Biscuit Bob

I happened upon him while walking my 12-pound chihuahua mix, Little Ricky Ricardo, on our neighborhood route. He was a tall, balding man with a round face and huge belly. He looked to be in his mid-60s. He stood in front of his ramshackle house and watched Ricky pull on the leash, excitedly trying to run to him. The man held a small Milk Bone biscuit and offered it to Ricky, who ecstatically snatched it out of his hand and snarfed up the delicious biscuit, tail wagging as he munched.

The man introduced himself as Bob and we exchanged howdy dos. It turned out that Bob always carried dog biscuits in his pockets. He’d give one to any dogs on a walk by his house. He knew every dog in the neighborhood.

He mentioned to me he’d had dogs, and missed them. He didn’t have any dogs anymore and didn’t give a reason. I got the feeling he’d loved his dogs so much, he couldn’t handle getting another one or two, and eventually losing them. Losing a loved dog, or any pet for that matter, can cut too deep to do again.

After that, Ricky knew exactly where Biscuit Bob’s house was on our walk. He always picked up the pace when we were 100 or so yards from the house. Ricky always looked hard for him and as soon as he saw Biscuit Bob, it was like he’d just gotten a blast of adrenaline: he danced on his springing back legs as he tried to sprint against the leash, front paws in the air, pulling hard like a chihuahua sled dog, with me being the sled.  He was fired up to cash in on another delicious biscuit from the big fella, ASAP.

Sometimes Biscuit Bob was in front of his house or in the driver’s seat of his van. Sometimes he wasn’t around. Sometimes he’d appear out of his house if he saw Ricky coming. He’d give Ricky a biscuit and pets while we chitchatted about the weather. Bob loved Ricky. Ricky loved Biscuit Bob.

“Ohh yess, that’s good, isn’t it,” he’d say in his raspy dog lover’s voice as he watched Ricky munch in pure bliss, tail wagging. “Yess..My goodness gracious…oh yesss…”

Ricky, a master at working humans for treats by dancing on his back legs while waving a dogpaddle with his front paws, always went back to Bob to make a bid for a second biscuit.

Bob gave him pets and coos, but held his ground. He gave out a lot of biscuits to a lot of dogs, so he had rules.

“Only one per customer,” he’d say.

When Biscuit Bob wasn’t around when we walked by, Ricky didn’t want to quit looking for him. He’d look back after we kept walking, holding out hope he’d still see him.

Biscuit Bob always kept the shades drawn on his front windows. When he was gone he left a bright desk light on visible from the street.

I didn’t know Bob’s story, but he lived alone. I asked him once what he’d done for a living, since he was retired, and I think he said he’d been a mechanic. He once showed me a radio controlled model plane he had in his truck. He liked to take it out and fly it in open areas where other hobbyists do the same. When his breath was labored and he looked like he felt ill, I’d ask him how it was going.

“Fine,” He’d abruptly answer.

Which was his way of saying none of your business.

Friendly to his neighbors, he couldn’t be bothered with keeping his place up. It looked like the thrashed “Malcolm in the Middle” house of sitcom past. His abode was a grungy site, easily the shabbiest home on the tree-lined street on which most of its modest homes and yards are neat, maintained and manicured. He never mowed or watered his brown lawn.

I’ve felt bad for the neighbors on each side of him. They got a daily view of Biscuit Bob’s place, which could be mistaken for a crack house. From the street, it looks like a self-contained, post-apocalyptic, scorched earth, nightmare. Clad in faded gray stucco, it has old double-hung windows with blistered paint, dreary rust colored shutters providing rain leached brownish stains down the side of the house. The house has no roof gutters. His short, flat concrete driveway is busted up into several large uneven pieces from massive tree roots growing under it. And until a couple years ago, to give onlookers and neighbors an extra dose of ugly, Bob had long kept old rusted inoperable cars and trucks parked in his driveway.

By the looks of its curbside presentation, the house’s interior has to be a full-fledged disaster. I pictured Bob sleeping on a greasy mattress in a room down the hall from a foul smelling, never clean toilet.

The kitchen? The living room? I imagine hoarded clutter everywhere, with useless, dusty, dirty, stinky crap of all kinds piled high in every available space, with trails between the junk piles to enable movement to the front door and the other rooms. Of course it could have been immaculate in there. But…nah. No way.

Biscuit Bob drove various used cars and trucks. His latest was a maroon van. Occasionally when Ricky and I were on our walk, he’d drive by us and stop in the street, open his driver side door and give Ricky his biscuit. Of course, Ricky went nuts with glee.

Bob had bad knees, his big, friendly, gregarious neighbor Lou, a woman who lived across the street, told me. When his lawn grew tall from the rain, she mowed it for him.

One day he lost his balance on his steps and fell. So he hired a carpenter across the street to build a ramp from his porch to his driveway. After that was built, he used a walker. His health had suddenly gone south and he’d been hospitalized. I saw him after he came home. His face was gaunt, drained of color, he needed a shave, he’d lost his belly. He looked hollowed out, not long for the world. But he still had a biscuit ready for Ricky.

Then his van was gone from his driveway for a long time. A few weeks later, someone had cut down the bushes on the side of his house and put up a for sale sign.

One day I walked Ricky by Bob’s house and Lou was sitting on her front porch, head in hands, sobbing uncontrollably. I felt like turning around so she could have her time alone. But Ricky and I just kept walking, trying to be inconspicuous. She looked up, took a deep breath, choked back her tears and called out to Ricky.

“Nice summer day, Ricky, gotta get your walk,” she called, the emotion edging her attempted cheer.

She and her friend Jody have always loved Ricky to meet up with their dachshund Maddie. Lou took another deep breath, and I called across to her: “You take it easy, now.”

I didn’t want to ask what the problem was. Somehow it felt better to let her cry out her grief. As we kept walking, I heard her resume sobbing as if she’d never stopped. I don’t know for sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she just got the news that her long-time neighbor, Biscuit Bob, was gone.

And a few days later, in the warm, flower-scented spring twilight of a recent walk, I said hello to the elder lady that lives next to Biscuit Bob. She looked up from her gardening and I asked her if he had passed.  She opened up as if she hadn’t talked to anyone in a long time. She told me he died after an extended stay in the hospital. She’s lived in her house 23 years, she said. Bob’s aunt gave him the house years ago. The neighbor lady, whose own colorful, flower-full yard shows her green thumb, said she knew Bob’s aunt when she lived in the house.

“She kept it beautiful,” she said.

Bob, she said, had served in Vietnam. She said she’d ask him why he just let the place go to seed, and he’d reply, “Why should I do anything when somebody else will do it?”

The neighbor lady said the house was just sold to men who told her they paid $140,000 for it. She couldn’t comprehend the price, given the grim state of the property. They plan to fix it up, she said, and replace the driveway. They told her they found a canoe in the house.

I’m guessing the new owners will try to flip the house. If so, any improvements will likely be done on the cheap so they can pull out as much profit as possible. Still, it’ll take a good chunk of change just to make the place inhabitable. A bulldozer could be the best first step.

As we chatted, Bob’s neighbor lady told of her son who served on a ship that was shelled during the Vietnam War. He had been badly injured. Nasty looking scars covered his legs and after coming home, thoughtless teenagers mocked his legs when they saw him in shorts.

“That kind of thing cuts deep,” she said.

I didn’t ask her if her son is still alive, but I got the feeling he isn’t.

Too many Vietnam veterans were given the cold shoulder by our society upon returning home, largely doing without critically needed support, morally, physically, psychologically, or otherwise. Of all war veterans, the neighbor lady said, “They go through things most of us could never imagine.”

It’s true. How easily we here at home, who’ve never known the fear and the physical and emotional trauma absorbed in combat, turn a blind eye. How easily we, who know nothing of returning veterans’ struggle to cope with their wounded bodies and minds, forget about their needs.

Bob, as a Vietnam vet, like many of his mates that managed to survive and make it back home -- just like those returning these days from serving in Iraq and Afghanistan – come home permanently changed from who and what they were when they left for duty. They come home with injuries ranging from concussions, to hearing loss to missing limbs, along with tsunamis of scary emotional trauma roiling in their psyches. In many cases, their battle zone experiences have been enough to fracture their at-home worlds into kaleidoscoped images of flashback horror.

Although current returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan are getting more support at home, more, no doubt, could be done to help them.

How do they pick up the pieces? Some get physical and mental therapy that helps them normalize their worlds with the love and support of their families. But some just can’t shake the seared in memories of their wartime experiences. Trying to cope, some hit the bottle or get hooked on drugs, or both. Some have bursts of violence. Some isolate themselves.

Biscuit Bob lived in full retreat, trying to make it through what he had left of his life as quietly as possible. Only he knew what he brought back from Vietnam, no one else knew what his eyes saw there. Whatever it was, he kept it bottled up tight. His way to deal with his at-home world was to keep to himself, to wait it all out. Just wait. Until, mercifully, it was his time to go.

He didn’t care what people thought of him or his crapped out house, yard and junk cars. It didn’t matter to him. He just did what he had to do. He was himself, for better or worse. No apologies. He’d given up big pieces of himself. Pieces he knew he would never get back. He just wanted to be left alone.

 “He was a lost soul,” said his neighbor lady.

Now, whenever we approach Biscuit Bob’s house on our walk, Ricky still trots faster. To him, a treat is ahead. When Ricky gets to his yard, he looks hard for his big friend. He’s sure Biscuit Bob will appear, with a trusty Milk Bone in his hand, ready to deliver. Ready to give him some pets.