Fifty Acres and a Poodle
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Joe the hunter got his first elk on a trip to Montana. The head is hanging in his living room.
Joe Crowley, the mechanic, finally got a bed at the VA hospital, and the quadruple bypass surgery was a success. So he’s back fixing cars, a renewed man with a heart that now pumps like a dream. By way of celebrating his good fortune, he bought his wife a beer distributorship, which she is running out of their basement.
George the sheep farmer got four llamas to look after his sheep. He hasn’t shot any dogs in over two years.
Tim, the FedEx guy, got a new car, a Ford Mustang. And he has started to write poetry.
Billy continued to refuse to receive treatment for his cancer. When new tumors were discovered—two in his neck and one under his arm—doctors gave him six months to live. He started his horse business. He contacted the one-armed man in North Carolina with the saddles and bought a garageful of tack. He bought twenty-seven horses from poor people in West Virginia and began selling them to rich people in Pittsburgh. One of the horses, T.J., got sick. The vet said it was cancer. The vet told Billy about an experimental medication available by mail from Mexico. Billy bought some. T.J. made a full recovery. Billy bought some more. Billy thought, well, if it worked for T.J…. Billy started drinking that medicine. That was two years ago. The tumors, he says, have disappeared.
Tom became a licensed EMT. He moved out of his father’s house and into a white trailer with a petunia patch out front. He got a steady girlfriend, and he just applied for college, where he hopes to study nursing.
And now it is 1999. The end of an entire millennium. I am forty years old, and the seventeen-year cicadas are outside making the loudest racket. Alex and I are about to celebrate our second wedding anniversary. We converted the South Side house into Alex’s office and put in the most beautiful hardwood floors, and virtually all of Alex’s clients say it is a place that makes them feel very safe. Our farm is now almost entirely free of multiflora, and instead is covered with the greenest grass. Alex spends a lot of time down in the garage with his power tools, where he is working on the oak for the gazebo he insists will one day sit on the top of our hill. (I sent away for some gazebo plans, which he refuses to use.)
We bought some fence posts from George and have started getting our fence up. George is selling us some of his old ewes next spring. We are also getting serious about goats. We have added more pets to our lives. Two barn cats, Walter and Irving, given to us by a friend who could no longer care for them. We also now have Sparky, a beagle who wandered into our lives and has decided to stay. We got another horse, Maggie. And another mule, Skippy. Sassy and Cricket remain with us.
Marley is currently on the three-groundhog-a-month plan.
Betty has started to paint her nails. Not really. But she should. In fact, I have thought of getting her ears pierced.
Wilma has learned to carry an entire tree trunk in her mouth, and she is believed to be the one who ripped the downspouts off the house.
Screech did not make it through his first year of life. We buried him by the magic tree, next to Bob.
Alex and I continue to enjoy our walks to the mailbox. We usually have one or two dogs with us. A few months ago, we decided to take Skippy and Maggie, to get them used to the place. But we felt bad about Cricket and Sassy, so we let them follow. All the dogs came. And Walter, the black-and-white barn cat. It was like a parade walking down Wilson Road.
“We are accumulating a lot of pets,” I said to Alex.
“We are,” he said.
“What do you think that’s all about?” I asked.
“Motherhood,” he said. “Fatherhood” He said he’s ready for another round. I said I’ve been ready for a first round for a while now.
And so the way this has worked out, we are going to do it. We are going to adopt a baby, a little girl living in an orphanage in China whom we have named Anna. His grandmother’s name. My grandmother’s name. We will leave in a few months to go get her, to bring her home.
“Well, I hope Anna likes pets,” I said to Alex this morning. It was a thrill to say her name, the biggest thrill in the universe.
“I hope she likes me,” he said. “She’ll have an old dad.”
“Oh, she’s hit the jackpot,” I told him.
“No, I have,” he said.
“No, I have,” I said.
“Okay, you have,” he said, at the exact same moment I said, “Okay, you have.”
It was the truth.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Portions of this book first appeared in somewhat different form in The Washington Post Magazine. My thanks to Bob Thompson, who saw through the chaos and came up with the original assignment, and T. A. Frail, whose insightful editing helped bring that project to life. I am grateful to my agent, Andrew Blauner, for having the idea to turn the series into a book, and for his patience and friendship. My sincere thanks also to Robin Michaelson, my editor at Bantam, for her intelligent editing and the spirited enthusiasm she brought to the project. To the people of the greater Scenery Hill area, thank you for passing on your stories and wisdom. To my friends and enormous family, I am more grateful than I can ever say. To Anna Levy, who remained in my imagination while I wrote this book, I thank you for providing the inspiration to finish it. And, of course, Alex, without whom none of this would have happened.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JEANNE MARIE LASKAS is a columnist for The Washington Post Magazine, where her “Significant Others” essays appear weekly. A contributing writer at Esquire, she also writes for numerous national magazines. She is the author of The Balloon Lady and Other People I Know and We Remember: Women Born at the Turn of the Century Tell the Stories of Their Lives in Words and Pictures. She lives and farms with her husband and daughter, along with their poodle, mutts, mules, sheep, and other animals at Sweetwater Farm in Scenery Hill, Pennsylvania.
This edition contains the complete text
of the original hardcover edition.
NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED.
FIFTY ACRES AND A POODLE
A STORY OF LOVE, LIVESTOCK, AND FINDING MYSELF ON A FARM
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Bantam hardcover edition published October 2000
Bantam trade paperback edition / January 2002
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Copyright © 2000 by Jeanne Marie Laskas.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 00-036075.
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