Though it happened in the summer, this is a holiday story. It is about all the good stuff — love and loyalty, courage and reward. It is about community — about a tight knit neighborhood a long time ago.
It was a tree-lined street and not one house was like the other. Looking back, the people seem at once individual and archetypal. Next door on the south side was the doctor, his wife and their two sons. The younger son was in love with my older sister, but in the end, she married someone else.
On the other side was the school principal, a widow living with her parents and two daughters. Donna and Nancy were my best friends. We played every day: real dolls, paper dolls, and “screenplay,” where we made up stories and played all the parts.
Next on the north was Ronnie. His mother startled us by saying she had gone everywhere and bought everything, and there was “nothing left to live for.” Ronnie’s father was never there. “He works,” mother and son said in unison.
Across the way were the merchants and their only son — their “precious.” Next door to precious Michael was his best friend Lyle. Years later, Michael oversaw the chain of stores his father founded, and Lyle went from Harvard to prison for running a floating crap game on campus.
At the south end of the block was the Cookie Lady, but beware, she was also the neighborhood snitch. She sat on her front porch and waved and offered a cookie as we walked home from the school bus, but if you were planning to break a rule or a law, don’t do it where she could see. She loved to telephone mothers and say, “Do you know where your child is and what your child is up to?”
At the north end of the block were the two big houses. One belonged to the richest family in town. It seemed perfectly ordinary that the people who made the stuff sold in the store owned by Michael’s father lived in our neighborhood. Patti was nice and regular. We all liked her — not like Melinda who wore sausage curls, carried a purse and offered, “I will give you a nickel if you will be my friend.”
In the other big house was the man we all feared. We walked way around and out of the way to avoid passing his house. We rode our bikes in a pattern designed to avoid even a plausible sightline. Lyle took the lead in planning our routes and emphasizing the danger that lurked within and all around that big dark house. Michael stood rapt and nodding and we all followed instructions — that is, until once I threw caution to the wind and rode my bike straight in front of his house just to prove I could.
I had never heard of Nelson Mandela, but even back then I knew “courage is not the absence of fear, but triumph over it.” I did a wheelie after I survived. It was then that I was rewarded, and that is the heart of the story I am telling you.
Around the block was the accountant and his family. His daughter was my friend Flora. The accountant lived right across from the crime boss who employed him. German Shepherds roamed the perimeter of the boss’ grounds, and we became friends because I, too, had a German Shepherd.

My dog was a treat. She once saved my baby sister’s life by knocking her down before she could step into the street as a car whizzed by. My baby sister smacked my dog very hard on the nose and spoke harshly to her, but that was my sister; she never did get things right.
My dog went everywhere with me. She was trained to heel when walking, and she loped behind my blue Schwinn, tongue hanging but game. My dog walked me to the school bus every day and was sitting right there waiting when the afternoon bus dropped me off. That, by the way, is how the crime boss made my dog’s acquaintance, and then mine. The school bus stopped in front of his yard. There sat my dog on his lawn and there came the boss to see why. He stopped to chat, seemed to like my dog and me. My father warned me to “stay clear,” but nothing bad ever happened.
That is not to say my father was wrong. That crime boss once took the accountant’s family hostage to assure the CPA would not say the wrong things to the district attorney. Flora said her mother was afraid, but she was not. No one believed her, but telling stories, that was Flora, so we didn’t believe, but we didn’t argue with her either.
One afternoon I got off the school bus and my dog was not there. I ran home. My mother, who was no good with dogs and didn’t pay them much mind, had not seen her. When Father came home, he took an interest and a turn around the neighborhood to no avail. I could not sleep that night and I heard my father calling people, but I don’t know who.
It went on like that for days, and I became more and more miserable. The following Saturday I was at home and at loose ends without my dog; I decided I would ride my bike right past the scary house at the end of the block. It was as if the sad fearing erased the fear, so I did.
It was when I was doing the wheelie in celebration that I was rewarded. I heard my dog bark. I pedaled home as fast as I could and told my father.
“I heard her. The bark came from the bad man’s basement.”
My father said it could be that one dog bark sounds like another. I said, “I know my dog’s bark.”
How is it word spreads in a neighborhood? I don’t know, but it does, and fast as lightening. As my father marched down the block, all the kids on both sides of the street came out to watch. Lyle and Michael and Donna and Nancy, Ronnie and the doctor’s sons all stood behind trees to see and not to be seen. Even the Cookie Lady left her porch to watch as my father marched down the block to confront the dog-napper.
My father banged on the scary house door and stood erect. He had to bang a second time and wait and then the man came. My father’s voice boomed out, “I have come for my dog.”
If the man said anything, it was too quiet to hear, but then I heard my father say in his I-will-brook-no-argument voice, “I will wait here until you bring her.”
Then it was over, and the relief was palpable. My dog came bounding out, and my father’s shoulders relaxed as he called the dog to heel. The relief spread down the block. All the kids stepped into view and stared as man and dog walked by.
When my dog saw me, she broke training. She left Papa’s side and ran to me licking, yipping, and I swear to you, laughing.
That night as I lay in bed, I thought: In this life, we must muster our courage or live in misery. I dropped a hand over the side of the bed and stroked my sleeping dog. Those scary people give us no choice.