INTRODUCTION
The End of the Road
There is no better way to breathe life into a career than by retiring. Like death, retirement is a great career move; unlike death, however, retirement does not have to be a one-and-done affair. The retiree still possesses options, one of which is to unretire—also a great career move. F. Scott Fitzgerald might have thought there were no second acts in American lives, but Michael Jordan, Richard Nixon, Phil Donahue, and a horde of wrinkled, aging pop singers who lived to hold another press conference have proven him wrong.
After pondering these examples carefully, I have decided to announce that this will be my last book. When the final galleys of Postcards from the Pug Bus go off to the printer later this year (2003), I am retiring from writing. There will be no sequels, no prequels, no Return of the Pug Bus—no matter how much an adoring public may clamor for more. Unless I change my mind.
Apart from the obvious leisure-time benefit, retirement has a large upside. It not only increases sales of the retiree’s previous works but also entitles the retiree to mount the grand farewell tour, a dog-and-pony spectacle that garners florid accolades and, hopefully, expensive baubles the retiring artist may no longer be able to afford. Indeed, there is nothing more gratifying than a well-managed retirement tour— except, perhaps, a reunion tour.
Nevertheless, even though I am retiring for the first time–and as a virgin retiree am entitled to wear white on my retirement tour–have chosen to skip the farewell turn. It’s not that I have anything against receiving costly baubles. I am forgoing the victory lap because I don’t like flying, meeting people, or being away from home for any length of time. Besides, my dogs would miss me.
In lieu of a retirement tour, I did consent to an exclusive interview with an award-winning journalist (AWJ), who agreed to speak with me (ME) on condition of anonymity. The transcript of that interview is presented below. It has been edited where necessary to avoid discussing topics covered later in this book.
AWJ: As you reflect on your twenty-one years as a writer, do you have any regrets about the direction your career has taken?
ME: No. South is as good a direction as any. The climate generally improves as you go, and you’re never driving into the sun.
AWJ: Why did you choose to become a writer?
ME: That decision evolved from a canny attempt to grow into my limitations, which include an inability to function in groups larger than one, a disinclination to take direction, and a bedrock aversion to a nine-to-five schedule–or to any schedule, if the truth be known.
AWJ: Why have you decided it’s time for you to retire?
ME: I made that decision more than two years ago when I was about to be wheeled to an operating room for a Sunday morning procedure to remove excess fluid that had collected around my heart. Most people have a few ml of fluid around their hearts; for some mysterious reason that doctors were never able to determine, I had more than a hundred around mine.
Something told me the operation was serious. Why else would a surgeon give up an early tee time on a Sunday in August? As the nurses were steering me down the hall, I said to my wife, “If I get out of this place alive, I’m retiring.” When opportunism knocks, I answer.
AWJ: What did you wife say?
ME: Like she was going to argue with me at that point? When you’re flat on your back on a hospital gurney on the way to the operating room, you’ve got the world by the [tail].
AWJ: If you decided to retire more than two years ago, why did you wait until now, June 2003, to announce your decision?
ME: Because art imitates infomercials, and I didn’t have any new art to promote. I’d been too busy with various writing assignments to devote much time to this book. Eventually I realized that the only way to finish the book was to retire in stealth, take some time to write this book, then retire officially.
AWJ: What sorts of assignments had you been working on?
ME: I had eight books published between 1993 and 1998, all of them animal related, and I helped to get a couple of pet magazines up and running between 1996 and 2000.
AWJ: Postcards from the Pug Bus is the second book you’ve written about pugs. Why did you decide to do another one?
ME: The sales of the first book, for which I didn’t take a royalty option, were my main inspiration. What’s more, the first book is a pet-care manual— one of those do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do affairs that is, by design, long on advice but short on anecdotes and je ne sais quois.
AWJ: Are you comfortable giving advice?
ME: I prefer giving orders or, occasionally, my blessing. I’ve always thought the best thing one could do with advice is ignore it. Besides, pug owners don’t want for advice. There are ten how-to pug books currently available, and another five will be published in 2004. What pug owners need instead of all that advice is a reality manual that picks up where the training manuals leave off–or never bother to go.
AWJ: And where is that?
ME: A pet-care manual cannot adequately describe all the colors in the pug rainbow, nor can a how-to book properly convey the ecstasies and the agonies of living with pugs. That’s why I decided to write Postcards from the Pug Bus. I believe a book of anecdotes and reflections will appeal not only to prospective pug owners who want to find out what it’s really like to live with these dogs, but also to current pug owners who have mastered the arts of house-training and feeding and are looking for something interesting to read about their favorite dogs.
AWJ: What is it like to live with a pug?
ME: It’s like living with another person in the house— a charming, innocent-looking, impish layabout who loves a good time, isn’t shy about expressing opinions, and is always trying to shake you down for whatever it is you’re eating. If you’ve never experienced the joy of watching a pug come to terms with the world and trying to bend the world to its terms, your life is poorer for want of that experience. Pugs are all wide, soulful eyes; flapping, velvety ears; and panting enthusiasm. They are fetchingly soft, unerringly cute, endearingly klutzy, unfailingly energetic, and damnably stubborn on occasion. They can coax a smile from your soul on the most grim, cheerless, lamentable days; and when the sun is shining, they have a way of making you feel as if it’s shining only on you. We would all do well to observe them.
AWJ: What have you learned from your observations of pugs?
ME: Three critical lessons come to mind: a moral compass is worthless indoors; inspiration begins with a nap; and a short memory makes for a clear conscience.
AWJ: And what have you tried to instill in your pugs?
ME: All of pug training can be reduced to two commands: “come” and “no.” The rest is window dressing—a lot of “look, Ma, no hands.” I can truthfully say that all my pugs come when they’re called. They might not always pick up on the first ring, but if I persist, they get the message. They also respond well to “no,” especially if I’m walking toward them—or standing right behind them— when I say it. That’s good enough for me. I don’t need to inflate my ego at their expense.
AWJ: What are the practical advantages of owning a pug as compared to owning another breed?
ME: Pugs travel easily and are accepted more readily in hotels or motels than many other breeds. Pugs won’t eat a hole in your discretionary income. They don’t require a lot of exercise. They can be washed quickly and allowed to drip dry, and best of all, because they’re small, you can have more than one. No wonder they ranked fourteenth among the 150 breeds registered by the American Kennel Club (AKC) in 2002 (the last year for which statistics were available before this book went to press).
AWJ: Do all your pugs know their names?
ME: Yes. That’s their only trick. Sometimes when we have company, I’ll gather the dogs and say one dog’s name. That dog will cock its head to one side and look at me quizzically. Then I’ll say another dog’s name, and that one will do the same thing. By the time I’ve called the sixth dog’s name, they look like a mime troupe performing “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?”
AWJ: That’s impressive.
ME: It beats the hell out of trying to teach them to play “This Old Man” on eight glasses filled with different amounts of water.
AWJ: Do you have a set schedule you adhere to when you’re writing?
ME: I like to be at my desk by three in the morning, sometimes earlier.
AWJ: Why so early?
ME: That’s the premium part of the day; the pure, unfiltered, extra-virgin hours. Nothing’s gone wrong yet. There are no interruptions. The phone never rings. It’s like being at a resort after everyone’s gone back to the city.
That state of grace lasts about two hours, but I can accomplish more during those two hours than I can during the rest of the day. Of course the fact that I sometimes call it quits after two hours may have something to do with that situation.
AWJ: Why do you stop after two hours?
ME: Because the dogs are early risers, and as soon as they wake up, they demand a walk and breakfast. By the time we’ve finished those chores, the paper’s arrived, the kettle’s on, and distractions have begun to slither from beneath their rocks.
AWJ: What are some of the distractions that writers who work at home have to contend with?
ME: I don’t know about other writers, but I have problems with the morning paper, the Internet, any number of restaurants, and the television we just installed in the kitchen, which is where the dogs sleep during the day and where I prefer to work once the sun comes up.
AWJ: Why do you prefer the kitchen?
ME: Because I don’t lose as much time walking to and from the refrigerator as I would if I were working in my office.
AWJ: How many pugs do you have presently?
ME: The current number is six: Hans, June, Burt, Harry, Dexter, and Fetch. We’ve had as many as eight.
AWJ: Did you choose “people” names for your pugs because they’re child substitutes?
ME: No! A pug is nobody’s stand-in. Anyway I’ve always thought of children as dog substitutes— and rather poor ones at that. I arrived at this conclusion after teaching in junior high and middle schools for ten years.
AWJ: You also used to raise pugs. Did you raise all the ones you have now?
ME: No. Dexter and Fetch came from a shelter in Philadelphia. We raised the other four.
AWJ: Are there any differences between the four dogs you raised and the two you adopted?
ME: There are physical and behavioral differences. The four we raised—Hans, his half-sister June, and her sons, Burt and Harry—have shorter faces, cobbier bodies, and deeper nose rolls than the other dogs. That’s because Hans and company all come from show stock and were bred to conform to the AKC’s standard.
AWJ: How do you know that Dexter and Fetch don’t come from show stock?
ME: You can tell by looking. We whelped and raised six litters of pugs, and the worst-looking puppy in those litters was to Dexter and Fetch what Catherine Zeta-Jones is to Lily Tomlin.
There are also, as I mentioned, behavioral differences between the “show” pugs and the other ones. Dexter and Fetch are the only pugs we have that are territorial. If we’re out in the backyard and someone walks along the sidewalk that parallels the front of our house—a distance of 175 feet from the yard— Dexter and Fetch will run to the fence and bark. The other dogs wander around looking to see if any food has fallen from the sky.
AWJ: Do you think you’ll have difficulty adjusting to retirement?
ME: I expect I’ll take to it like a pug takes to spilled food. I’ll read a lot, rent every movie in Blockbuster, download every music file on Kazaa, study Eastern religions and cosmology, and devote my spare time to restaurants, gardening, and trivia, which are the real business of living.
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