Addie and Her Dog

Here is a photo of my mom’s paternal grandmother Addie Hine Bucklin with one of the dogs she had during her life.  I’ve posted a story about Addie and her dog Sammy.  In that post, I shared an old voice recording of Addie talking about how her dog Sammy got run over by a truck.  But don’t worry, he commenced to getting better shortly after the incident took place.  When I wrote that story, I was mainly talking about how wonderful it was to have a recording of her voice from around 1942.  Since she died shortly after I was born, I wasn’t familiar with her voice.

When I first heard the recording, I didn’t know who was telling the story.  I had to get my mom and my aunt to identify the speakers in it.  Since I was used to seeing photos of Addie with a scowl on her face, I assumed her voice was the more shrill one.  I was so glad that I was wrong.  Addie is the one telling the sweet, warm story about her little dog that made it through a scary incident.  I have listened to it many times over the past seven years because it helps me to ‘see’ her as the caring person that she must have been.  She obviously liked children, because she gave birth to a dozen of them!

One of her children was Fred Bucklin.  My cousins and I knew him as Grandpa.  He and Grandma (Myrtle Sylvia Phenice Bucklin) were the parents of five children, including my mom, Betty Lou.  My grandparents had considered naming my mom after her grandparents.  Addie was married to Louis Bucklin, so the proposed name for my mom was Addie Lou.  When Addie heard that, she nixed the idea.  She thought Addie was a too old-fashioned name.  So instead, my mom was named Betty Lou.  The name fit her.  I think my mom looked up to her Grandma Addie.  When she was young, she wanted to grow up and have a dozen children herself.  Actually, she wanted to have thirteen.  My mom was a little competitive, so she thought she could outdo her grandmother by having one more than she had.  In the end, though, she “only” had half as many as Addie had.  Lax, lax, lax.

The other thing I realized about Grandma Addie was that she was fond of animals.  After I wrote the post about her and Sammy, cousin Joseph shared a photo of Addie with a dog.  I also noticed that one of the early photos of the Hine family in 1892 shows a dog with the family.  Then I found the photo I’m posting today.  Again she is posing with a little dog.  It’s possible that this little dog or the one in the other photo could be Sammy.  Even though she took photos with her pets, nobody ever bothered to give the name of the pets.  And it wasn’t just dogs she was fond of, there are a few photos of her with a cat.  I also have a picture of her with some cows, but I don’t know if she considered them pets.  Even though the cows were a business venture, some people do get attached to those animals.

My mom did not share that affection for animals that her grandmother had.  We had pets when we were growing up, but Mama was not too fond of them.  If we ever found a stray animal, she would insist on cleaning it with Lysol before she let it hang around for any length of time.  I remember her doing this with dogs, cats, and a turtle.  I don’t know how she got away with doing that to a cat.  Most cats fight their selves away from any kind of smelly water.  I would think Lysol water would be particularly unappealing to cats.  Maybe my mom wanted them to run away!  After we had cleaned them, she would let us keep them.  But she mostly just tolerated them as long as they stayed outside.  It was only our little black dog Mitsy that was allowed inside.  She must have been fond of him.