The End Of The Marriage

    Time progressed and we were all getting along fairly well. Ernie met and married Atma, a girl from the neighborhood Harry's station was in and was one of the regular customers on the shoe store. Harry had a rather expensive hobby. In his living room were two 50 gallon salt water aquariums fìlled with tropical fish. Harry was also an extremely avid fan of the San Francisco Forty Niners football team. Mter watchi11g one of the games with Harry at his house when the team lost， he became irrationally over emotional. He went into fit,and tipped one of the fish tark onto the floor. There was salt water and fish everywhere. i didn't understand why he was acting that way,he hadn't even lost any money on a bet. Erin was too young to remember this incident, but it was not the kind of behavior i wanted her seeing. So Carlene and i decided it was time to find another place.
    It didn't take long. Ernie and Atma had found a two bedroom house that was
affordable if we moved in with them and shared a11 the expenses. We a11 got along and they liked Erin, so it was a good arrangement. Time went on and Erin grew big enough that she was getting pretty mobile. She was already crawling around the house at 5 months old, and we had to be careful not to accidentally step on her. So we got her a baby walker. It was about two and a half feet in diameter with the seat inside of a flat, plastic table resembling a doughnut. 4 legs attached it to a thin lower ring that the wheels were attached to. i liked to refer to it as Erin's house saucer. 1t had six wheel suspension and two feet drive! It was kil1d of neat to put Erin in it and watch her scoot around the house. It helped her learn to walk quick and at 7 months she was walking around the house without it.
    While living with Ernie and Atula, i stumbled on a couple amazing things.
Everyone knows dogs are territorial. When one dog barks, it sets off one or two more of the neighborhood dogs to do the same. They are talking to each other and it's as if the first dog says, 'Be aware you guys, i'm on duty here". Then the second dog says, "Yeah, well i 'm on the job too". The third dog says, "So what, you guys just keep to your areas, because I'm watching things over here".
    Well roosters are the exact same way.When one crows, it sets off others to do the same. I've told you all this to set up something that happened one day. Ernie and At1na had a dog who's 11ame escapes me for the moment. She was a cross between a cocker spaniel and a collie. The dog was blind in one eye, rarely barked, and deaf, or so we thought. But she was smart. Though she couldn't hear us, she would respond to hand signals.
    One day i happened to be in the backyard with the dog. She was watching the
birds flying around, and just occupying herself by playing, throwing a tennis ball with her head and chasing it. This is when i discovered that roosters are territoriallike dogs, and something else remarlcable. A rooster on one side of us crowed. This made a rooster in back of us crow, and then one on the other side of us did the same. As i listened to his and watched the dog, she perked her ears and looked in the direction of the first rooster,Then she did the same thing when the second rooster crowed, and again at the third. The dog wasn't totally deaf.it was just limited to hearing sow1ds in a small range. Wow, just a small miracle in itself that i happened to be there and was able to see that she could hear the roosters.