For Love of Animals

 My dearest sympathy to Barbara on the loss of her beloved Eva. I love the fact that Barbara has immortalized Eva in her novels. All dogs deserve to be immortalized. 

Lucy

From my very first published novel, The Old Buzzard Had it Coming (2205), I've made it a point to always have an animal as an important character. When you write murder mysteries you explore the psyches of human beings and all their foibles and ugliness (which has been on blatant display all over the world lately).

My first series, the Alafair Tucker Mysteries, mostly take place on or near a farm, so adding animals is natural and easy to do. One the ten book series, readers have gotten to know the horses, Hannah and Missy and Sweet Honey Baby, Gregory the Duck, and the family's dogs, Crook, Buttercup, Charlie Dog, and Bacon (Charlie Dog and Buttercup's illegitimate offspring) Often they figure in the mystery. In the fourth Alafair, The Sky Took Him, a Persian cat named Ike helped solve the mystery. I added Ike the cat after the entire manuscript of The Sky Took Him had already been  written. I had to go back and sprinkle Ike’s presence through the novel and it was a lot of trouble. And yet, I don’t know he did it, but that cat tied the action together with a big red bow. He was a magic character.

When I started working on my first Bianca Dangereuse Hollywood Mystery, The Wrong Girl, I was busily typing along on the MS when it struck me like lighting that my heroine needs a dog, and that dog is going do something that saves the day. Thus was born Jack Dempsey, the feisty little mutt who looks like a cross between a rat and drain hair.  He has the same juju as Ike and Bacon and all the others.  Putting an animal in one's books adds an element of ... I don't know what else to call it besides "trueness". Animals are true. They do not have an agenda. Even the crazy and the seemingly vicious ones are what they are and without shame they let you know where they stand. They are pure and innocent, and that's an element that we can all do with even when the rest of life goes to hell in a hand basket.

Zeros

I enjoyed Rick's and Charlotte's latest Type M Entries about using pets our novels (though I'm sorry about Charlotte's grandson losing his friend and companion Mayzie). Rick says he doesn't include animals in his books. I certainly do, especially in the Alafair Tucker Mysteries. That series is set on a farm in the 1910s. Their lives revolve around animals, both companion animals, hunting partners, and dinner, so I pretty much had to include them. In the Bianca Dangereuse books, set in Hollywood in the 1920s, my protagonist grew up on said farm and can't imagine a life without animals. 

 In my mind this ties in with my thoughts about Vicki Delany's new series set in 1953. I cannot wait to read it. 1953 is about the time I was becoming aware of the world. The very mention of the year catpulted me back to that time, the feel of it, the way it looked, the smell of it. The beloved peopl, all gone now, who populated the little world I lived in when I was a small child. It's funny how a word, a thought, a conversation, can evoke memories and feelings you thought you had long forgotten.

The building in the distance is where Grandma's cafe was located from the late 1920 to 1970. I took this photo in 2018. Even the building is gone now. 

 A few days ago, my husband and I were driving down the street discussing candy bars. He’s one of the few people in the world who doesn’t like chocolate, so we were trying to think of as many non-chocolate candy bars as we could. I mentioned Zeros, and suddenly was transported back half a century, to Boynton, Oklahoma, and the eatery that my grandmother owned for over forty years, Mrs. Casey’s Cafe, on Main Street. 

That cafe was a very large part of my childhood, since we traveled to Boynton from Tulsa every other weekend to visit my dad’s mom, and we kids spent at least two weeks with my grandmother every summer. Our two summer weeks were no vacation, either. My grandmother couldn’t afford to take time off from her cafe, so she put us to work. I imagine that at the time we were like any other family ristorante in Italy or corner cafe in Greece, where a ten year old with a dishtowel wrapped around his waist comes to your table to take your order. I don’t know what Family Services would say these days about all the times I carried a tray full of open beer bottles to the men in the back room when I was pre-pubescent, or fried up hamburgers on the grill, or stood on a step stool in the kitchen to wash up glasses in a sink full of lukewarm dishwater. 

 Her cafe was a very small affair; a counter with half a dozen twirling stools that we kids made good if annoying use of, and three booths. Every weekend that we went down there, one of the rituals my sisters and I indulged in was to take a small paper sack and fill it with candy bars from the display behind Grandma’s counter to take home with us. We were thoughtless and greedy little buggers, and it never occurred to me that this was costing my grandma money. I hope that my father reimbursed her. I wasn’t aware of it, but knowing Grandma, she probably did bill him. 

 There were certain candies and treats that she always stocked, such as Hershey Bars, Mounds, Milky Ways, Snickers, Mr. Goodbar, Baby Ruth, Butterfingers, Three Musketeers, Pay-Days, Twinkies, Hostess Cupcakes. But there were others that only made an occasional appearance, and we would snap those up with delight when they did show up. One of these was the aforementioned Zero Bar, which resembled a Milky way, except for the fact that it was white chocolate, or something-that-would-be-called-white-chocolate-in-the-future. I don’t remember that term being in wide use back in the olden days. I also kept a sharp eye out for Heath Bars, Brown Cows, Almond Joy, Krackles, and good old Hostess Sno-Balls, which came in white and pink. I liked the white. Pink snow balls just seemed wrong to me. We didn’t neglect the chewing gum, either. My sister liked Double Bubble and Juicy Fruit, but both were too sweet for me. I liked Spearmint and Beeches Clove gum. I can’t say I enjoyed bussing tables every summer all that much, but I’m sure it was good for my character. Perhaps one of the reasons I write about food so much in my fiction doesn’t have something to do with the experience. 

I wonder if they still make Zeros?