I am reposting the Saga of Speedy since I just shared it with You know you lived in Pueblo if you remember . . . I have revised it a little. The Saga of Speedy by Norman Kincaide A saga is an old Norse tale of fantastic deeds performed by legendary figures. These tales weave a tapestry of fact and fiction to create a story every bit as great, if not greater than, those who performed the heroic deeds. The Saga of Speedy, however, is all true. They are facts verifiable by those who witnessed these fantastic events. The Sanford Kincaide Ranch was home to several dogs from the 1930s through 1984, Tuffy, Bootsie, Pokey, Lassie, Stubby, Mitzi, Andy, Sam, Doc, and Jake. But the one who outshined them all in notoriety and fame, though residing with us for less than a year, and who was the smallest in physical stature, was, Speedy. In the spring of 1965 (I don’t know what it was about 1965, but it was chock full of interesting events), my grandfather, Carl G. Duncan happened upon a story about how if you bought a Chihuahua dog for an asthmatic child that the dog would take on the asthma. I don’t know from what Norse or any other Saga this notion came from, but this is part of the Saga of Speedy. So I went with Granddad Duncan in his Dodge Dart with the push button transmission to a home west of Pueblo City Park on Goodnight Street. There we perused a litter of Chihuahua puppies. I picked one out and we took him home to the ranch. He didn’t have those shivering fear episodes and angst ridden eyes I had seen with other Chihuahua’s. I think he was a mix. Anyway, he slept with me, and we named him Speedy, after Speedy Gonzales in the Warner Brothers cartoons and because nobody could catch him. He could scoot around the yard and turn too quickly for anybody to catch him until he grew tired, thirsty or hungry. Speedy thought he was a big dog, he used to chew on Lassie, our older, extremely patient farm dog. He had to go every where with me, rode with me while I drove the hay truck. I took him hunting. But he ended up scaring squirrels and rabbits to cover before I could get a shot at them. My younger brother, Craig, teased the poor little guy unmercifully. Speedy took revenge by defecating under Craig’s bed. The only two photographs extant of Speedy are those of him in the ditch in the Sanford home backyard. These were his grown proportions. He was a good enough natured little cuss, but he thought he had big cojones, which he also endeavored to use in excess and on anything manageable. He would not tolerate being left in the boy’s basement room while everybody else was watching Combat on TV. He’d howl, whine and bark until I went down to let him out. I think he was particularly enamored of reruns of Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone. Speedy also jumped into the Bessemer Ditch during the Great Raft Race of 1965. Craig was supposed to watch him, but let him go and Speedy jumped into the canal when he saw me on the raft with my cousin, Greg Hoath. Speedy also left his mark on some memorable items. He chewed on a corner of the afghan knitted for us by our great-grandmother, Nellie Kincaide, which did not endear Speedy to my mother. He also chewed on at least one piece of my Sculptured Chess Set by Ganine “Gothic,” which I still have. The black pawn with the scratches around the helmet and without the felt covering the bottom, remain the marks of Speedy. In the fall when they stopped running water in the Bessemer Ditch, I hunted along its course. From time to time I’d find stuff, mostly golf balls that had floated all the way from the Pueblo City Park golf course, through which the Bessemer Ditch flowed. One day we happened upon a muskrat. Instead of running from us the muskrat scurried in a circle. Speedy thought he would take him on. But no sooner had Speedy attempted attack the muskrat, the muskrat bit him. Speedy backed off and I shot the muskrat. The ditch company didn’t want muskrats compromising the banks of the canal. I cut the tail off and gave it to Speedy, who treasured it as if he made the kill himself, prancing triumphantly back to the house with it between his teeth. It became his favorite toy. I’m sure he showed Lassie his prize and Purple Heart wound. Not long after that episode, I went hunting with Speedy late in the afternoon way out on the prairie. We didn’t put up anything. On the way back, however, as it was getting dark, I scared up a Jack rabbit. Speedy took off after him. I shot the rabbit, which went down a hole. Jack rabbits are not burrowers, like cottontails. If they go down hole it’s because they are wounded. I approached the hole and remembered step-grandfather Sanford’s advice: Never stick your hand down a hole in the prairie. I looked around and found a piece of baling wire. Speedy, in the mean time, had his nose in the hole. I pulled him back. Step-grandfather Sanford’s other advice: Never let your dog stick his nose down a hole in the prairie. I put a loop in the wire and managed to snare the Jack rabbit’s leg and pulled him out. Speedy jumped on him and I pushed him off. It was the biggest Jack rabbit I ever shot. I wasn’t very big then, maybe not even 65 pounds, I didn’t grow very fast because of asthma. I don’t know how much it weighed, but with my rifle and carrying the rabbit, I felt like I had a load. I held it high and then over my shoulder, so Speedy wouldn’t chew on it. The sun was now down, and it was completely dark when I passed the corrals and finally arrived home. “Where have you been?” Mom asked. “I shot a Jack rabbit.” “Take it outside. Dinner will be ready in about an hour.” I left the rabbit on the back porch, went down stairs and cleaned my .22 rifle and put it away. I turned on the back porch light, and went out to dress out the rabbit. It was gone. I looked down at Lassie. She looked up at me with an innocent grin, like: “It wasn’t me.” I looked around on either side of the back porch; no rabbit. I walked across the backyard and around the back of the garage where we had our trash burn barrels. There was Speedy devouring the very last bit of fur and flesh from my Jack rabbit. I couldn’t believe it. He looked like a football with legs. “OH, MY GOD!” I ran to the backdoor and into the kitchen. “Speedy! Speedy ate my Jack rabbit!” “What?” Came the response in unison from the living room. “SPEEDY ATE MY JACK RABBIT!” We all rushed outside to see Speedy, in the dim light of the back porch, gingerly wobbling around the back yard. “OH, MY GOD!” We burst out in unison. “He ate the whole thing! Can you believe that? It was the biggest Jack rabbit I ever shot.” I complained. “No.” Marilee responded. “Go look behind the garage by the barrels, there’s nothing.” We all went to look with a flashlight. There was nothing, not even any hair. Poor Speedy couldn’t even lie down. He was one sorry looking critter. Then I remembered a Warner Brothers cartoon about a dog who exploited a cat and mouse to extort money and collect reward money for a lost cat. He made enough money from this scheme to buy a butcher shop. He then proceeded to indulge his gluttony until he ended up a corpulent unmovable blob on the vet’s examination table. He lay on his back unable to move. The cat and mouse showed up. The dog managed a weak smile. They opened his mouth and placed a funnel therein. The dog started to sweat bullets (even though dogs don’t sweat, this was just a cartoon). The cat and mouse swung a vat of gravy over the head of the dog to pour down the funnel and down his throat. I knew that dogs suffered from gluttony, but Speedy really proved the case, QED. Speedy, very shortly thereafter, regurgitated most if not all of my Jack rabbit. He probably came back to it later. “Don’t let him in the house.” Mom commanded. And so, Speedy was banished from the house and found comfort with Lassie. He, however, found another calling. He ran off, joined, then, commanded, a pack of dogs that held court in the St. Charles River bottom between the South Road bridge and the bridge on 27th Lane. He even left his beloved Muskrat tail behind. Speedy had been missing for a week or so, when I drove the car (I didn’t have a driver’s license yet, but you could get away with this in the county if you didn’t go very far.) along the South Road to 27th Lane with Celeste, Marilee, and Craig, looking for Speedy. We were crossing the 27th Lane bridge when we saw a pack of dogs in the river bottom on the east side of the bridge. There was a very small dog chasing the bigger ones around, and they were afraid of him. I stopped the car, got out and called: “Speedy! Come back, Speedy!” He stopped chasing the other dogs for a second, turned and listened. “Speedy! Come back, Speedy!” He shrugged off this pitiful entreaty as if to say: “Naaaa.” He resumed chasing the bigger dogs. The whole pack then disappeared into the brush. We never saw him again. We envisioned him challenging the bigger dogs for leadership of the pack. “Hey, Speedy, have you seen any combat?” “Well, I’ve seen a little on TV.” Speedy engaging in a vicious, dog stare-down with a rival for command of the pack. Thereafter we imagined him holding forth in the river bottom surrounded by a coterie of slavish toadies waiting on his every beck and call. “What now, Speedy? What now, Boss?” “Bring me the one in heat.” “Yes, Speedy! Yes, right away, Boss!” “And bring me some muskrat tail jerky.” “Yes, Speedy, muskrat jerky, right away.” “Hey, that’s an idea. Hey, who has the corner on jerky in Pueblo?” “I don’t know.” “Well, find out! Jerk! Yeah, Speedy’s Muskrat Tail Jerky. Now that’s an idea.” “Hi, Speedy.” “Hi, Babe, how ya doin?” “I’m fine, now. Tell me about the Jack Rabbit.” “Okay. Here, have some jerky.” So we embellished his saga with our own imaginings. When my sister, Marilee, and I were hanging Chile Christmas lights at our duplex on the west side of Colorado Springs in December 1996, she remarked: “Hey, Louie, these Chile lights remind me of Speedy,” I looked at them. “The red ones.” She added. She was right. From then on I could never look at those Chile lights the same. Now we just call them: Speedy Lights. The Saga of Speedy remains one of the most venerated heroic tales of the Sanford Kincaide Ranch and Pueblo County to this day. After all if the Kincaides could eat 13 dozen chocolate chip cookies in one day, which Celeste and Marilee had baked one morning, surely a Chihuahua mix, named, Speedy, could eat a whole Jack rabbit at one sitting.
Posted on: Mon, 26 Aug 2013 02:07:18 +0000
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