The Coonridge Digest: Remarkably logical…and a bit profound?

Greetings from the Ridge.

Last week Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld addressed the V.F.W. in Reno, Nev. He said that the problem in Iraq had nothing to do with the administration’s policies, but rather the lack of will in our own country. He said, "And while some argue for tossing in the towel, the enemy is waiting and hoping for us to do just that." No blame for him or the administration.

I couldn’t help but think about Morey Hunter.

Morey was the town’s handyman. To my knowledge he never had a steady job in his life, but if you needed help for a day, Morey would be the one to call. If you found him early enough in the morning he’d even show up sober.

But the most peculiar and memorable thing about Morey was his dog Bertram. Bertram would follow Morey everywhere. He’d eat with him, sleep in the same bed, and it was the town’s daily amusement to find that the dog was Morey’s most trusted advisor.

Morey talked to Bertram. Oh, not the commonplace "Here boy," and "fetch," but about headier matters such as macro economics and quantum physics. Morey claimed with a straight face that he’d first met Bertram when they were both attending the University of Iowa, and that

after college Bertram had become so enamored with Morey’s tales of the pastoral lifestyle in Coonridge that he returned home with him to live out the rest of his life.

Bertram, said Morey, majored in philosophy, but was equally well-versed in economics, political science, and knew more than the average dog about the origins of several Sino-Tibetan languages. He said the dog was conversant in Burmese.

Morey and Bertram used to sit on the concrete stoop in front of the post office to discuss the events of the day. The post office being the one place in town that most of us visited during a day’s time, it wasn’t difficult to overhear their conversations. They seldom argued, but they seemed to have an intellectual respect for each other’s opinions. I can remember walking into a mid-June conversation as Morey was saying, "Bertram, there is no way that Voltaire’s philosophy of civil liberties could stand up in a multi-cultural society!" Then he’d stop and listen as Bertram would say nothing for several seconds, finally ending with Morey’s pronouncement that, "Well, if you put it that way, I suppose you’re right."

The casual listener would stop a minute to listen to these two great minds battle it out in front of the night-drop box, and then the eavesdropper would meander down the walk, shaking his head and wondering if we were spending enough on research into mental illness.

The local newspaper would occasionally receive letters to the editor with Bertram’s paw print as the signature. As Morey put it, "Well, you don’t expect a dog to be able to write his name, do you?"

Bertram and Morey would often be gone for days at a time. In a small town this does not go unnoticed, and when they’d return a few days later Morey claimed that they were on a fact-finding junket, or sometimes he’d simply say, "Bertram was in need of a sabbatical."

The strangest thing about this old man with the philosopher dog is that he.. rather, they… made pretty good sense. When Morey and his dog would wander into the local cafè during a discussion of baseball, Bertram, according to Morey, had come up with the ideal pitching rotation for the Cardinals and had worked out a series of trades that might very well put the Cubs into contention. Other than the rather pronounced fact that Morey was completely loony for spending his days debating a dog, the two were remarkably logical and sometimes even a bit profound.

It was Bertram who predicted the summer’s gas prices, the decline of technology stocks, and even hinted at cure for bird flu. Joke as we might about the loon and his talkative pooch, when Morey would lean back in his chair and say, "Well, Bertram was telling me…" we’d listen. We’d listen hard.

Morey never named names, but we all knew that he’d receive phone calls every spring, asking if maybe Bertram had given a hint as to when to plant corn.

As Rumsfeld blamed the administration’s critics for the lack of progress in Iraq, and by implication branding anyone as un-American who opposes the war, I wondered which was worse… a dog-talking lunatic who makes good sense or… well, never mind.

You ever in Coonridge, stop by. We may not answer the door, but you’ll enjoy the trip.