It had just started as a regular day, where I had been enjoying myself in our drinking water and Travis was already yelling at me; I was just cooling off in some clean water! I didn’t want to leave so I just stuck out my tongue and then he threatened me, what kind of brother does that? Then I saw he meant business, I was so scared! I ran back to the house as fast as I could, screaming for mama so he could get in trouble and I sure did darn good at it cause she sees me and then says, “Travis, what on earth have you done to your little brother?” and as if he couldn’t get any scarier as he was he said, “Nothing yet. But if he doesn’t keep out of our drinking water, I’ll wear him a frazzle”. That’s something Papa always says when I’m raisin’ sand, and that’s when I realized it, Travis is going to be taking Papa’s place till he gets back from Abilene, so he’ll be even meaner! Then the next thing comes around and mamas taking his side! Then she holds me up by the ear to the point where I think I’m going to die. Now I‘m the one getting a pep talk and I have to go sit through a timeout in the dog run. The dog run is the cool shaded area between the two rooms of our log cabin where we would sometimes hang fresh-killed meat to cool over the night. So I sat there because they didn’t have enough kindness to be fair with me while Travis was over yonder getting water to put in the ash hopper. I sat there and Travis worked all until Mama called us over for dinner. After dinner, Travis and I went to our room and went to bed on the corn shuck mattress that Papa had made us and called it a night.

It was the next morning when the big yeller dog came. Travis found him when he went outside to get the day’s breakfast. He said the minute he opened the door and looked up he saw the meat was gone. And right under where the meat should’ve been was my big yeller dog. Now I’m gonna pause the story for a hot minute to say, I’ve never had a dog, I’ve always wanted a dog but I never got one. Travis had a dog once and it died from a snake bite so I never got a little buckaroos best pal. So I don’t get how all of a sudden Travis tries to abuse my starving dog. So I ran over and petted him till he stopped hollering and that’s when I got really mad. I yelled and hollered in protest; however, that didn’t seem to change Travis’s focus at all so I grabbed Mama’s laundry club and started swinging. I think I surprised Travis for making a fight at him but then Mama stepped in and took away my weapon. In my last hopes of saving my dog, I just yelled, “That’s my dog, you can’t kick him, he’s mine!” Now Old Yeller was standing up wagging his stub of a tail and licking the tears off my face then mama laughed, “Well Travis,” she said “looks like we got ourselves a dog”, I was in a feeze. my heart was racing faster than a panther chasing a stow. I felt like I had won the world! Mama convinced Travis to at least thinking about keeping him, but I didn’t care, I was keeping this dog no matter what. That’s how it all started.