Mark K February 23rd, 2010

When I moved to Berkeley in the ‘70’s, I soon learned about all of the colorful characters who hung out on Telegraph Avenue.  Little did I know that my dog, Eddie, would also soon reach legendary status.

There was a guy we called “The Orange Man” who could usually be found on the edge of Sproul Plaza, at the south entrance to the university.  He was always dressed in pastel tie-dyed clothes and had long curly blond hair like a halo around his head.  He carried a plastic bag with three or four oranges inside which he would swing about as he stood for hours, talking to no one in particular.  The word was that he had lost his mind on drugs and that he fancied himself to be a sort of Johnny Appleseed, but with oranges.

There was a homeless man with bloodshot eyes and a crazed expression who camped out near the Café Mediterranean down the street.  He would mutter and scowl and then occasionally break into a frantic kung fu fight, driving away unseen foes.  Once I asked him if I could buy him a coffee.  “No, thanks, I’ve already had one today,” he replied in a clear and refined voice.

My favorite, though, was the one we called “One-way Shoes” who shuffled about town, sometimes pushing a shopping cart.  He had a pair of worn-out leather shoes with the back part squished down under his feet – like someone going outside to get the morning paper.  The shoes were so tattered that we joked that if he ever tried to back up, he would leave the shoes behind.

My friend Bruce worked at Moe’s Books in a five-story building on Telegraph and lived in an apartment on the third floor.  I was staying with him temporarily until I found an appropriate place for Eddie and myself.  Finding an apartment was going to be tough because not everyone allowed dogs, not even an average dog, and Eddie wasn’t exactly average.

Eddie was a shepherd-terrier mutt and to call him hyperactive would be an understatement. His expressions of strong will were legendary, leading him to near-expulsion from a dog obedience class (for trying to bite the trainer) to being maced by a mailman (for greeting him with barks, snarls and a driveway-long sprint). He had already dodged death once – or at least dodged a few fenders in a mad dash across four lanes of Interstate 80. But despite all of this, Eddie was a lovable and loyal pup who never wanted to leave my side.  But that day in Berkeley, we had a terrific craving for a cappuccino and couldn’t bring him with us across the street to the Café Med for fear of what Eddie would do to the apartment if left alone. So we meticulously planned (for 20 or 30 seconds) and decided that the perfect solution would be to leave the dog alone on the roof of the apartment building.

There was stairway access to the flat room where a clothesline was located and the perimeter was enclosed by a four-foot high solid wall. As we left Eddie up there, we wedged the door shut, gently pushing his eager snout out of the way, and made our way to the elevator. In a minute, we were in the lobby, opening the front door.

We were greeted by a passer-by who seemed to be very disturbed about something.

“There’s a dog running around in the street and I think it was just hit by a car.  Does it belong to one of you?”

“No.  My dog’s on the roo…,” I started to say.  Bruce and I looked at each other in horror as we came to the same conclusion.

We ran outside to see Eddie, who recognized me and came hobbling in my direction, listing twenty degrees to the right, stepping gingerly, as is he were walking on thin ice.  My mind couldn’t quite figure out how he had gotten there until I went around to the alley next to the building and saw a parked car with a dent on the hood, surrounded by Eddie-hairs.

No, Eddie had not been hit by a car.  He was the one who had done the hitting.  “Dog Hits Car”, the headline would read.

I was filled with guilt as I took Eddie to the emergency vet, certain that he wouldn’t survive the day.  I felt completely irresponsible for leaving him on the roof, but who would have thought that he would have jumped over a four-foot wall?

Amazingly, Eddie survived.  He didn’t even have any broken bones or major injuries, although for a few weeks he moved as if he had aged a dozen or so dog-years.

Looking back on it, I wonder what One-way Shoes would have said if he had shuffled around a corner just in time to see Eddie flying off the roof and crash landing below:

“Hey little bro’ – you got the right idea – keep moving forward, never go back.  Just remember though – the jumping is the easy part – it’s the landing that takes a little getting used to!”

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