Author: Donald Guenther
Obtained: October 25th, 2013

During the summer months the boys would sleep outside. We once slept over 100 days in a row outside. If it started to rain we would run back into the house and sleep on the floor. Sleeping on the floor still counted.
Watching for shooting stars and talking made for a wonderful experience. In those days there was no light pollution to ruin your view. The night sky glowed. 

A treat for us was to have our little black terrier house dog Ginger crawl into our sleeping bag for the night. Having the small dog in the bag kept one warm. Along the same line but disastrous was having our Saint Bernard Tiny crawl into your sleeping. A person only did that once. Tiny’s uncle had been the rescue dog on the TV show Topper so we had a claim to fame but that only went so far. The sleeping bags were small and Tiny would take up a bag and a half.

It was during one those August summer night with the boys sleeping out that the dogfight occurred. Richy said he had Ginger sleeping with him and Johnny said he had Ginger sleeping with him. How could they both be right? Richy exploded and told Johnny that Johnny was lying. How could they both be so certain and yet only one could be right. The other three boys Donny, Eddy and Davy didn’t know what to make of the situation. Richy being the oldest and very excitable began to scare us. We feared for Johnny.   Richy asked Johnny to produce Ginger and Johnny argued that Richy just wanted to steal her. The altercation began to escalate. Richy was much bigger and can hurt Johnny but Johnny held his ground. Finally Richy took Ginger out of his bag. Johnny looked confused and proceeded to take Ginger out of his bag. We all became confused. How could there be two Gingers? We felt like we’d watched too many Twilight Light Zone episodes on the T.V.

Upon closer examination one of the dogs had a tail and Ginger did not. Apparently one of our neighbors had a dog exactly the same size, color and breed as Ginger. The dog had come to pay us a visit. I can’t remember whether Richy or Johnny had the real Ginger but we all became excited and took the dogs up to the house to show everyone. The dog fight dissipated.

The real Ginger continued to live with us for many years while the impostor visited a few more times that summer and disappeared. Our twilight dogfight caught us by surprise and only goes to show you that you should be careful before you accuse someone of lying no matter how sure you are.

Read by Jereme Guenther