Millionaire Monroe

It was the year of our lord, one thousand, nine hundred and ninety-two. I was in college at ULM, renting a three-bedroom, two-bath house with my friends, Sperry and Barney, and two dogs. T-man was a gaseous, “special needs,” three-year-old Boston Terrier, a gift from my late high school/early college girlfriend, Nici. Alpha dog and chief troublemaker, record holder for most “dog at large” tickets, Beaux, a portly and sweet Catahoula Cur with one blue eye who bucked in excitement around pizzas, belonged to Barney.

510 Harn Street, Monroe, Louisiana, was half party house and half hunting camp. You wouldn’t have believed it if I had told you that the “tickling” feeling on your ankles while walking sans socks was fleas. “Feels kinda nice at first, don’t it?” Or that the pizza box “flung” in the middle of the kitchen floor was trash that didn’t make it into the can, not a mask for the loose dog poop spackled on the linoleum.

These were the heydays for Ronnie, my dad, as the owner/operator of a successful lumber business in Florida and his “travel and entertainment” budget was significant. One such budgeted trip was during that winter of ‘92, when he took his marque customer at the time, Shawn Maher, a guy from so far upstate New York that he might as well be Canadian, and friend, Dan Grimm, legendary pulling guard for the Packers, to Monroe during the second split of duck season.

Back then, when I wasn’t studying or partying, I was fishing or hunting, and during winter, practicing blowing a duck call, the source of several noise complaints. I’d listen to a Duck Commander cassette tape of Phil Robertson going over every call for every scenario over and over.

My friends rarely missed a day of the short waterfowl season, and it had been a good one. Big Sperry, Sperry’s dad, LaArk Hilton CEO and Master of Camp Ceremonies, called his fellow Louisianan and golfing buddy, Ronnie, my dad, and told them to bring their butts.

Sperry and I were to escort the Floridians to Big Sperry’s camp, the LaArk Hilton in Jones, Louisiana, before sunrise to hunt on the morning after they arrived. They had booked rooms for the night at the Holidome, the nicest hotel Monroe had to offer, home of the nightclub, Bobbysocks, an “older crowd.”

Having been at Sal’s saloon, the preferred local watering hole for some before their arrival, Nici drove Sperry and me to the Holidome to retrieve the three. What Nici, Sperry, and I found upon entering Bobbysocks was unbelievable. Ronnie, Shawn the false Canadian, and Dan Grimm, former NFL great, hovered around a smaller fellow, drinking, laughing, and carrying on. Ronnie caught my eye, “Hey, Jed! Come here! You know who this is!”

We knew exactly who this was… Holy crap! They’re getting drunk with Otis, the town drunk from Mayberry. My generation had grown up with the Andy Griffith Show.

What did we do? In a cold North Louisiana January evening, we loaded all four of them up in Nici’s huge green and white Ford OJ Bronco and trucked them to Sal’s Saloon, where a large contingent of the ULM student body was in full tilt boogie.

You can imagine the reception upon walking into the bar with a legendary, famous drunk, who was already drunk, poised to get more drunk. If I remember correctly, he was in town selling wishing wells.

Dan Grimm, the Vince Lombardi-coached lineman, was a bigger draw at Sal’s than Otis from Mayberry. Not surprising in an area ruled like it was a sports monarchy, producing athletes like it does good-looking girls who drink beer and use four-letter words in common dialogue without sounding tacky. I would be remiss not to mention the latest North Louisiana Boy to make it to the NFL last season by way of first-round, fourth pick, Big Country #66, Will Campbell. Well done, lad.

We made it to the duck camp and for two days whacked the big ducks: mallards, pintails, widgeon, and gadwalls from Big Sperry’s pit blind. It was there that Ronnie and Shawn decided they needed a Labrador Retriever for all the duck hunting they were going to be doing. Not just any Lab, they demanded, but one with a championship bloodline.

What in the hell are they going to do with a highly trained duck hunting dog in Marco Island? I thought about asking but belted a high ball call at a group of pintails in the stratosphere instead.

It was settled that Ronnie would call his lifelong friend, another North Louisiana football great, number seven for the Colts, 76’ NFL MVP, Bert Jones, to hook them up with the best Lab guy in the area. A great American sportsman, Bert took me on my first duck hunt, gave me my first call, and roasted me about my poor shooting at a party where people celebrate unions.

Bert gave Ronnie the name Omar Driscoll, a duck-hunting guide, supposed dog-trainer extraordinaire. The next morning, Ronnie, Shawn, and I met Omar and one of his dogs at Omar’s field in Jones. The hunt started with a bang when Omar’s gun “misfired” during his pre-shooting hours safety speech. Later, the three of us would agree that Omar seemed to be missing his trigger finger.

There was enough action for Ronnie and Shawn to see what they needed to see – a chocolate Lab named Mud, trained by Omar, do his thing. Shawn tried to buy Omar’s dog then and there, asking him in his pseudo-Canadian accent, “Why can’t we juss buy thut Mud daug?”

Omar responded like a highfalutin’ country club member who’d been told to move his car, “You cain’t have that dog, that’s a Millionaire in Monroe’s dog!”

I saw Ronnie and Shawn exchange a look that said, “What? How dare he, treating us like we’re not the high rollers we are,” and I knew there was no way they weren’t going to get a dog now, having been “challenged.”

In the months to come, I would make visits to a little town outside of Monroe where Omar trained his dogs and check on Sam, the black lab that Dad and Sean had picked out. When the training was complete, Omar shipped Sam from Louisiana to Marco, a barrier island, where he would be confined to saltwater and sand and no ducks.

A short while later, the inevitable happened. They put Sam back into the crate and sent him home to Louisiana, where he became the third canine member of the Harn Street household. Not too keen on rules like someone else we know whose name rhymes with Big Head (Jed), Sam surpassed Beaux on the most violations list, stacking ‘em high.

Never acclimating to fences, walls, and slabs, he continued to be at large, showing up on a construction site where I was working. High on scaffolding, hanging drywall at Good Shepherd Catholic Church, I heard a noise and looked down to find Sam sitting there. Another time, while I was out of town, the former Mrs. Edwards, Ronna, my girlfriend at the time, came home to her parents, where I had left my truck to find Sam sitting next to it. He’d never been to their house before.

Sam remained within the Chauvin River Basin until presumably jumping into the back of a stranger’s truck - anyone with an open tailgate and a toolbox for him to prop up on - and went somewhere else where he kept on being Sam.

Hal Smith, Otis from Mayberry, died two years later. I don’t know what happened to the trigger-fingerless dog-training duck-hunting guide, Omar Driscoll. I miss Big Sperry and Dan Grimm a lot, and Phil Robertson, although I never had the privilege of meeting him.

I see most everybody in Monroe at least once a year at Christmas, staying with Sperry part of the time. Barney and I were supposed to go to Costa Rica on an ayahuasca excursion, but plans were tabled. Ronnie and I see Shawn from time to time, and Ronnie keeps up with all the Joneses – it’s a big family. I’m still dear friends with Nici, Ronna hates my guts, and we never did find out who the Millionaire in Monroe was.