25/10/2026
Welcome back to Sunday stories:
Volume 1 - Edition 9.
One of my favorite rites of youth was the ever-challenging art form of picking up a smooth, flat stone and skipping it across the local creek, river, pond, lake. Etc.
It's hard to forget one summers day where just below the dam at Palisades Kepler State Park, near my home of Bertram, I picked up such a stone and flung it onto the Cedar River.
Skip......skip......skip, skip, skip, skip, skip, you get it. Probably 35 times. Hall of fame throw that I'll never forget.
That's the best metaphor I know to describe this week's post.
This could be a 100-page tome, and of course, I'm going to break this entire story-saga-lived experience into many pieces over time. I will "skip this" across the FB feed over the next many weeks and we'll see just how many times this tale can capture your hearts and inspire.
It is also a promise kept to my dear friend Angelica, who as you know, was promoted to her heavenly address this past spring.
When I shared this story with her in the Salsa Guy Cafe dining room months ago, we were both moved to tears and when this accomplished, career journalist tells you this is a book-movie or both: I told her I had scripted a rough draft on a yellow pad years ago that to this day, remains in a bankers box waiting for a chance to be told: She got mad at me for putting something so unique away and "hidden in the dark." Well, my friend, today this story is to be told and like a lit candle in a dark room, I hope it brings you a sense of wonder and joy....
Let's just call this: "A Boy and His Dog."
This AI assisted compilation of 3 real pictures is emblematic of my youth. Growing up in the woods and streams (Big Creek-Abbe Creek) near Bertram.
Heidi was our family pet. A gorgeous German Shepherd that came into our lives after our first Shepherd Kelly, passed away suddenly one summers evening.
It was my first week of Junior High at McKinley. I had gone out for football and on the 2nd day of practice, decided I would rather spend my free time in the woods and streams around our house. It was my childhood passion, and I would not surrender it for something that seemed fun, but certainly NOT a priority I wanted to pursue. I simply walked off the practice field and parked myself on the front steps of the school where I knew Mom would be looking for me. I had just checked out a book from the school library called "Ri**es for Waite." It won the Newberry award decades ago and I just couldn't keep my eyeballs from this compelling civil war era storyline.
I was immersed in a new chapter and oblivious to everything around me when suddenly there was this wet tongue licking my ear!
Clearly startled, I look over at a black, furry, energetic German Sheperd puppy giving me an enthusiastic HELLO and at the end of the leash was Mom, with a smile on her face that I will never, ever forget. I called that moment "our first kiss!"
Heidi was my shadow for the next 6 years of my life until I moved to Ames to attend Iowa State in August of 1980.
She was an incredible family pet and we were inseparable. She did have one "bad habit" that was pretty hard to train out of her. Heidi loved to chase cars. Sadly, one summer evening, she was hit by a pickup truck and was in terrible shape. Making this long story short, I spent the next 72 hours, day and night, outside on a blanket at her side continually until slowly, but surely, she began to regain her strength and eventually, fully recovered from this terrible accident. Yes, we were then bonded in a way I have no words to describe.
One night while running the rural roads under a full moon, we startled a coyote in the ditch eating on a deer carcass and my dear Heidi became my protector with the very startled wild animal first attacking, and then running away as fast as the legs would permit. Only weeks later, July 3rd to be exact, under another full moon run, I was startled when a skunk charged right at me down the middle of the roadway. Heidi was well behind me and would typically run off leash so she could enjoy the sights and smells around us. When the skunk was only a couple feet in front of me still in full charge, Heidi was a black flash that suddenly whizzed past and in the next few seconds, the threat was "silenced." Oh yeah. We both got a full-load, direct dose of nature's least favorite perfume.
I remember spending the morning of July 4th in the shower with several cans of tomato juice, sad that I was missing out on the Wimbledon finals, as we both needed several rounds of treatment before we could be near people again.
On my birthday, August 21, 1980, I departed for Ames borrowing my parents Volkswagon Rabbit to move my belongings. Before departing, Heidi and I took a very long walk in the woods and exchanged very tearful goodbye "for now." It was a like a rite of passage to manhood and I missed her dearly: EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.
Apparently, Heidi missed me too. Only weeks after my departure, Heidi disappeared from our home! My parents and siblings were sick with worry and spent hours and hours looking for her.
Sadly, this includes driving and walking the roads near our home, searching the ditches for what they feared would be a very tragic ending to our beloved family pet.
I knew NOTHING about any of this. They understood I would be devastated and then immediately come home to find her. They wanted me to concentrate on my studies.
Ultimately, they didn't share me this story with me until MANY YEARS later! I'll never forget that day! I can't unhear this tale and it is "branded" on my heart until I breathe my last breath before heaven.
3 days after Heidi went missing, the phone rings at the house. On the other end of the call is a farmer near Maxwell, Iowa. "Ma'am, I seem to have found your dog drinking out of the cattle trough here at my farm!"
My Heidi traveled 108 miles to this farm in her quest to "rescue me" and was only 8 miles east of the Iowa State Campus in Ames!
I'll tell you what this is: LOVE, DEVOTION. LOYALTY. Here we go, tears flowing freely...
It is this "essence" that I believe has shaped me into the man I aspire to be every single day. How can we NOT learn from this simple act of courage and dedication from my childhood pet!
Enough for today. Tonight, believe it or not, is this month's full moon. I will be on the rural roads of Bertram with my two German Shepherds to remember this profound story, the love and companionship of my pets and the gratitude that I am blessed to find in my life....
I pray this helps you start a quest to find that in your own lives.
