Bacon Scrapins – “Golden Doodle”

by Barry S. Wolfe

Bacon Scrapins are the little bits of meat left in the greasy fry pan. They’re tasty, but the nutrition needs searching for. This tale is a bacon scrapin.

BBQ banter. You never know where you’ll end up.

Our wives were inside. The three of us were standing around, for probably the season’s last BBQ on the back patio. Chilled brown bottles in hand, meat piled on a plate, waiting for the temperature to reach optimum. Louis’ puppy was stretched out on the patio stones, soaking up the last of the day’s heat.

“Louis,” Hank asked, “what’s the dog’s name?”

“It’s a pure-bred cross between a golden retriever and a poodle – a Golden Doodle. My wife paid big bucks for the little guy.”

“Name?” added Hank.

“The breeders give them long descriptive names, for registration, with the name of the kennel, the sire, and the dame, and then a name for the ‘out-pup’. They named this one something, something, something, ‘Doubloon’. Doubloon is for its colour, like a gold coin. When we get the registration papers, I’ll be able to tell you exactly. In any case, the long name says what the breeding means.”

“Louis,” said Hank, “my full name is Hendrick. To my parents, that says what it means. But everyone calls me ‘Hank’. ‘because that means what it says. What do you mean when you call it?”

“We call him ‘Loonie’.” The pup raised its head slightly and went back to snoozing. “He’s a crossbreed, and somewhere back in its gene pool, something got skipped, so he’s not the brightest match in the box. Not smart enough to rank as a doubloon, and a little bit dim, so we call him ‘Loonie’ – worth a little less but still valuable to us.”

Louis then scowled, paused and changed the subject, “Have your grandkids had any trouble on the playground at school?

“What do you mean by trouble?”, inquired Hank.

“Oh, fitting in. My son’s two are in grades 2 and 3 and they seem to be shunned by the bigger group of kids.” he replied.

“Shunned? At school? Shunned how?” I probed.

“The other kids don’t play with them on the playground. The others just run around and chatter in their own language. My grandkids can’t understand them, even though they speak English in the classroom with the teachers.” Louis complained. “They have a closed group and don’t let others join in. There are so many of them that they have taken over the playground – in our own community.” he finished with a scowl.

“Our own community?” Hank asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Yeah. Our own community. We were here first. Not long ago, everybody got along, but with this big influx in the last few years the new ones have taken over in numbers. Our kids are a minority of the mix in our own community.” he emphasized.

I looked at Louis. “Here first? Our own community? Scientists say the oldest human fossils, so far, were found near Morocco, north Africa. They’re about 300,000 years old. Everybody, all of us, started out there they say, and then we spread out in all directions, all over the globe. The scientists say humans eventually wandered over here across a land bridge between Asia and Alaska, following the caribou.

“The ‘first’ folks here are long gone. It seems we replace each other over time, don’t we? One group occupies a region, then the next one, and so on. We can occupy or own a parcel of land for a short time, but maybe there really isn’t any ours or theirs for very long?”

They both gave me ‘the look’. The ‘What the heck, smart-Alec?’ look. I shrugged, “Just sayin’.”

Just then Louis’s Golden Doodle jumped up from the stones and started barking at us, its front paws down and rear end up.

“What’s with the dog, Louis?” I asked.

“Loonie! Quiet Loonie!” Louis warned the dog. “Loonie means well, but he sometimes has trouble being friends with folks. You have to be calm, patient and non-threatening with him at first. Toss a small ball back and forth and he’ll play along. Invite him to come closer. Just talk gently to him. He’ll settle in soon enough.” he added.

Hank chuckled and said, “Maybe, we should advise our kids to do the same at school.”

I took a swallow and started loading the meat onto the BBQ.

Characters in these tales are fictional.

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