trained pigeons were needed to essay Herman—there were walking Hermans, pecking Hermans, and a flying Herman. Most of them had their wings clipped, and I adopted one of those. The children enjoyed getting a new pet and renamed him Kingfish, after a character on Amos ‘n Andy, a popular, albeit politically incorrect, radio show of the day. For a short while, they paid him some attention, but the novelty of feeding and petting him soon waned, and I ended up being Kingfish’s sole caretaker.
Kingfish lived in a corrugated carton that sat on a bench in the pool house. To insure that Rinnie could not get at the bird, I cautioned everyone to keep the men’s dressing-room door closed at all times.
For the record, one morning, Annie had gone to look in on Kingfish and found that Kingfish had laid an egg. It was then that we changed Kingfish’s name to Sapphire—Sapphire being Kingfish’s wife on the Amos ’n Andy program.
That summer, our New Rochelle neighbors, Millie and Jerry Schoenbaum, who were visiting from New York, joined us for lunch and a swim. I had not briefed Jerry about keeping the men’s-room door shut and discovered my goof when I glanced toward the pool house and saw Rinnie with his head in the corrugated box and his tail wagging. I shouted his name and rushed to the cabana, expecting to find a dead pigeon, but instead, I found a naked one.
Sapphire was naked because Rinnie had been nibbling at the poor bird, who was trying to defend herself. With jackhammer speed, Sapphire was pecking at the nose of the pervert who was trying to undress her. Rinnie knew he was doing wrong because he stopped the moment he saw me.
I had no idea what Rinnie had in mind, but he seemed to be playing a game with Sapphire, a game Sapphire obviously hated. It was miraculous that Sapphire was not harmed. Rinnie had obviously not nipped her hard enough to draw blood. It seemed that each time he closed his teeth on her, she hopped away, leaving her plucked feathers in his mouth.
In a few weeks, after placing Sapphire’s carton on a high shelf out of Rinnie’s reach, our naked clipped-winged pet recovered. Not only did her feathers grow back, but so did her wings.
It was Rinnie who was instrumental in our discovering that Sapphire had regained her ability to fly. I had taken her carton from the high shelf and placed it on the bench when Rinnie strolled in and immediately poked his head into Sapphire’s carton. The panicky bird flapped her wings furiously, flew out of the cabana, soared high in the air, and alighted on the weather vane atop our house.
Sapphire sat on that weather vane for days. We worried about her starving to death. She knew of no other home but ours, and we all felt responsible for her survival. Every morning, Estelle tossed bird feed on the back lawn, and every morning, Sapphire flew down, pecked at the seeds, and when sated, flew back to her perch. This ritual kept on for a few days, until one morning while Sapphire was having her lunch, Rinnie strolled out into the yard. As soon as Sapphire spotted her nemesis, she flapped her wings and soared back to her safe haven.
The very next day, we looked up, and Sapphire was gone. We liked to believe that she had chosen to join one of the flocks of pigeons that regularly flew by our house.
The setting for the last and my favorite tale of Rinnie was the foyer of our home in Beverly Hills. The year was 1966, and it was six years after moving here from New Rochelle. The whole family was excited about a visit we were about to receive from one of our favorite relatives, my wife’s brother-in-law, Ira Shapiro. Ira was just one of those good souls who was happiest when he was doing things to make others happy.
One of the others he always made happy was Rinnie. After every family dinner, whether at Grandma Minnie’s apartment in the Bronx or at o
ur house in the suburbs, Ira would take Rinnie for a walk. The two took dozens of leisurely, twenty-minute strolls on Wilmot Road in New Rochelle and on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx. Sadly, those walks were discontinued when I signed on to write and produce The Dick Van Dyke Show and had to relocate in California.
Ira had arranged to fly out from New York and visit with the West Coast contingent of his family. This included his son, Georgie, who was working at the William Morris Agency in Beverly Hills and Rinnie, his walking buddy, who was now getting on in both regular and dog years. It had been six regular years since Rinnie and Ira last saw each other.
At eleven, Rinnie was still a fine-looking specimen. Even though his hearing was impaired and his back hips ached, he still had a regal air about him. His appetite remained intact, and thankfully, so did his teeth. Strangers often remarked about how white they were. I thanked them and took credit for their healthy condition. I would tell them about the article on dental hygiene I had read in some doctor’s waiting room. It claimed that the number-one cause for tooth loss in animals was an excessive buildup of plaque. Armed with this information, each night as we watched television, Rinnie would rest his noble head on my lap, and with my dental tool, a Roosevelt dime, I would scrape the plaque from his teeth. I was actually disappointed when I completed the job and could find nothing to scrape.
Considering Rinnie’s age and the fact that he had not seen Ira for six years, we anticipated that he might not welcome Ira with the same level of enthusiasm he did when Ira took him for his nightly stroll. And we were right—he did not greet him with that same enthusiasm.
When the doorbell rang, Estelle and I, our young son, Lucas, and Rinnie all came to the door to greet George and Ira. I opened the door, and when Ira stepped into the room, Rinnie did not welcome him as he had years earlier. Instead of wagging his tail and waiting impatiently for Ira to attach a leash to his collar, a howl escaped Rinnie’s throat, a howl the likes of which I had never before heard come out of him—or any dog. It was a prolonged, deep-throated, extended, wolflike howl that he continued to emit while pressing his body against Ira’s legs and encircling them. The howling sound that Rinnie produced was much like a human wail—a legato wailing that to this day, I can impersonate almost perfectly. I plan to recreate this sad-happy wail for the audio recording of I Remember Me.
Here is how one might spell the air-piercing howl:
“AAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWRRRRRRRRRRR”
“AAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWRRRRRRRRRRR”
I may, in other stories, have exaggerated or even invented a bit, but everything I have written about Rinnie up to now is on the nose. And for the record, Rinnie’s nose, until his last days, was always cool and damp.
In his last year, Rinnie’s coat still shone, his teeth still sparkled, his appetite was good, but he started to have hip problems. Prednisone was prescribed for his condition, and it worked, but only for a couple of months. He was no longer able stand on his back legs, which made his bowel movements difficult. I would support his haunches whenever he had to go or when he had to negotiate the five steps down to the back yard. We considered having a contraption built that we had seen fitted to a dog who had lost his back legs in an accident. Considering his age, and there being no hope that his condition would improve, our vet recommended that we put him to sleep.
A few days later, with me supporting his back legs, Rinnie walked into the vet’s office. If not for some graying around his muzzle, he still looked as young and regal as he did back in New Rochelle.
I sat and watched as a white-coated assistant helped Rinnie walk out of the waiting room. Before leaving, Rinnie suddenly stopped, sat down, slowly turned his head and looked back at me with, what I can only describe as a hangdog expression.
I thought, aaaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwwwwrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
Awhile after Rinnie’s death, I chanced to be looking up something in the Encyclopedia Britannica and came upon a section that featured every breed of dog extant. My eye was caught by a photo of a German shepherd, listed as Pfeffer Von Bern, who, I thought, our Rinnie very closely resembled. And why shouldn’t he? On Rinnie’s pedigree papers, he was registered as Blake of Dornwald and grand-sired by Pfeffer Von Bern, the Pfeffer Von Bern, who, according to the encyclopedia, was the world’s finest example of a German shepherd, whose genes informed the breed and who sired the world’s most famous and awarded German shepherds of the modern era.
So there it was, the reason our Rinnie Von Reiner seemed to have a royal mien about him—he was of royalty! To his credit, he never behaved like anything but a good dog. And that is exactly what he heard us tell him almost every day of his life: “Good dog!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Estelle, B.C. and A.C.
Estelle B.C. (Before Carl), whom I refer to in the chapter heading, was born Stella Lebost on the fifth of June, 1914 and weighed in at four pounds. Her three siblings, Sylvia, Sidney, and Eddie, were respectively ten, eight, and six years older and, from all accounts, they treated her as their pet. When she was four, Stella’s brothers, whose athletic abilities she admired, had devised a contest where they placed their little sister in the middle of a field and tossed a tennis ball back and forth over her head. Whoever threw the ball closer to the top of her head was declared the winner. She remembered enjoying the experience and never once worried about being struck. The influence her brothers’ athleticism had on her was palpable. In later years, by playing handball, softball, and tennis with them and their friends, she developed skills that stood her in good stead for the rest of her life. When we played tennis, our friends would comment that Estelle served a tennis ball “like a guy!” “Like a guy” is how she tossed a ball—or anything that needed tossing. It was traditional in Estelle’s family to toss items. If someone said “pass the salt,” a salt shaker would likely be tossed—and caught.
Her mother, Minnie, made me privy to some of Stella’s gifts that started to manifest themselves early in her life.
At the age of four, little Stella soloed, at the altar of the White Plains Catholic Church, singing the hymn, “Jesus Loves Me,” a capella.
At thirteen, she had taught herself to play the ukulele and entertained her friends. One summer afternoon, at Rockaway Beach, while singing and playing her uke for friends, the manager of Bronx radio station WBNX heard her sing and liked what he heard. For three consecutive Saturday mornings, he paid Stella five dollars to play her ukulele and sing her songs. A positive audience reaction resulted in the manager offering her a daily fifteen-minute program, which she declined, explaining that she had used all of her repertoire and had no time to learn new songs, as she was getting ready to start high school.
In her late teens, Stella and her brother Sidney entered a ballroom dance contest and won first prize—a gold cup.
At Bronx’s James Monroe High School, Stella won another first prize for taking dictation faster than all the other contestants.
In a citywide high-school art competition, Stella was awarded still another first prize, this time for her still-life drawing of a yellow, ceramic bowl filled with fruit. (Hanging in my breakfast room is a painting she did of this same subject.)
In her youth, she was often teamed with one of her brothers and played in men’s doubles handball competitions.
Estelle a few years later
So this is the Stella who became my wife, Estelle, with whom I shared a productive and loving sixty-five-year union. Our pairing was an unlikely one, a coupling that no professional matchmaker or Internet dating service would ever have recommended or dared to have set up. I am sure you would agree with this assertion—if you knew just one thing about us. And here now is that one thing, which will kick off part one of multiple addenda.
PART 1
“THE ONE THING”
From March 20, 1922, the year of my birth, until sometime in 1932, Estelle, nee Stella Leb
ost, and I lived in the Bronx. She and I resided with our families in apartment buildings that were but a few blocks apart, but Estelle and I did not meet until ten years later, in July of 1942—and not in the Bronx.
At that earlier time, when we resided in adjoining neighborhoods, I was referred to as a skinny “melink,” even though I was, by any account, a fine-looking lad who sported a head of dark, wavy hair. Had we met at that time, Estelle would not have given me a second glance, or for that matter, a first one. I, on the other hand, would have done more than just glance at her—I would have ogled her, as I would any pretty girl with great legs, a curvaceous body, and gorgeous gazonkas. “Gazonkas” was the word my friend Marty often used to describe our friend Lenny’s sister Theresa’s ample bosom.
You might ask how I could know of Estelle’s physical charms, not having met her, and how I could assume that she would not have given me a second glance. It is easily explained when you know that we actually met seven years later at an adult camp called Allaben Acres. Allaben was a vacation resort in New York’s Adirondack Mountains, where I was a member of the social staff. For the heady salary of ten dollars a week, I performed in variety revues, hosted game shows, and at the Saturday night socials, was expected to dance with the unescorted female guests. Estelle had hired on to work backstage as the assistant scenic designer.
After we had spent our first days together, it became clear that my initial premise was right. Had Estelle and I met in our old neighborhood, I would, no doubt, have ogled and drooled, and she would have totally ignored me, as any normal twenty-year-old woman would have, had a twelve-year-old pubescent passed by. It was at Allaben Acres that I learned of the almost eight-year difference in our ages. I cannot tell you how happy I am that we did not meet in our old Bronx neighborhood! Had we met then, it is unlikely that I would be sitting at my computer and chronicling the history of our coupling.
