This week I read an article in The Advocate, my newspaper of choice, about how some legislative body, somewhere, obviously with time on its hands and nothing better to do, is considering passing a law against people leaving either their children or pets alone in parked vehicles. Admittedly, I cannot recall which legislative body, whether Federal or State, or where this discussion is occurring, Washington or Baton Rouge, and since I’m too lazy to go locate the article again, I cannot provide that information; but, then again, who and where are quite irrelevant. The important thing is that the Government wants to make it a crime for people to leave their children and/or pets alone in a vehicle. And we’re not talking about leaving them unattended for hours either. We’re talking about even the few minutes it would take for a parent and/or owner to use an ATM, dash into a convenience store for an overpriced gallon of milk, or pop into the local post office to pick up his or her economic-stimulus check from Uncle George so he or she can afford to pay for that overpriced gallon of milk. 

Now, granted, I do realize that it’s cruel to leave living creatures, human or animal, alone in a vehicle, with its windows tightly closed, on a hot day. And, yes, I also realize that the temperature inside a closed vehicle, on a hot day, can become dangerously high in no time at all. Moreover, I recognize that even with its windows open, a vehicle’s interior can become rather toasty. On the other hand, I think this legislative body needs to find more important issues to discuss (taxes, health-care, schools, the economy), perhaps because I myself have some fond memories of times when my daddy left my siblings (Vicki and Bud) and I, plus our three dogs, in the family vehicle on sweltering summer days back in Fairburn, Georgia.  

Our excursions to town with Daddy usually occurred twice a month on a Friday since that was when he got paid at Taylor Gas, where he was an “Installation Mechanic” (a fancy title he came up with for someone who did what he did, which was hook up gas heaters, stoves, and hot water heaters). Daddy’s destination was always Gene’s Bar & Pool Room, located on Highway 92, one of the two thoroughfares in Fairburn, the other being Roosevelt Highway, which doubled as Main Street. Not that he told Mama this was his destination, since she didn’t much care for his drinking. Instead, Daddy would tell Mama that he had to get a haircut, have his shoes resoled, pick up some Prince Albert Tobacco (he rolled his own cigarettes), or “see a man about a dog.” The problem with his lying, however, was that we kids invariably jumped up and down, whined, and pleaded to go, and Mama would say, “Bill, take them noisy young’uns with you; get ‘em outta my hair for a spell.” So, squealing with delight, my siblings and I would pile onto the backseat of the old Plymouth, yell for the dogs to join us, and try out best to ignore Daddy, who climbed in, mumbling and grumbling under his breath, slammed the door, and gunned the engine of that old Plymouth. 

Once in town, since Daddy didn’t want us kids to know where he was really going, he would park in front of Amos Pharmacy, which faced Roosevelt Highway and was around the corner from Gene’s. Then Daddy would tell us “mind your manners,” get out, again slam the Plymouth’s door, and depart—leaving his kids and the family dogs all alone in a vehicle in the Georgia heat.

Of course, the windows were all rolled down so we kids could amuse ourselves by doing things like seeing who could spit the farthest (Bud usually won) and who could yell the loudest at passersby then duck the fastest so that no one saw him or her; and the dogs could stick their heads out, growl at passersby, and sniff the city air (I use the term “city” loosely since, at that time, Fairburn had a population around 1,500, give or take a couple hundred). And the funny thing was, even though we lived in the Deep South and the summers could get pretty darn hot, not one of us ever suffered from heat stroke. Granted, the dogs did slobber and pant a lot, since that’s what dogs do, but I don’t recall us kids even breaking a sweat, although we probably did since a fair amount of time usually passed before we would glimpse Daddy rounding the corner, wobbling a little as he walked, and heading back to where he’d left his kids and dogs all alone in a vehicle on a summer’s day in Georgia. But one thing for sure, my daddy didn’t look like he thought he’d committed any kind of crime. To the contrary, he looked pretty darned pleased about something.