About two years ago, a friend stopped me at church and asked if I could help him with a problem. He and his wife had purchased a new two-story modular home. The house was brought in on four semis and put in place by crane. They planned to save some money by doing the drywall connecting and trim work themselves. After about two weeks of making a large mess, they asked me for help. Being a homebuilder, I was not thrilled with the whole modular-home program, and I really did not want to take on the task. But they were friends.

They had purchased a piece of land several miles from town, so we always tried to bring everything we would need for a day’s work when we headed to the job site in the morning. We also brought food for breaks and lunch. The crew was my father, two other men and me. My father often rode to work with me in my van.

We got to the house at about 7:30 one morning. At about 9 a.m. that day, one of my men went outside. When he got back inside, he said, “There’s a dog in your van.” I laughed and thought it was no big deal, but dad dropped everything and ran out the door. I assumed he was going to chase the dog off and close the van’s doors. After about 15 minutes, I began to worry when dad still had not returned. So I went outside to see what the problem was.

There, I found dad and the dog in a face-off in the front yard. My dad was trying to coax the dog into giving him back the lunch bag that he had taken from the van. Dad was mad. He had been chasing the dog for 15 minutes. Being the cutup that I am, I raced back into the house to get the others to come and watch. We gathered on the front porch for a view of dad cursing and chasing the dog around the yard.

After about five minutes of laughing so hard we could barely breathe, I yelled to dad, “You aren’t still planning to eat that, are you?” Dad didn’t say anything; he just got madder. I could tell dad was to his limit, so I said, “Just let the dog have it.” One of the other guys said, “We’ll share our lunch with you.” Dad then stopped, turned to us and, in a loud and disgusted tone, replied, “My teeth are in that bag.”

—Timothy Myers, North Wilkesboro, NC

Drawing by: Jackie Rogers

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