I fear that these poor lost dogs may be the shadow of a future journey if we don’t watch out.

Greyhound Tragedy

She wanted her life to be a movie magazine tragedy like the death of a young star with long lines of people weeping and a corpse more beautiful than a great painting, but she was never able to leave the small Oregon town that she was born and raised in and go to Hollywood and die.

Though it was the Depression, her life was comfortable and untouched because her father was the manager of the local Penney’s and financially compassionate to his family.

Movies were the religion of her life and she attended every service with a bag of popcorn. Movie magazines were her Bible that she studied with the zealousness of a doctor of divinity. She probably knew more about movies than the Pope.

The years passed like the subscriptions to her magazines: 1931, 1932, 1933, 1934, 1935, 1936, 1937, until 2 September 1938.

Finally it was time to make her move if she were ever going to go to Hollywood. There was a young man who wanted to marry her. Her parents were very enthusiastic about his prospects. They approved of him because he was a Ford salesman. ‘It’s a company with a fine tradition,’ her father said. Things did not look good for her.

She spent months building up the courage to go down to the bus station to find out how much the fare to Hollywood cost. Sometimes she spent whole days thinking about the bus station. A few times she even got dizzy and had to sit down. It never dawned on her that she could have called on the telephone.

She made it a point during those nervous months never to go by the bus station. Thinking about it all the time was one thing but actually seeing it was another.

Once she was driving downtown with her mother and her mother turned on to the street where the bus station was located and she asked her mother to please turn down another street because she wanted to buy something at a store on that street.

Some shoes.

Her mother thought nothing of it and made the turn. She didn’t think to ask her daughter why her face was red but that was not unusual because she seldom thought to ask her anything.

One morning she was going to talk to her about all the movie magazines that came in the mail. Some days they would jam up the mailbox, so that she would have to use a screw-driver to get the mail out. But her mother had forgotten about it by noon. Her mother’s memory had never been able to last until twelve. It usually pooped out around 11.30, but she was a good cook if the recipes were simple.