8:55 a.m. - 2004-10-26
grass hut
My mother and her sister had written the song in honor of their family pet back when they were young and forced to while away hours on cross-Texas car trips, she'd turn to tell us, implying to my sister and I that peaceful, constructive, sibling-relation alternatives existed in our cramped and sweaty backseat. Then, adopting the somber baritone of celluloid aboriginal chieftain-types everywhere, she would sing:
In Hawaii-land there lived a dog,
Named Hoochie Poochie Henry Hogg.
He lived in a little grass hut (woof! woof!)
Even though he was a mutt (woof! woof!)
That dog, Hoochie Poochie Henry Hogg
My 5 year old sister would squirm and clap and sing along. I was two years older and took my cues from my stepfather, who drove in cool silence; aviator sunglasses scanning the bleak Texas landscape as if the sagebrush harbored Chinese gun-ships. I tried to affect a similar air of masculine detachment, staring out the window as the ladies chanted and "woofed", but my lips moved in time to the familiar, nonsensical verse, and in my mind I heard the drums and smelled the lava.
Yesterday, in Hawaii-land, my cousin and I participated in a race sponsored by a breast-cancer research organization. We wore on our backs pink memorial placards on which we wrote the name of his mother, half of the aforementioned songwriting team. I was ten when she fell victim to that disease, and haven't spoken to God since.
The final leg of the race ran parallel to a palmy beachside park, in the shadow of Diamond Head crater. "The perfect patch of real estate upon which to erect a little grass dog-hut!" I thought, my oxygen-starved brain collapsing in response to this ill-conceived experiment in athleticism. The long-forgotten song came back to me as my cousin (3rd place) and the rest of the pack pulled away.
(Woof! Woof!)
