Chapter 10: Dog Biscuits and Dandelions

In addition to licorice, ice cream, and salt-water taffy, one of my favorite snacks of summertime was MilkBone Dog Biscuits. At least it was when I was about eight years old. My reasoning was simple. Dogs like biscuits. I like dogs. I like biscuits. Therefore, I must like dog biscuits.

My acquired taste amused my grandmother but she did not object. In fact, she encouraged my strange habit by buying me a small box of MilkBone Dog Biscuits.

My mother, on the other hand, was not nearly so appreciative of my diet choice. To put it politely, she panicked when she picked me up at the end of summer. I can still recall the shouting match that erupted between them over my dietary habits.

“You gave him what?” Joyce screamed at my grandmother as she rattled the box of dog biscuits under my her nose. “How could you give him dog biscuits for God’s sake?” My mother sniffed the open box and made a face as she dropped the dog treats on the kitchen table.

“Oh, there’s no need to worry. The goodies are nutritious and he likes them, and so does the dog. Besides, it ain’t killed either of them yet,” was my grandmother’s pragmatic reply.

Thank goodness, my appetitive for dog treats diminished over the winter.

As I was writing this book, I decided on a lark to try a nibble out of a dog biscuit, just for old time’s sake. It was nothing less than God-awful. It was like chewing on dust-flavored particleboard.

Then I read the list of ingredients (something I should have done before conducting the taste test):

Wheat Flour, Wheat Bran, Beef Meal, Beef Bone Meal, Milk, Wheat Germ, Beef, Tocopherols, Poultry By-Product Meal, Lamb Meal, Salt, Chicken Meal, Dried Beef Pulp, Dicalcium Phosphate, Bacon Fat, BHT, D-Activated Animal Sterol, Propyl-Gallate, Citric Acid, Brewers Dried Yeast, Whey, Choline Chloride, Dl-Alpha Tocopheryl Acetate, Calcium Pantothenate, Riboflavin, Malted Barley Flour, Casein, Sodium Metabisulfite, Zinc Sulfate, Calcium Carbonate, Copper Sulfate, Ethylenediamine Dihydriodide, Soy Lecithin, Iron Oxide, and more.

Iron oxide? I think that’s just a fancy name for rust. I don’t even want to know what Animal Sterol is. It’s amazing that I even survived childhood.

My other adventure in questionable food groups was an attempt to brew a batch of Dandelion Wine. Back in the day, illicit intoxicants such as beer and wine were difficult to obtain, especially when you were only eight years old. The difficulty was further increased by the fact my grandmother was a lifelong member of the local temperance society.

My friend and I had heard other adults talking about Dandelion Wine and how s-m-o-o-t-h and tasty it was. We decided to make a batch, just for us. I mean, how difficult could it be?

According to my “research” (talking to a friend of a friend who was in high school), all we needed were dandelions, yeast, water, a crock-pot, and a few weeks for it all to ferment. The yeast I could get from my grandmother’s kitchen. Dandelions were knee-deep in the backyard. There were several old mason posts in the barn. Water was accessible.

With youthful enthusiasm, we set about collecting dandelions, roots and all. After about an hour, we had enough to fill the mason pot. We carefully shook out most of the dirt and tossed the wilting flowers and green leaves into the pot along with a package of purloined yeast and a few gallons of water. We then hid the vat in the back of the barn and let it brew for a few weeks. We forgot about it until summer was nearly over.

In late August, we decided to check out our handy work. The yeasty stench of rotting and fermenting dandelions greeted us when we lifted the lid off the mason pot. The broth was a sickening mass of gray-green froth and a foul smelling liquid with a faint whiff of alcohol. It smelled bad enough that we thought it had to be real booze.

I dared him to take the first sip. He then doubled-dared me to try it. I responded with a triple-dare. After a few minutes of escalating dares back and forth to the?nth degree, we decided to each take a taste at the same time.

Human evaluation is a beautiful thing, as is the gag-reflex evolved to keep our ancestors from poisoning themselves with their own stupidity. Our reflexes were in tip-top shape as disgust gave way to unrelenting waves of nausea. We each barfed up breakfast and at least a few meals from the week before.

To say our concoction was appalling would be a world-class understatement.

August was the blur at the end of summer. The long lazy days of a school vacation, which seemed endless in June and July, suddenly began to fly by. September, once barely visible on the horizon, approached with the speed of an express train.

As a kid growing up in Kingston, I both hated and loved August. I hated the thought of the end of summer and a long winter with my mother. But I loved what August brought. For me August was the month of Dust Devils, and Thunder Math.

Movie stars may dance with wolves but I pranced with dust devils. My grandmother ran an open-air parking lot at Duxbury Beach and the flat sand parking lots were ideal breeding grounds for dust devils. I can remember chasing a group of dust devils around the parking lot for nearly an hour when I was about seven or eight.