Huck: The Remarkable True Story of How One Lost Puppy Taught a Family--and a Whole Town--about Hope and Happy Endings Read Online Free PDF

board the train. Our imaginations took us all over the world to places we had only heard of but never been—Paris, Rome, and New Haven.
    Another of our favorite games was “school,” with each of us having a classroom full of imaginary students. Our older sister, Louise, had beautifully illustrated fairy-tale books. We’d pile into her bed, and she’d read to us. Our brother, Bill, collected baseball cards and taught us how to play a game where you would stand the cards against the floor molding and flick others to knock them down.
    During my grade-school years, my two best friends were Betsy Weldon, who lived next door, and Mary Beth Quinn, who lived at the end of the block. We’d sleep over at one another’s house. Often, when it was my turn to sleep at Betsy’s or Mary Beth’s, darkness would fall and I’d decide that life was really better back at my own house. The unfamiliar, creaking floors, the shadows on the walls, the intimidating parents in the next room, all made me long for the comfort of my own room and my own bed.
    I’d sneak out of bed and dial 336-5148, hoping the click, click, click of the spinning dial would not be overheard. The voice on the other end always said the same thing: “I’ll be right there.” My father would come and take me and my Raggedy Ann doll and my pillow home without making me feel embarrassed about being too homesick to stay the night at someone else’s house.
    Mary Beth’s family was the first on the block to get a color TV. She had Barbie dolls. Betsy’s family had the cast album to The Sound of Music , and a little room in the basement stocked with cans of food in case war broke out. They ate white toast with butter and cinnamon and sugar on it. I envied them all those things.
    But neither Betsy nor Mary Beth had a younger sister to boss around, or a brother who was a ham radio operator and could talk to people from all over. Through my eight-year-old eyes, they were not taken into New York City as often as we to see plays, or to have fancy dinners in restaurants where the waiter came over with a giant pepper mill. Their mothers did not play “Clair de Lune” on the piano, and I don’t know if their fathers packed all the neighborhood kids into the family station wagon to take them for ice cream as often as mine did.
    Everyone in the neighborhood did have a dog and we did, too. He was one of the largest on the block, a golden retriever, a birthday present for my brother, Bill, who named him “Scout.”
    On occasion, Scout would sneak out the back door, sending the entire neighborhood into a panic. “Scout’s loose! Scout’s loose!” The screams could be heard from front porches up and down the block. Sooner or later, Scout wandered home, having taken a swim in the brook or a run through the country club. Sometimes my father would take the family station wagon out, park it by the brook, and call to Scout, who sooner or later would come running. Even though the scenario was oft repeated, I was always scared when it happened. Surely the day would come when Scout would run away and not find his way home.
    As adults, my siblings and I all look back on those Connecticut days as the happiest, most stable time of our childhood. Eventually my father had some shattering financial setbacks, and his heart disease went from a disease he could live with to a disease likely to kill him. He often could not work.
    When he’d fall asleep in front of the television, or reading a book, or close his eyes while listening to music, I’d stare at him to see if he was still breathing. When I left for school each morning, I wondered if he’d be alive when I got home.
    For all of us, life became unmoored and stayed that way for many, many years. My mother struggled single-handedly to support four kids and a sick husband. She was a nurse, though she had started her career as a research physicist. In her early twenties, she turned down the government’s invitation to work on the