66 REMINISCE.COM * JULY 2018
LastinG
ImpreSsionBACK IN TIME
PAL RAN with
Charles on many
more adventures.
Here they are in
1952, four years
after her accident.Y
ears ago, when we were all boys,
we spent hours along the two
waterways that bordered our town.
Lime Creek (now Winnebago) and
the Shell Rock River came together
south of town at a spot we called the cutoff.
Many stories took place in the land between
the rivers. This one was in 1948 , when I was 10.
Rodney, Lyle and I decided to go fishing
on Lime Creek. We crossed the steel-span
bridge and went east to an old wagon crossing
overgrown with ragweed. We had corn knives,
which were like machetes, to cut a path.
We were almost at the river when my dog Pal
ran down the path and into someone’s knife.
She was cut above the eyes, bleeding badly
and running in dazed circles.
Rodney and Lyle held her while I squeezed
the wound closed and covered it with my shirt.
I kept thinking what a good friend she’d been.
She loved water; duck hunting was her favorite
thing to do. She always knew where she was
supposed to be when hunting pheasants.
I can’t let her die, I thought. I scooped her up
and started frantically back toward town.
Rodney was right beside me holding the
cloth over her head. But Pal must’ve weighed
almost 70 pounds. When I finally made it near
the edge of town, my arms gave out and I fell
to my knees, exhausted.
Lyle picked her up and took off at a very
fast pace. He was a rugged kid, probably from
fighting his older brother Merle every night
after school. Block after block Lyle kept on.
Rodney tried to relieve him but Lyle was too
bullheaded to quit. However, the vet’s officeMake an impression. Send in your stories and photos:
REMINISCE.COM/SUBMIT-A-STORYA charge across the field
for a life worth saving.
THE KNIGHT
WITH A BLACK BAG
BY CHARLES GREENMAN • FLOYD, IAwas across town, and we still had a long way
to go. Lyle was worn out. We had to rest,
so we set Pal down in the grass.
“What’s wrong with that dog?” It was the
town doctor, Russell Knight, calling to us from
his office across the street. We told him, and
seconds later he was running toward us, in
much the same way he must have done during
combat in World War II—with his bag in his
hand and a serious look on his face. He knelt
beside our wounded friend and talked softly
to her. She kept very still for him, as though
she knew he would take care of her.
Doc cleaned the wound and, moving quickly,
sewed it closed right there on the grass.
“Don’t let her scratch the stitches out,”
Doc said as he stood. “You can bring her to my
house next week and I’ll take a look at her.”
I was gazing up at him, trying to explain that
I couldn’t afford to pay him, when something
strange happened: I saw a plate of steel appear
across the doctor’s shoulders, and the bag in
his hand transformed into a shield.
I blinked away the vision and heard him say,
“Boy, you don’t owe me a thing.”
I’m sure it was the sun playing tricks on me.
Yet forever after I would consider that doctor
to be my knight in shining armor. •