Boneyard Dog by Carl “Papa” Palmer |

Jackie called the station complaining of a growling dog at Saint Matthew’s Cemetery on Old Mill Road. It seems this hound was protecting a bone, later identified as a human thumb bone, not a major issue out in the sticks, but then we received a call the very next day that the dog had returned, this time with a shoe containing a human foot.

Big news in Ridgeway, but then on day three,
yes, the dog was back, this time with a knee.

Day 1 – a thumb
Day 2 – a shoe
Day 3 – a knee

That evening I got the letter from Barbra Kaye.

She’d warned us back in 1982 that her old man would roll back home one of these days. How we should’ve taken stronger action when he was suspended from the school district for going too far with a student’s punishment, a British term for spanking he’d called a paddywhack.

She had gone as far as to show us his collection of weird mementos and sick souvenirs, his knickknacks, on the shelf in his utility room.
However, he’d left town and the boy’s parents hadn’t pressed charges.
It was obvious in Kaye’s letter he was back, that he’d gotten his revenge on the former student who turned him in.

Her letter read:

This Old Man, He Played One
He Played Knick-Knack on my Thumb
With a Knick-Knack Paddywhack
Give a Dog a bone.
This Old Man Came Rolling Home

*Carl “Papa” Palmer of Old Mill Road in Ridgeway VA now lives in University Place WA. He has a 2015 Seattle Metro contest winning poem riding buses somewhere in The Emerald City. Carl, president of The Tacoma Writers Club is a Pushcart Prize and Micro Award nominee. MOTTO: Long Weekends Forever